Christmas has officially appeared on the horizon now. Sorry to those of you who dread this run-up, but after the 1st Dec, I think we’re officially allowed to begin preparations. Ours kicked off promptly with a Christmas party on the 1st, followed by a wet-and-windy trip to see the Christmas lights at Kew Gardens. As I’m posting this late (on Saturday) I’ve also made progress on a gingerbread house, using some neat cutters from Lakeland. Recipes:

• Gingerbread – Lakeland recipe
• Ginger, clementine financiers – Nigel Slater in the Observer Christmas food monthly. 

Without a recipe:

• Sausages and roast veg
• Pork and red pepper stir fry, with purple sprouting broccoli and rice
• Pasta bolognese

Reading:

•  We need to stop saying easy cooking is easy
• A show-stopper of a restaurant review in the Spectator
• A couple of cookbook of the year round-ups: the New York Times on baking books, including a lovely review of Edd Kimber’s patisserie book; Delicious magazine has a book for every occasion.
• Disappointingly, the FT’s books of the year only included two food books: But they did have a nice feature about turkeys from Tim Hayward and some rather lovely looking canapés from the Honey and Co team.