If you have the family descending this Christmas, have a ham to hand. Gleaming and studded with cloves, a Christmas ham is excellent for the Christmas Eve supper, breakfast with eggs or even as a surreptitious late-night snack. Our festive favourite dates back to the Romans, as Hattie Ellis discovers.…
Learn how to make Christmas crackers to ensure your Christmas goes with a bang.
As thoughts turn to Christmas and families getting together, there may be worries about a shrivelled turkey or even the odd crossword fuelled by excessive glass-emptying. However, the perfect tonic to such thoughts is the prospect of time spent in joyful outdoor surroundings, whatever the weather, with mad dogs, even…
Eleanor Doughty in defence of the goose Ding ding ding! The Christmas birds are in the ring. Goose or turkey? I know whose corner I’m in: the goose. Or, as we call it in my family, the long-necked chicken. This, of course, began as a classic parental ruse, and it’s…
If you’re feeling in need of inspiration for what to buy those who love to entertain, worry not. The Field‘s Christmas gift guide for the home is here to help with everything from baubles to backgammon. For more Christmas inspiration, be sure to take a look at our other seasonal…
Where would Christmas be without hunting? Bing Crosby dreamt of a white Christmas with every Christmas card he wrote. When that card shows the traditional scene of the hunt on the village green or in the market square on Boxing Day, then so much the more Christmassy. And along with…
On one cerebral festive occasion in an Irish castle I was invited to join in an incomprehensible word-play game with two Oxford undergraduates, then in full command of their intellectual plumage and prowess. They must have thought me a dunce and a dullard for, in that drowning hour, I did…
Q: At about this time every year I buy poinsettias to give as Christmas presents. Do they come in colours other than red or white and is it worth trying to keep them going from year to year? What is the best way to keep a poinsettia flowering? (Read our…
Charlotte Mackaness doffs her paper hat to a cracking invention that makes each Christmas go with a bang.
The best Christmas pudding and brandy butter is a hard combination to beat. Don’t be alarmed by the lack of precision and for goodness sake, leave the supermarket brandy butter on the shelf. Both are best homemade, and remarkably simple, says Ettie Neil-Gallacher. (However, if you are short of time,…
