Well  the weekend has been and  gone and it is only 6 weeks till Christmas Day. The weeks are passing by faster and faster but at the same time the amount of work I am trying to get through is becoming more and more. I am working on my Christmas Recipe Book – “All things Christmasy” at the moment so the family are having Christmas treats already. They will be fed up of them by the time Christmas comes around so I am trying to keep a couple of recipes out of the book so I have something for the children to enjoy over the holidays.

I haven’t really decided what I am going to bake this week but I am trying to make sure I have up-to-date photos for the recipes which I am including in my new book. One of the recipes I am working on is for Cheese Straws which my family and I enjoy over the festive season. When I ran my market stall, I would sell these Cheese Straws in small bundles which customers would munch on as they walked around the market. These little treats complimented the homemade soup which was sold at the market and was the perfect warming meal on a cold winter’s day.

On the Foodie Calendar by Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen and with the help of Foodimentary, I have missed so much in the month of October but for November there is “Thanksgiving” in the USA, “World Fairtrade Week” and “National Clean out your Refrigerator Day” in the USA ( I like the sound of this one) . I have already missed “World Vegan Day” which was the 1st of November. I need to try harder and actually bake some recipes and meals to celebrate these events.

For the “World Vegan Day”, I would have had to use some sort of dairy free cooking margarine or butter in the recipe which is something I have never actually tried yet. Did you know there are avocado based spreads, walnut based spreads, and of course, the infamous coconut spread all readily available on the refrigerator shelves at Tesco, Asda etc. I wonder what these would be like to bake with as I have seen some recipes where coconut based fat/oil is used in baking but in my house the coconut oil is only used by my eldest daughter as a moisturiser and makeup remover at the moment. This is an area I need to explore in the future but not at the moment as I am in Christmas mode – big style – not just with the recipes and writing but with organising what Santa is going to bring for my little ones. 🙂

Back to the other mundane jobs I must go and tomorrow I will be sharing a recipe for some cupcakes or something savoury perhaps.