Christmas geese and turkeys

and a few other food related things have passed through my mind recently. I have done nothing about any of them.

In previous years I have usually made large quantities of shortbread, lebkuchen and "honey crackles" - the latter made from cornflakes, sugar, honey and butter if you are not familiar with the term. It has been time consuming.

I have also made Christmas cake. My cousin T... expects cake. R... does most of the cooking in their household but fruit cake is something that he has not yet troubled to make. Why make it if Cat can do it instead?

I may get around to doing some cooking but my excuse this year has been the "moving house" one. I know I can only take that so far. I still have to post Christmas letters. I have started on that but my young friend S... needs a letter of his own, not some adult missive of dubious interest to a twelve year old boy.  It is more fun to do that than think about Christmas food.

I went into the third supermarket yesterday afternoon - on my way back from taking yet another load to the charity shop. The other two are in the main shopping centre. This one is across the road. It is that German origin store. I rarely go in there. I dislike it for a number of reasons, not least because the staff are very unfriendly. They had none of the ingredients I was looking for apart from strawberries. W... is coming to lunch so I will need to go to my favourite supermarket shortly. They will have what I need. They will have the ordinary every day things that can be turned into the extraordinary if I want to do it. I can get milk produced at a farm not too far away ....and think of the cows and the dairy farmers as I do it. I can get tomatoes and be thankful that the local suppliers to this supermarket were not hit by the recent disease troubles. These are ordinary, everyday things that should come from local places but the third supermarket has nothing like that. It is another reason I rarely shop there.

What infuriated me even more than the lack of the ingredients I was looking for however was the presence of something else. Christmas is coming up - so why on earth are there hot cross buns on the bakery shelves? Will someone please explain?