Christmas with Hershey

 Most of our colleagues went home, had family over or travelled during the Christmas, there were just a few of us around in Bydgoszcz and Hershey  who lives in a flat at the top of the School invited me to spend Christmas with her and in combination with CJ we planned a multicultural and  ethically varied (if that's the right term) Christmas meal together.  CJ and I had been taking about menus for a few weeks during our taxi rides to Pessa, where we both teach on Tuesday afternoons, and on our long night time walks home up the hill when we frequently talk about food and what we plan for a quick meal before bed.

Hershey and I volunteered at the Wigalli meal at St Andrew's on Christmas eve and in the afternoon she made a Nanaimo bar - a delicious chocolate biscuit based cake with peanut butter filling and ganache layer with a toping of peanuts. it was also vegan to include CJ. In the evening we went to the English Mass at St Andrews and then dived into Bidronka (a more chaotic version of Lidl a bit like Quick Save in the 1980's) for a turkey meal for the next day - we'd managed to over look the key ingredient!!

I had planned to make a vegan pavlova, initially I searched for vegan meringues, then decided to make them with chickpea aqua Vida but a lack of chickpeas, and vegan cream that was only 12% and wouldn't whip resulted in an altogether different yet festive desert!!

We had a lovely meal which also included delicious stuffed mushrooms, vegan sausage rolls, two types of gravy ( cherry gravy for the turkey😋) and traditionally ate too much and then ate some more when Nick and Stefan came for coffee, Nanaimo bars and chocolate covered oranges. Nick had received 'holy coffee' when they had attended midnight mass at the Basilica - literally a packet of ground coffee which was delicious.

Its not a pavlova !!!!!

Zooming on Christmas Day. (Ella was on the slopes in  Samoans, France in between preparing Christmas meals for guests at her chalet)

Beautiful beaded gifts from mum made their way to Poland in one piece and on time.

the Nativity at St Andrews with crotched decorations💓 

Hersey and I made a friend on the bridge  going to the hot chocolate café!!

You will be astonished to hear that I couldn't finish my hot chocolate; literally ganache in a very large cup and neither of us could  finish the cake either .

Heavy snow fall 2 days before Christmas which disappeared on Christmas Eve.

Originally we had thought to have Christmas in my flat, which is close to CJ's  but the spare bed is so awful, we decided on comfort over distance, also a better equipped kitchen👍.