A blog post about a foodie Christmas should probably include lots of photographs of the food, but I have completely failed to provide any, so will post some photographs of the wonderful day and night skies we have had over Christmas instead.
We had to plan quite a few meals this Christmas as the festivities began on the 22nd when friends came to celebrate a birthday – so we started with our favourite smoked trout from Tobermory Fish Shop on blinis, followed by fish pie, the ingredients for which were also bought there.
We had friends coming to stay for Christmas who contributed to our foodie Christmas menu in lots of ways, and by sending us a side of Smoked Salmon from Achshealach Smokery at Glenuig – near where our friends live – so it has a fine local provenance to them! It was perfect for a light lunch on home baked bread before a lovely walk down below the house and along the shore.
Daughter baked her annual Yule Log which turned out beautifully, using our own eggs and all the Green & Blacks organic chocolate we could find from Dervaig Stores!
Our Christmas meal is always in the evening, so that we dont waste daylight cooking. For this we had saved a rib roast, our own Treshnish beef, to eat with home grown cavelo nero and our own pink fir apple potatoes. We had no room for the damson pudding our friends had brought with them, so had that on Boxing Day instead!
Other Christmas meals were equally gastronomic – and equally local. At the Dervaig Producers Market in November we had ordered part of a ham and home made pork pies from Louise and Fiona. Fiona rears the pigs near Dervaig, Louise cooked up a storm in her cottage kitchen in the village – this is local food at its best, and not even a website between them.
We were spoilt for choice with shellfish too as a couple of days before Christmas the Croig fisherman delivered us a box of fresh Croig crab, and a friend on the other side of the hill from here produced delicious shrimps caught in Loch Tuath in time for Christmas eve, so we ate the freshest of shellfish from the waters surrounding Treshnish Point. Amazing!
Michelle, who makes the little jars of delicious marmalade our guests find in the cottage on their arrival, made our mince pies and a fantastic Christmas cake. She doesn’t have a website either but a photograph of her puddings are in the link above!
We have had a wonderful and ‘foodie Christmas’. It is great to reflect on how lucky we are not only to have had great company, a warm house and ample food on the table, but also to have the luxury of knowing where our key ingredients come from, to have personal connections to those who produce the food we eat and to know that we have not unduly lined the pockets of the supermarkets! Pity we don’t yet produce wine on the island…
