Christmas Tree Shopping & Winter Casserole

Today we got our Christmas tree :)  I have had real ones the last few years as I love the smell and, to be fair, I haven't seen many nice fake ones.  We get them over the road from us, which is handy, but this year we have radiators where we would have put a large tree (took us 5 years to get central heating, don't know how we survived!!) so we decided to go for a smaller one and do some furniture moving around.

I found some diced beef in the freezer so decided that, rather than the usual roast, I would do a casserole.  A roast after yesterday's feast might have tipped us over the edge ;)  I diced some celery, carrots, swede and onions and picked some thyme from the garden (bit spindly now).  I coated the beef in seasoned flour and fried that and removed it.  I then cooked the veg, added the beef, some stock and half a bottle of Black Sheep ale.  I cooked it for about 2.5 hours (200 degrees to start with then turned it down to around 160).

I served with leek-topped mash, cabbage and broccoli.  It was pretty good and there's plenty left so possibly tomorrow's dinner too.

Oh and we had a starter of butternut squash and parmesan soup, made from the left-over ravioli filling from yesterday (and stock and cream).  Pretty good combination, I was a little skeptical but broccoli and stilton soup is nice so took the risk and it was really tasty.

I MUST go to the gym tomorrow!!!  Was supposed to be there today but couldn't let Mr W decorate the tree on his own.  More like I wanted a beer whilst I was doing the tree.... ;)

I stupidly bought Mr W a Playstation 3 for Christmas and it turned up early so guess what he's been doing all weekend. Thankfully we have more than one TV!  He enjoyed his birthday weekend anyway which is the main thing :)