Archives for December 2012

2012 – The way it was on Hotly Spiced

As the year comes to a close I thought it would be interesting to look back on the posts I’ve written over the year and discover the stories that generated the most comments.  It’s a list I found quite surprising and I thought you might like to see the Top 10 Most Commented on posts […]

Boxing Day

Sometimes it’s just not enough to get together on Christmas Day, you have to spend Boxing Day together too.  Christmas is the ultimate celebration but with a large family it can be hectic and stressful and busy and challenging.  No one in my family would swap this for any different experience but despite this, there’s […]

Christmas 2012

I’ve been wondering how you all celebrated Christmas and hope you had the best of days and thought I would give you a glimpse into how my family and I spent Christmas.  After much debate and at least 60 emails it was decided Christmas would, as usual, be at my parents’ house which is actually […]

Merry Christmas 2012

All of us here at Hotly Spiced Headquarters would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas.  We hope you have a lovely time spending time with family and catching up with relatives and friends.  Enjoy the best the season has to offer and we’ll see you in a few days. In the meantime, please […]

The Gingerbread House

It hasn’t been a good day in the kitchen here at Hotly Spiced Headquarters. I wasn’t going to make a gingerbread house this year; mostly because the December 25 deadline is hurtling towards me at a frightening pace and in the last few weeks I’ve been incredibly busy and I know from experience that gingerbread […]

Mum’s Christmas Mince Pies

In the lead-up to Christmas when I was a little girl we knew the big day was close when in the evening we would be dressed in our nighties and sitting in the family room doing puzzles or colouring-in when we’d hear the sound of carols coming from a big brass band.  We would run […]

Quay

After the mop-up from my time on the high seas, my employer, who had been away at the same time but on a different P&O ship, wanted to take me out for lunch to celebrate our hard work that had resulted in a very happy client.  I was thinking we might be taking an hour […]

The Christmas Cake

It seems to have been a long time in the making but it certainly wasn’t started early enough.  A few weeks ago I showed you a porcelain bowl filled with dried fruits and nuts soaking in brandy.  And soak they did.  For weeks.  It just seemed to take an inexcusable amount of time to progress […]

Update

I’ve had a few queries from readers wanting to know not how I survived the cruise but how the family survived without me.  I can report they are all alive but as Alfie’s teacher just penned in a comment, ‘We’ve missed you and I’m sure Alfie has too. No wonder he’s looking a bit thin […]

Salt Grill

Thank you all so much for the warm welcome back to the blogosphere.  You are all so kind! I just have to tell you more about the cruise. When I was on the cruise ship I was working long hours but not so long that I couldn’t enjoy some time at Salt Grill.  Salt Grill […]