Christmas Newsletter From The Kiwi Online Tealady

Christmas Saving Tip – the Secret Santa Present Game

This is the classic Secret Santa with a twist. We play it every year in our family and not only does it save buying presents for everyone but it always ends up a lot of fun too. It will only work for up to 11 participants however so keep it for the adults.
This is how it goes:

  • Everyone who attends must bring a unisex Secret Santa present to the agreed value e.g. $20. Try and be imaginative as it’s not much fun if there are only chocolates!
  • Sit in a circle & hand out a present to everyone, this can be a fun job for the kids.
  • Unwrap your present but don’t get too excited as you will most likely not get to keep it.
  • Now you give everyone a number starting from 2 or 3 (not 1 as you will see why shortly)
  • Then get 2 dice (the greatest total of the dice needs to be greater than the highest number given e.g. 2 x 6 = 12)
  • The first person throws the dice. Add up the total. This number is the person whose present you can swap with yours if you like. The person whose number you threw has no choice in whether they can keep it, however the person who threw the dice doesn’t have to swap if they prefer their own present.
  • Then the next person takes a turn and so on.
  • Decide at the start how many rounds you will do, we usually do 3.
  • There are often a few presents that everyone wants & maybe one that no one wants, for instance one year we had a can of spam & it wasn’t me that bought it!

Recipe

Christmas Kumara

This is a delicious way to cook the kiwi favourite. It’s sweet and goes well with Ham.

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds kumara
  • 1 cup of drained pineapple pieces
  • Quarter teaspoon of ground cloves
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1 oz butter
  • 2 tablespoons of pineapple juice

Instructions

  • Peel kumara & slice into 2 cm rounds.
  • Boil until just tender; do not overcook as we will be baking them later. Drain well.
  • Grease a flat baking dish & layer Kumara slices with pineapples pieces.
  • Mix together cloves, brown sugar & butter to form a paste.
  • Add pineapple juice to make a thin spreading consistency.
  • Spread over the Kumara & bake for about 30 mins on 150 Celsius.

My Christmas pudding Confession!

Those of you who have been with us for a few years may remember my family Christmas pudding recipe that I included a few Xmas’ ago. Well I have a little confession – that recipe has been archived as I came across this fantastic pudding while surfing the net one day (as you do) It’s brilliant if you’ve left it a little late as you boil it all on one day & then just for a few hours on the day.
The website is very thorough, even has pictures to show you what to do.
Click on the links below for the instructions and the ingredients.

Instructions – http://pudding.denyer.net/pagerecipe_instructions.html

Ingredients – http://pudding.denyer.net/pageingredients_list.html

Many thanks to Paul Denyer the Christmas pudding maestro!

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