Baking is compulsory at Christmas.
It's a delusional way of thinking you are making inexpensive gifts.
That is lies, lies I tell you.
The other lie is that making gifts is a loving and thought filled joy.
Believe me making cookies, truffles and coconut ice
at 10pm on an evening where the temperatures are hoovering upward
of 28C all the love and thoughtfulness ebbs away rapidly.
Having said that though,
it's like at Christmas you make time to do cool baking.
Baking that you wouldn't normally do
cause it's fiddly, sticky, messy, involves an eye for detail
and patience.
Cathedral Cookies are a fine example of this.
The other thing that I love about Christmas,
I mean other than feeling like I can actually be arsed to do fancy baking,
the other thing is family.
I think its that there are a couple of weeks off.
It's summer and it's almost a new year and a clean slate.
Laughter and teasing fill the air.
Ok some teasing has an edge and a bite,
but why risk it when people are thinking presents.
I think the women in my family have a pretty good sense of humour
about ourselves,
the men have equally as good senses of humour,
just not about themselves.
Stories that just make me wet my pants with laughter
and always will are things like this post
involving Mags, her baking efforts and kitchen disasters.
It's always cool at Christmas time to give back.
Big and small doing good things for others
has wonderful warm fuzzies that go on and on.
It's like a bank that you store up and can make withdrawals when you need to.
Last Christmas my especially gorgeous niece Mem came to stay.
One cold and rainy day probably this very day last year,
we joined a bunch of farmers to fill bags of food to give to
families stuck between earthquakes and hard places.
The food parcels were pretty spectacular.
A roast lamb, kilos of fruit and veges and lots of treats.
Mem even made it onto the front of our local newspaper!
It was a good day to give to others and
reenlist with the Farmy Army.
Two days later the neighbours house was rasied to the ground
and two days after that we had a nasty earthquake
that unsettled all of us.
But giving is always better than receiving.
(another lie, but we'll go with it)
And right now some blokes need a hand.
A while ago I started following this fulla Jimi
on his Odyssey of floating down the very long Waikato river on a lilo.
(if you are like me that movie Lilo and Stitch makes it impossible to say LIE-low)
Jimi suffers from depression.
Floating down the river was his way of helping himself up.
It's a bit odd but I think the saying
"what ever floats your boat' is applicable here.
Some other blokes made a documentary about Jimi and his lilo adventures.
TV3, the awesome people that they are, picked it up
and are showing it on the telly.
This is very cool.
Not so cool is the time slot....
4pm on New Years Eve.
First its a work day and
second that's probably the busiest hour in any off-license in New Zealand
so people are going to standing in queues buy booze
not on the couch watching a doco
that will inspire and uplift.
So here's the teaser of "A Bit Mental"
I think the women in my family have a pretty good sense of humour
about ourselves,
the men have equally as good senses of humour,
just not about themselves.
Stories that just make me wet my pants with laughter
and always will are things like this post
involving Mags, her baking efforts and kitchen disasters.
It's always cool at Christmas time to give back.
Big and small doing good things for others
has wonderful warm fuzzies that go on and on.
It's like a bank that you store up and can make withdrawals when you need to.
Last Christmas my especially gorgeous niece Mem came to stay.
One cold and rainy day probably this very day last year,
we joined a bunch of farmers to fill bags of food to give to
families stuck between earthquakes and hard places.
The food parcels were pretty spectacular.
A roast lamb, kilos of fruit and veges and lots of treats.
Mem even made it onto the front of our local newspaper!
It was a good day to give to others and
reenlist with the Farmy Army.
Two days later the neighbours house was rasied to the ground
and two days after that we had a nasty earthquake
that unsettled all of us.
But giving is always better than receiving.
(another lie, but we'll go with it)
And right now some blokes need a hand.
A while ago I started following this fulla Jimi
on his Odyssey of floating down the very long Waikato river on a lilo.
(if you are like me that movie Lilo and Stitch makes it impossible to say LIE-low)
Jimi suffers from depression.
Floating down the river was his way of helping himself up.
It's a bit odd but I think the saying
"what ever floats your boat' is applicable here.
Some other blokes made a documentary about Jimi and his lilo adventures.
TV3, the awesome people that they are, picked it up
and are showing it on the telly.
This is very cool.
Not so cool is the time slot....
4pm on New Years Eve.
First its a work day and
second that's probably the busiest hour in any off-license in New Zealand
so people are going to standing in queues buy booze
not on the couch watching a doco
that will inspire and uplift.
So here's the teaser of "A Bit Mental"
Now what I want you to do is go here
and
let TV3 know it's needs a better time slot.
Go on, it's an easy run on the board for doing good.
