It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Right. So.

First off, apologies for not updating for nearly a month. There have been myriad miscellaneous things keeping me busy, such as lesson plans, day trips and crises with our window shutters, but here I am now, bringing you up to speed.

The main big thing that I’ve been busying myself with lately is CHRISTMAS – I’ve done all my Christmas shopping for the family through the wondrous medium of Amazon, I’ve started putting up decorations in the flat – only paper snowflakes on the windows so far as it is impossible to hand anything from the ceiling without a ladder (and sadly no fantastically cheap tree from the local supermarket, but there will be other trees), I have pudding and cake and I have made plans to make a trifle with Claudia and Simone on the Wednesday before I fly back to England (two weeks and I will be home! I’m excited). I have also been planning lessons this week for the fortnight before the Christmas break, involving discussions about food, traditions, songs and so forth. I am even planning to break out the guitar for the younger classes. Just call me Maria Von Trapp.

I also went to Salerno last week with one of the other girls posted in this region by the British Council - we had lovely cakes and walked along the seafront, I bought a new umbrella, and we managed to arrive in the square just as they were about to switch the main Christmas tree on for the first time. It was a lovely day, and the Salerno Christmas lights are some of the coolest ones I have ever seen (most of them were made out of recycled plastic bottles too)! Photos can be found here.

Now, as everybody knows, Christmas is not only a time of joy and sparkly things and ridiculous amounts of food – traditionally, people give and receive presents, and I like to give presents. Having bought what appears to be half of the Amazon stock (if you go by my parents’ description of the pile of parcels that are currently sitting on my bed waiting to be unwrapped, delegated, wrapped up again and distributed to various people on the big day), I realised that I had nothing to give Giovanni and Claudia, and no real idea of what they would like. I already had a selection box to give Simone that Mum stuck in with the rest of the Christmas stuff, and after having a bit of a thinking sesh sprawled out on my bed with my iPod in one hand and a pen in the other, I decided that you really can’t go wrong with food. So, I came up with a plan for a lovely box of mixed goodies – all homemade – and I am going to make my first attempt at creating arancello, which is like limoncello but without the horrible lemon-ness, and it apparently tastes all Christmassy, with cinnamon and orange and warm festive spiciness.

See what you think:

ARANCELLO

5 oranges

1 cinnamon stick

2-3 cardamom pods

1 vanilla pod

1l vodka

600g caster sugar

Extra cinnamon sticks, orange peel and such to stick in the bottle and make it look fancy

Okay, so the last bit wasn’t actually written on the recipe I found. And I probably won’t make as much as it actually states, but once I’ve bought some nice glass bottles and jars and some ribbon to make it look nice, it should be an interesting challenge. I started the process on Wednesday afternoon by labouriously peeling oranges and dropping all the peel in a jar, adding cinnamon sticks and pouring on the vodka. I could not for the life of me find cardamom pods or a vanilla pod in the supermarket, so it won’t be exactly right, but I added some vanilla extract to the mix and from the smell emanating from the jar when I open it, it seems to be working. All I have to do now is keeping shaking it up every day before adding copious amounts of sugar on Wednesday, then I leave it for a week again and it should be ready to go.

My variety box of lovely sweeties will hopefully include Peppermint Creams, Spiced Shortbread, Chocolate and Vanilla Pinwheel Cookies (be quiet, I like to capitalise things, okay? It makes them seem more significant), White Chocolate, Cranberry and Pistachio Fudge and Chocolate Truffles. I say hopefully because I’ve only ever made one of those things before (the Shortbread, and it didn't turn out that well, but I know what I did wrong now!) but it can’t too difficult when only two out of five things require the use of an oven and some of them can be made and kept in the freezer until necessary.

However, I have never been one to shy away from a kitchen experiment. My cookery motto is At least you can eat your mistakes.

Unless they will give you food poisoning; in which case, don't.

Until next time, my avid(!) readers,