It's almost a week until christmas, a little while ago I moved furniture around the living room making space for a (facsimile) Tree which someone decided to cover with as many decorations as they could possibly find & once they'd done that, they threw a few more at it to see how many of them would stick.

To prepare for the occasion I prepared a Christmas cake, while it took some time to gather the ingredients, it took much longer to actually cook the thing, up to four hours & the resulting cake was somewhat larger than expected. You could probably buy a cake from a supermarket, but they would be a fraction of the size of this cake. I still have to add the icing to the cake, but I had to wait a while before I could actually get around to this as I didn't actually get around to buying the Apricot Preserve that adheres the Marzipan to the cake until yesterday

I also prepared some Christmas Pudding with lots of Figs & other fruit Raisins, Prunes, Sultanas & a Banana that I pureed in a liquidiser with a Pear. I then had to steam the puddings in a pan for up to five hours, but as I could only fit one pudding bowl in the pan at the time it took twice as long. Combined with the four hours it took to prepare the cake & I've spent fourteen hours cooking desserts so far this month. But there will likely be a few more hours spent in the kitchen as I have to prepare some Mince Pies & there's a recipe for Chocolate Blancmange which I found on the packet of Rice Flour that I used for the Cake & Pudding.

I'd make some Stollen or a Yule Log if I actually had a recipe & there was actually any room left in the refrigerator, which seems to be especially full this year!

Thinking ahead to 2009, I found myself at a loss as to whether or not I should book a table at the Bristol International Comic Expo. But I looking into the matter, it would appear that all exhibitor spaces have now been sold which kind of solves the conundrum for me.

I saw this sketch for a product that parodies the old Cillit Bang Ads, the ones where Barry Scott shouts his lines at the top of his lungs, the product in this faux Ad is aptly named 'Kitchen Gun' BANG & the dirt is gone!