(because I forgot to add a title until after publishing)

Sausages, mash and onion gravy with broccoli cheese; jam roly-poly and custard

With confirmation received that I will be home for Christmas, I spent a chunk of this morning scrolling through a supermarket website working out what I’m going to order for eating over Christmas, like the adult foodie’s version of going through the Argos catalogue with a pen as a child. (Or whatever children these days do to indicate to Father Christmas what they want to find under the tree: set up an Amazon wishlist, presumably.)

I have yet to decide what we’ll have as a main course or, as we are sadly without my late grandmother’s famed¹ Christmas pudding for the first time this year, for dessert. Whatever I pick (and it will be me doing the picking, as mum always defers to me in matters of food) will have to need next-to-no preparation and no more cooking ability than it takes to put something in the oven, as it will be managed by me (who can’t cook, or at least not properly), mum (who doesn’t cook, if she gets any say in the matter), and our respective carers (who will presumably want to get done asap so they can get on with their own plans).

It should ideally also look good in photos (for blogging purposes), provide good leftovers (for Boxing Day and beyond purposes), and be available for delivery with only ten days to go until Christmas Day. I don’t ask much, do I? 😄

One thing that will definitely be included, because for me it isn’t Christmas Dinner without them, is chipolatas. My dad was a huge fan of sausages – for several years my birthday gift to him was a box of sausages in various flavours from whichever fancy butcher’s shop I was closest to at the time – so there were always chipolatas on the Christmas dinner table and, even though he’s been gone for nearly ten years now, I still have to have them. And now they’re all mine, as mum doesn’t like sausages.

And – you would almost think I actually thought about this before I started writing for once – sausages are what was for lunch today. Good ones, too, with a nicely snappy casing giving way to coarse, well seasoned, decently porky interior. They would be an excellent breakfast sausage, if this home offered sausages for breakfast, which it sadly doesn’t.

The gravy was the same slightly sweet, thick, creamy, oddly enjoyable gravy they use on everything, just this time with added fried onions (which I could tantalisingly smell through my open bedroom window all morning).

The vegetable side listed on the menu was braised red cabbage. When I came to the care home I had never had braised red cabbage; now I have had it often enough to know that I don’t really care for it (I mean, I wouldn’t turn it away if it was served to me, but I don’t like it enough to seek it out). Instead, I asked for a side-dish sized serving of the other main course option, broccoli cheese bake, and the ever-obliging kitchen did as asked. It was nice, too, if not quite as outrageously, deliciously cheesy as it was last time.

Dessert was another classic British pud, jam roly-poly. It was also very good: crunchy on the outside, without being hard as I seem to remember it was last time it was served, and soft, fluffy, and jam-laden on the inside. The custard was again oddly tasteless, though. I don’t know why or how they make it like that, but I do know I will be adding some decent custard to my first post-going home shopping list. And possibly to the Christmas shopping list as well, as the first lot might not last that long.

Scores:

• Sausages: 9/10 – near perfect.
• Mash – 8/10 – I didn’t mention it, I know, but it was good.
• Broccoli cheese: 7/10 – not as good as last time, but still very tasty.
• Gravy: 7/10 – it’s always the same, no matter the meal, and luckily I’m leaving before that goes from cause for celebration to “not again”.
• Jam roly-poly: 9/10 – really very good indeed. Please store leftovers in a box with my room number on, thank you.
• Custard: 4/10 – because how do you make custard taste of nothing?

Now I’ll go back to reading my book, or pondering what to have for Christmas dinner, or pretending to read my book while pondering what to have for Christmas dinner, and realise in the process that, once again, I have forgotten to have the post-lunch nap that the OT advised and I intended to have, and now it’s too late. Nvm, I’ll just intend to go to bed early instead, then jit do that either.

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1. Locally famous, anyway: everyone who tried it loved it, and often got added to her pre-Christmas pudding distribution list. We won’t be the only household in West Wight facing the big day with a suboptimal pudding. ↩︎