50 days to go...

...and I've already bought the Christmas cards for this year. The Christmas lights in town are due to be switched on soon, and the Christmas markets will start to pop up here and there over the next few weeks. Next week I'll be giving serious thought about how to decorate my house - it's been renovated all year, so this will be the first "proper" Christmas it will have had since I moved into it. I'm not one for those cheap foil gardlands or tinsel, but I do like a big tree with plenty of lights on it, surrounded by festive tealight holders. But what else to do?

The Christmas food is starting to appear in the shops - there's plenty of Stollen (sort of a marzipan bandy fruit cake thing), but what is this country's obsession with mincemeat?! It's OK in small doses, but a British Christmas seems to hang on to Christmas pudding, mince pies and fruit cake. I'm going to have to dig out some festive recipes for the raisinophobes such as myself. The only recipe I have so far is for sugar cookies! I'll hopefully find a killer liebkuchen recipe - a German spiced cake-ish cookie that gets coated in either chocolate or a sugar glaze.

And then there's the drink - I have a bit of a soft spot for spirits. Whoever invented Mint Choc Baileys deserves a knighthood - not sure about the appeal of the new Hazelnut Baileys that's just been launched. For the tea-totallers, the coffee shops have started doing Gingerbread Lattes, plus various twists on eggnog and hot chocolate - I'm quite looking forward to trying those the next time I'm in town.

It may be 50 days away, and a horrendously large cliche, but the Holidays Are Coming...