Claire's Cooking Quest: Christmas Foooooooooooooooooooooood

I miss having a 'proper' Christmas. I've been missing the Christmas of my childhood. The weather should be cold, but with a couple of hours of bright, wintery sun that hurts your eyes. You should need to wrap up warm against the biting wind - a padded coat and matching hat, scarf and gloves. You should need the fire on to keep the drafts at bay. You should have an oven, stuffed full of yummy food...

You should not be sat wearing shorts and vest as you type, sipping on iced water. You should not be in a country where having an oven in your kitchen is virtually unheard of. You should not be in a country where people decorate just 3 or 4 days before Christmas day. You should not be in a country where most people don't celebrate Christmas!

So I didn't have anything that faintly resembled a 'normal' Christmas (although I do have some very cute decorations). I did have a good Christmas though, even though I was longing for roast spuds and parsnips, yorkie puds and sprouts! Therefore I looked up a lot of food that I fancied whilst I ate some nice veggie pasta the I made (without an oven!)

So today's post is a bunch of good-looking food to tempt you with links to the recipes - coz I can take no credit at all for any of this food! Most of the credit goes to everyone's favourite Jamie Oliver. I love Nigella's food too, but couldn't find most of the recipes I was looking for on her website. So here it is - my Christmas food wishlist: