Busy in the Caravan Kitchen

It’s Christmas Eve, the weather is hot and muggy in my part of the world, and I’ve been working away like a busy little Christmas Elf in the caravan kitchen preparing for tomorrow.  Not that there is a great deal of room in a caravan kitchen, you understand.  We celebrate Christmas in summer down here in New Zealand, so the temperature is generally rather warm.  So while some Kiwis like to prepare the traditionally English Christmas Dinner,  with roast turkey and all the trimmings, ours will be much more summertime fare.

I’ve prepared some delicious little chicken parcels for the barbeque, my Christmas Day speciality.   Chicken breasts cut thin, rolled around a dried apricot which had been soaking in a bit of plonk, then wrapped all around with several rashers of streaky bacon and secured with toothpicks.  We cook these on the BBQ, and they smell divine as they slowly sizzle away.  This is a recipe from one of our famous cooking stars, Jo Seagar.  We visited her cafe in Oxford, just out of Christchurch, while we were on our South Island Odyssey earlier in the year.

Potatoe salad was next on my to-do list, that wasn’t too hard.  Then I made a boysenberry trifle, and it does look nice, if I say so myself.  Last on the preparation list was my Chocolate Cherry Delights. 

I’m getting chocolate everywhere

These are glace cherries wrapped in almond paste, then dipped in chocolate.  The only problem we have is trying to fit everything in the caravan fridge, as a lot of room is already taken with our Christmas ham.

 

The cherries wrapped in almond paste, ready for dipping

So that is everything prepared for tomorrow, with just a green salad to prepared, and bottle of bubbly to chill.  I’ve got a Christmas Pudding and custard handy in case we are still feeling peckish, but I don’t think we will need it.  Hope your food preparations are gong well.