"...my True Love gave to me: a Parsnip in a pear tree!"

What are you doing, reading this when you should be celebrating with your family? Well anyway, you probably didn't expect me to be posting on Christmas Day. Actually, as you well know, this post was put together a couple of days beforehand and published automatically...

Today we have been eating our Christmas turkey, with all the usual trimmings - sage-and-onion stuffing; sausages rolled in bacon, bread sauce, gravy, and of course lots of veg: roast potatoes, carrots, Runner beans (home-grown ones from the freezer), home-grown Brussels Sprouts with chestnuts, and roasted home-grown Parsnips.

A couple of days ago I showed how uninspiring the Parsnip patch looked - largely devoid of foliage by now:

But there were lots of good roots down below:

There are a couple of "tiddlers" in that batch, and one very forked one, but on the whole I'm quite pleased. They are mostly decent specimens, and I just know that they will taste strong and sweet - much better than anything you can buy in a supermarket! The batch weighed in at 1.1kg, which along with all the rest of the veg, will be plenty to feed our 7 adults and 2 kids.

I didn't think I was going to be able to say that we ate home-grown Brussels Sprouts on Christmas Day, but in the end I was able to contribute just a few - just to say that I'd done it!

Obviously this little basketful (215g) was never going to be enough to feed the whole family, just to boost-up the shop-bought sprouts, but it sounds nice, doesn't it? "We had home grown Brussels Sprouts for Christmas dinner...". Honour is satisfied.

Merry Christmas everyone!