The forecast for Christmas Day in Central Australia is 39 degrees Celsius ... so much for a "white" Christmas. It's a tad hot for roast meats and vegies straight out of the oven, so we plan to do our cooking Christmas eve in an outdoors barbecue after dark and then have cold meats and salads for lunch.
We usually start with a pancake breakfast around 10 am after we have opened our presents. Our pancakes are topped with jam, cane sugar syrup and cream (for anyone keen enough to bolster their cholesterol levels) accompanied by fruit juice, coffee, and a variety of seasonal fruits.
Around 2 pm we begin to feel hungry again, so it's back to the table for another round, this time pork, chicken, turkey and beef roast and a variety of salads eg, potato salad, bean salad, , prawn salad, and that green leaf stuff that has no nutrition, tastes like cardboard and doesn't seem good for anything ... lettuce. (By now I expect you will have guessed I don't like it).
At lunch we will probably crack a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine or Champagne depending on how much we have already consumed and who wants what. We have quite a collection for a family that doesn't really drink all that much (in comparison with other Territorians that is).
After lunch I usually get the job of cleaning up, (thank goodness for dish washers) have a nap for an hour if time permits and then in the evening Christina and I are off to Ilparpa (five or six kilometres away) to have dinner with friends. By then we probably won't care what our son, daughter and grandson are doing. All the excitement tends to wear us out these days.
It's a good thing Christmas only comes annually, although I seriously think that in Australia we should have it in July, not December. I may start up a Christmas in July Lobby Group to try to change our traditions. There is another group hell bent on eliminating Christmas, so my pressure for a change in timing shouldn't be such a bad deal.
We hope you and yours, wherever you are have a wonderful Christmas and New Year if it is part of your tradition and if not, we wish you all the best for 2013.
Robin
