It is deepest, darkest winter in Belize right now. The temperature is around18oC/ 64F and it doesn’t get light until 6am in the morning. It is really hard to get up when it is so chilly. The scarves, woolly hats and cardigans are out now and the cats are fighting for a cosy position on our laps. Anyway, I trust you all had a good Christmas; we ended up with a ham dinner since there was a cold front and drizzly showers on Christmas day. It was hard to start a fire and cook our goose in coals outside. Oh, and I was so cold, I asked Gnome to make mulled wine. Of course, we didn’t make it the traditional way (God forbid!)…I walked around the yard to pick all the ingredients…this is what we used: cinnamon leaf, allspice leaf, calamondin peel, chilli pepper and sorrel.

It was very warming and exactly what I needed for a cold winters day in Belize. All in all, Christmas day was quiet and the cats were so cold that they spent most of the time sleeping!!

Boxing Day was another cold day so we had the bright idea of bringing out the brand new noodle machine. Gnome cranked out skins to make ham and potato dumplings (from our Christmas leftovers!!). We spent the whole morning cranking and filling…ended up with 56 dumplings to freeze and managed to use up all of Christmas dinner. I will have pictures on a later post. Meanwhile, I will leave you with some pictures of our new noodle machine; Gnome is very pleased with it because it is a lot sturdier than the traditional Italian pasta machines. Perhaps this one will make it through a rigorous Munchkin and Gnome marathon! Ohhh…look at that!! Quite formidable looking…Made in China too!!

This one can take a pound of flour at one time, un-kneaded! Hours of fun!!

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