Watch the birdie

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We have been completely frosted over here today. It was -1C when I came in on the bread shift at 4.45am and when the sun rose it felt so Christmassy!  

My friend and guru for all things game – Silver Sheldon, of Hadrian Game – dropped in today with our first hand-reared turkey and I am pretty much past myself with excitement. We’re cooking it this Sunday for the restaurant customers and I have a large one ordered for my family for Christmas Day. We are a drop point for Silver’s birds (geese, duck, chicken) and we have a nifty hamper of trimmings we’ve put together (check out our Facebook page for details).

The freezer in the shop is starting to swell with ready meals for Christmas. We have been making chestnut stuffing with herbs from the garden (the thyme and parsley is hanging on in there…), delicious garden celeriac and carrot crush laced with horseradish and cream, and duck fat roasties which just need blasting off on the day. Cousin Anne’s cranberry sauce is out of this world and for sale in our shop too.

Our celeriac soup with white truffle is hugely popular with customers in the restaurant for our pop-up Festive Friday menu (open noon-2.30pm and 6pm-8.30pm – quote this column and we will give you a complimentary glass of prosecco  – such is our love of appetite readers!).

A group of foodie bloggers came for a sneak preview tasting of the menu in November and if you have a little look online you’ll see they loved it! We’re making rabbit rillette, black pudding Scotch eggs with garden plum ketchup, roast turkey and the trimmings, slow-braised beef with a sauce so sticky and dark it could be chocolate, and lots more besides. It’s wonderful.

Rose the cow is moving closer to her due date and we expect baby Rose to be born before Christmas. We also have two hens who are clucking a lot but on strike for eggs, but they at least have a new cockerel to look after them.

All in all it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas; a frosty, cosy, foodie Christmas…Now then, where’s the sherry…

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