Chilly.

Happy Christmas Eve.

In our Lithuanian heritage Christmas Eve is the more important part of Christmas, (you can read about it here.) and the meatless evening meal is a time to get together. The link says no alcohol but I've never celebrated Kucios or indeed been to any Lithuanian gathering without a generous amount of drink being present. I don't think presents, apart for children feature or at least they didn't but pre Christianity Lithuanians worshiped nature and trees so that is a link to the past. Tree decorations were made from straw and some beautiful designs are still being made. 

We shall celebrate with a scaled down Kucios, only 9 dishes instead of 12. I've tried to not make too much and the potato salad and the beetroot and bean salad will also do for Boxing Day. Being super organised, (not) I made the beef Bourguignon today. In the end I did the frying in the wok anxiously watching the temperature after the last time, and then used my old aluminium pot in the oven. I should have done it last week because after a whole day of cooking my ribs are really bad. I'm just hoping the pain killers kick in soon.

It was a crisp sunny morning with plenty of blue skies, should have taken a photo then, and I think but am not sure that there was snow on the top of a mountain behind the hills behind our local hills/mountains in other words Snowdonia. Or it might just have been an odd shaped cloud sitting on top of a mountain.

The windsurfer was out again. Sometimes he was above the water, sometimes below. There were a couple of swimmers as well but no surfers today.