Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas.
We spent it up in the apartment in La Mongie, we had some friends round for a light lunch (bread, soup, pate etc), went skiing and then had roast chicken in the evening with a lot of yummy pork, sage and onion stuffing. It was one we hatched ourselves. He was called Christmas Dinner - who says what our parents name us doesn't affect our lives!
He was a very tasty plump fellow. Some of them have quite skinny chests as they are an egg laying breed, but his was great, we wish we knew why not so we could replicate in the others!

This is my christmas present, I have no idea how Doug knew it is what I wanted!.

View from the apartment window

Poppy modelling a hoody

View of the apartment from the lift

Doug

A snow monster the child in the block next door made with his dad

Christmas dinner the plump chicken (cockeral)

Poppy posing outside the apartment

Cooking beef in a microwave

The gas has been shut off in our La Mongie flat. V annoying. The company say they sent an email saying I should phone them, but I never received it. They cannot come to reconnect until the 26th Dec. Will make Christmas dinner tricky. We plan on taking up our induction hob and mini oven so hopefully will work out ok.
We only discovered it when we got up there one evening planning on making a quick pasta dinner with gorgonzola, pasta and beef. I ended up cooking each bit in the microwave and them putting it all together. You wouldn't think microwaved steak would be edible, but I heated up oil in a pyrex dish for 7 minutes on high and then tossed the chopped up and salted steak in to the hot oil and put back in for a minute. It worked out really well!

Brandy Butter Icing

I have taken a radical break from the norm this year and iced the Christmas cake with butter icing (with brandy to make it Christmasy). Weatherills use royal icing on their Christmas cakes, and have for GENERATIONS. but I thought something that goes a bit less rock hard would be a nice change.

100g Butter
300g Icing sugar
2 tblsp Golden Syrup
2 tblsp Brandy (or whisky or perhaps an orange flavour spirit would be nice)

Mix together the butter and icing, it will probably crumb rather than go in to a paste unless the butter is very warm. Add the golden syrup and brandy and beat until fluffy and holding peaks. It should be a pale cream colour.

This makes enough to ice my 9 inch cake.

First night in our New Apartment

We have bought an apartment in La Mongie. We will rent it out and use it sometimes when it is not rented. There will be some time while we get ready to rent it though so we are planning on Christmas there and to use it plenty to learn all about it.

The living room

Poppy carrying out an inspection. She wasn't that impressed being in a different place. She also can't manage to go down the stairs without crashing down them all so has to be carried until she learns. Up is fine.

This is La Mongie village in the summer. Our apartment is towards the top and left of the buildings you can see here.

Tiny corridor kitchen that leads in to bathroom (!?)

It has one bedroom, this is currently chock full of a bunkbed and a truckle bed, we plan on replacing this with two single beds that will join in to a double when required.

As the bedroom is so chock with kids beds, on the first night we slept on the clic-clac which was very narrow. So we didn't get much sleep. Poppy didn't help by pacing around all night not happy about the new place - and having not had enough exercise in the push to complete the bedroom. As a result I was up at 7am despite quite a late night celebrating the purchase walking a stupid dog up the piste.

It was quite exciting. First we saw some footprints from a wolf (just by my foot - see how huge they are compared to Poppy's next to it - and Poppy doesn't have small feet)

There was driving snow

But I had wrapped up warm

This is Poppy looking at the back of the flat. Lights in the distance are pistey beasts.

This is the apartment later in the day. It often isn't this snowy around it.

Top floor here

 The road through the resort is on the left here and ends just out of the picture and the piste starts there. The apartment is in the nearest building on the top floor (2nd floor)

You can see the snow is lovely. We stayed up there for two nights. Doug popped back and fed the animals while I went to the supermarket. It was quite a trek down a very snowy road but worth it for some great skiing.

Anyone who wants to come and visit or to rent is very welcome!

Visit from Bob

My friend Bob who I worked with until recently came to visit with his daughter Rose, before starting his new job in January. This is the first time he or Rose have ever skied. They loved it! Well he did and she got on board after a few lessons.

If you have a friend called Bob be sure to take him to La Mama in La Mongie as he will be very impressed by them having a beer especially for him.

They were staying up in La Mongie, but also came to the farm to visit. We made Bob take part in preparing dinner, so he helped by killing a chicken (very enthusiastically resulting in the head being pulled off) and assisting in plucking and preparing it.

They were very lucky with the snow so early in the season. It was very cold though.

We had some beautiful skiing while they did their lesson on the first day

Progress on bedroom

We have been super busy doing the bedroom as well as going skiing, having a friend visit and 'harvesting' rabbits and chickens which explains why I haven't had a chance to blog! We are both quite knackered and looking forward to finally managing to finish the bedroom. Sooooon

This is all clean and ready for the new floor

Doug at the new mega saw cutting the first floor board

Me having cut a floorboard. Super pleased to still have all fingers.

Floorboards slowly spreading across the floor

We went for a walk with the dog for a break from it all. Lovely.

Ski area opened

The ski area opened a little later than originally planned on the 7th of December.

It was a lovely sunny day but COLD.

We both have new light reactive goggles.

The ski area was meant to open yesterday

The ski area was meant to open yesterday, but they changed their minds and it is now opening on Thursday (7th Dec).

We went for a nice walk to check it out as it was beautiful weather and we have a friend with new skis and skins who wanted to try out skiing up the hill.

Bob and Doug walking up the piste

Doug teaching Bob to do kick turns (which are uphill turns with skis on)

Ski area looking perfect and ready for it's opening on Thursday.

Dog modeling her down jacket

Breakfast of champions

Fried haggis, fried potato and fried egg with Irn Bru.