So, I’ve never cooked Christmas dinner before. To be honest, my experience of cooking roast meat of any kind is limited. A chicken or two, maybe a ham at some point, and that’s the limit. I’ve really tried to up my cooking game this year, though, as we start to focus on our health a bit more than we have previously. With that in mind, when HelloFresh started advertising their Christmas box, I was keen to get involved.

The BBC Good Food Show has been on my to do list for a while, and this year I finally managed to find time to attend the show for a few hours. It’s bad timing really, because I haven’t been cooking or baking as much as I used to, but even so, I’m still keen on seeing what the best of the kitchen world has to offer. In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed.

I wouldn’t cook well with a camera up close like that. The pressure!

I enjoy cooking a lot, but it’s something I’ve never really managed to get fully into. I had that brief interlude with baking and impressed myself with a couple of dishes, but even that ended up petering out before it really got going. The trouble I have is that I don’t really have the fundamental basic knowledge to start experimenting and learning and making great things. Without boring details about the meals I have been making up to now, I will say that the famous rut of cycling through a handful of recipes over and over has definitely been reached.

Today I braved the supermarkets to pick up ingredients for the mammoth piece of gammon we received. I told you about it yesterday, and the fact that I am even blogging about the results means I didn’t burn it. That is a bonus! I was following this BBC recipe, but I sort of modified it for my own results, due to constraints with both time and the size of the dishes that I had to work with.

After the success of the chocolate covered pretzels, my mother and I decided that baking mince pies would be the next challenge. It is Christmas, after all. After a bit of a delay as we tried to locate some mincemeat (silly supermarket two for one offers resulting in empty shelves), and we were ready to go. Now, I cook and I bake and I enjoy it, but I’m not so good at the bit where you have to dive right in and get your hands dirty.

A while ago, I tweeted about my desire to have some Nestle Pretzel Flips, but it appears they are no longer sold in the UK. Along with Lucky Charms, the best things are always stolen from me. My good friend pointed out a site called American Soda that delivers US groceries to our shores, but shipping isn’t exactly cheap. Instead, I had an idea. Why not make them myself? I visited my mother today and we had a go at making them.

I bought some Pop Tarts today but it wasn’t until I got them home that I realised – we don’t yet own a toaster. D’oh!

Rant No. 1 I do not understand birthdays at work. If it’s your birthday, at many offices you have to go out and buy some cakes or donuts or cookies, or a selection of all three. Everyone very graciously wishes you happy birthday and thanks you for the sweet treats. It’s all nice and pleasant. But my birthday means nothing to me, I’d rather the day just went by like any other.

I came home yesterday, and it was raining and really nasty weather, just at the time when it’s getting dark. I hate that time because you have your lights on but they’re not really doing anything, although it’s still hard to see. Over the weekend, I tried my hand at making my own fudge. It wasn’t a complete success, but Mr C did attempt to eat it. He ate quite a lot of it actually, despite my warnings that it was basically pure sugar.