How I Spent My Christmas

I don't celebrate Christmas, hence the lack of frantic preparations and festivities. All that I looked forwards to is spending the day at home. I am one of those terribly boring people who does not like to go out. I am happy hanging around at home in my tee shirt and sarong watching exercise videos while munching on keropok or cookies. I'm pretty low maintenance and my partner does not have to worry about taking me on exotic getaways or think of ways to keep me amused during the holiday season. So what did I do on Christmas day?


Let's see. I woke up early. My schedule runs as usual with military precision. But it was Christmas, and I decided to go free and easy. Instead of watching exercise videos, I decided to become proactive. My day started with these :

But after 2 lifts, I decided that they were too heavy.

Each of of these blue babies weigh 3.5kgs which is 7.7lbs. Then I switched to these pink ones :

These were way better. At 1.5kgs each which is 3lbs, it was manageable.

After a couple of heaves and some huffing and puffing, I got distracted. By thoughts of the 2 pumpkin halves in the fridge. Why am I thinking of the pumpkins? It must be because of Realgunners' Pumpkin Pie. I had planned on making pumpkin puree to freeze so that I can bake with pumpkin anytime I want. So I went to the kitchen and took the pumpkins out to stand to room temperature. I was going to roast them later.

And then I thought of lunch. What was I going to eat? (It was 5:00am by the way). I knew there were 2 chicken legs in the freezer and a head of broccoli in the fridge. That's it! Lunch settled. 

Next, I had to bake something. Anything. I shall not talk too much about the cake because I will be blogging about it. Here's a sneak preview of my cake.

But before I baked my cake, I had to settle the pumpkins. Off they went into the oven. I clearly remembered that my last pumpkin was perfectly roasted at 160C for 35-40 minutes. While they were in the oven, I decided that I wanted to make cookie batter. No, I wasn't going to bake cookies but I wanted to freeze the batter for future use. Since I had lots of time today, why not prepare tomorrow's cookie dough today? So I took the butter out to make brown butter. You want to know how to make brown butter? Just in case you don't already know, here's how :

Put butter into heatproof container and melt the butter at medium heat.

Keep stirring till butter melts completely.

The butter will start to foam. Keep stirring.

Then it will boil vigorously. Keep stirring, The butter solids will start to brown at the bottom.

Once browned, take off the heat and pour into another container to prevent burning.

While all that was going on, I forgot to check on my pumpkins. I overbaked them! The flesh was all mushy and watery and I was upset. That's the problem with me. I try to overachieve on my days off. But I thought of a solution. Drain the water off using a strainer like so :

I left the pumpkin puree to stand for more than an hour until most of the fluids drained off. This is how messy my dining table was.

See my kitchen scale? I bought it at Tesco a few years ago for RM15.00 only. It has served me well.

I packed the pumpkin puree into airtight glass containers at 100g/200g each and stashed them into the freezer. 

All this time, my cookie dough was chilling in the fridge for easier handling. Once I was done with the pumpkin, I took the cookie dough out of the fridge and divided it into two portions.

Then these two mini torpedoes were wrapped in cling film and put into a bag and safely stashed into the freezer. When I get a snack attack, all I need to do is thaw the cookie dough and bake. Convenient, huh?

By this time I was very hungry. My chicken legs were already defrosted and the broccoli washed and drained. After all the work I did above, I did not want to cook anything that took too much time. That's when I drew some inspiration from Lazy Man. 

I decided to bake the chicken legs with broccoli and one green pepper from my garden. I seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper and I did not forget the lemon juice. 

That wasn't quite enough and I topped up my meal with some salad greens.

I made some dressing for the salad.

It was a simple meal but an enjoyable one. 

After that I had a slice of cake. OK, two.

Then I felt guilty. I had to burn off the carbs. So I went to clean the bathroom. If there is one thing I cannot stand besides dirty floors is a dirty bathroom. The cleaning was very therapeutic. I enjoy housework. I know, I am crazy. After dinner (I ate the same thing, I can eat the same thing for lunch and dinner) I had a good bath and had a relaxing time reading this book, laughing all the way through. It's hilarious.

I finished it in 2 hours but 3/4 of the way through I realised an anomaly in my copy of the book. Pages 137-152 are repeated and pages 153 to 166 are missing! This copy must have slipped quality control before it left the printers. Can anyone who has this book verify?

And that's it. My very ordinary but very relaxing and joyful Christmas. It's back to work the next day but that's fine because today is Friday! I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas too :)