Christmas Meat Part 2- Goose and Turkey

 After the Boars Head came all sorts of roast birds - including peacock in royal households but it was goose that became  the main  Christmas meat for 300 years. Tradition says Elizabeth I was dining on goose at Christmas 1588 when she was told that the remaining ships of the  Spanish Armada had been destroyed by storms around the Scottish and Irish coasts. She decreed that the Goose should be the bird served at Christmas. 

 Turkeys are native to Mexico so was the common bird used in early America and then brought back to this country. George II kept a flock of turkeys in Richmond Park to provide birds  for shooting for his guests.

Then in the 1800's improved farming meant turkeys became more available, cheaper for households to afford and once Queen Victoria had turkey for the royal Christmas then it became the staple.

We never raised turkeys on the smallholding but always good sized chickens from  day old or off-heat and if we sold all the biggest then I'd cook two smaller birds instead.

ED asked me to get the turkey for Christmas Day  as their car was going to be full of everything else needed for the 11 of us and for them for 5 days. It's been defrosting slowly in the fridge. My fridge runs quite cold so it's a good thing I got it out of the freezer in plenty of time.

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Yesterday was nice and bright and I had to go and buy some cream for Christmas Day after finding the long life tub that was in the fridge was way out of date  - whoops.  Decided I'd like a bunch of flowers for Christmas too so after shopping I had a quick walk around the lake. It was very busy, with some sort of small-dog-group walk going on. 

Plenty of ducks

 

In the afternoon - I don't know if it had been on TV before - probably - as it dates from 2017- but it was new to me......... 'The Man Who Invented Christmas'. A very enjoyable watch for pre-Christmas.

Just editing in to say how sad to hear about the death of Chris Rea - only aged 74 - seems so apt that he died just as everyone is playing ' Driving Home For Christmas'. I have several of his CD's - Colin was a big fan too.

My post about this is HERE December 2023

                              

Christmas Meat Part 1 - The Boars Head

Now this is something you don't see dished up on the 25th December nowadays!

Although it would have been quite common in Medieval and Tudor England and the tradition carries on in some Oxford Colleges. 

The boars head in hand bring I

With garlands gay and rosemary

(These are the words from an original Boars Head Carol printed in 1521)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ1N4Flm7Ko

and according to this youtube from a few years ago - in the US too.

                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqbGmtNIUo

This dish was always served with mustard and is actually what we know now as brawn, something that I made a few times when we kept pigs. Although we always had the head cut in half before getting it back from the butcher as there is a surprising amount of meat on a pigs head, and I would put it to set in a bowl rather than putting it back in the cleaned pigs head skin!

Apologies as I'm sure someone has already mentioned this in their Blogmas posts and I copied some of it from one of my own posts from few years ago! Difficult to be original in December in Blogland!

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I watched/ half watched the programmes  I'd planned yesterday and  the final part of  'The War Between Land and Sea' had a very clever ending.  

Wartime Christmas puddings were made and today there isn't much to do, I ought to get out for a bit of a walk as it looks like being a mostly sunny day.

St Thomas's Day and The Winter Solstice

 

A page from the lovely book by Sophie Jackson 'A Medieval Christmas'

St Thomas was also known as Didymous and Doubting Thomas - one of the first apostles. Details of his life after his appearance in the gospels are uncertain . He is thought to have gone as a missionary to India and to have been martyred at Madras. His special day now is usually marked on July 3rd

There are two old sayings for this day.

Look at the weathercock at noon on St Thomas's Day and whichever way the wind blows from it will stay that way for the next lunar quarter

St Thomas grey, St Thomas grey

Longest night and shortest day 

In the past St. Thomas's  Day was a excuse for 'gooding', which involved  begging for food in return for a small bunch of greenery. In some places this was called 'Doleing'. The dole given was usually some flour for making bread with the wheat donated by a wealthy farmer and ground without charge by the miller.

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St Thomas by Rubens from around 1612

This is an old traditional saying about preparing for Christmas feasting

                                    On St Thomas the divine kill all turkeys, geese and swine.

The Winter Solstice for us today at 3.03pm. The word solstice means the day the sun stands still. 

After the Solstice the daylight hours are much the same for 3 days until at last they gradually begin to stretch towards spring.

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Day 19 and 20 of the Advent Coffee Calendar were both the same - Irish Cream Coffee. All the little sachets have had enough for two coffees which is good.

BiL had a spare hour yesterday afternoon and came over to use his big motor-mower on my grass and to cut down the huge buddleia a bit more than I can and to remove the flamingo tree that died over the summer. It made a good load in his trailer which would have taken me forever to fit into the garden waste bin.

The Strictly Come Dancing final yesterday evening was a lovely colourful watch although emotional with the last live appearance of Tess and Claudia. I think they will be glad to get their autumn and winter Saturdays back to themselves after all the years being out. 

I would have liked George to win but it didn't really matter.

The programme about the Great Winter Freeze of 1962/3 was good, I didn't realise about the smog in London being so bad right up to this date. 

Tonight there's a big circle in the RT around the final part of 'The War between Land and the Sea' - it's been a very clever drama.  Before that I'll probably watch the London International Horse Show and might re-watch - for the umpteenth time one of my favourite WWII films 'The Heroes of Telemark'. They don't make 'em like that anymore!