Last weekend Tito and I put our tree up. The putting up of the Christmas tree has been a long tradition in our family – my parents still have the same tree they bought in 1975 and we put it up every year! My folks have always had a sort of ‘when in Rome’ type attitude towards Christmas – though we are not Christians we enjoy the festive spirit, decorations, good food, time with friends and family, gift  giving and, of course, putting up the tree.

Another tradition is the idea of inviting lots of folks over to participate in putting up the tree with us – we love to decorate while spending time with people we adore and eating good food! This time I had that roast from the Highland Cattle Farm and we took a stab at cooking it up for our guests.

Luckily I have two awesome women in my life, Cheryl and Beverly, who both know much more about cooking than I do. They gave us temperature and time recommendations and Bev suggested we just wrap the whole thing in bacon (because you can’t go wrong with bacon).

I don’t know anything about cooking, honestly. But Tito helped me out and we got the roast lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, wrapped it in a good coat of bacon and put it in the oven for a long time on a low heat. It was _amazing_. The meat was so tender and moist and the bacon flavouring was perfect!

We also enjoyed a selection of jams from the same farm, and used Kim’s spicy relish to spice up a cake of warmed up brie. Throw on some cookies, and Christmas cake, and even a culinary newbie like myself can set a good table =D

However you celebrate, whatever you celebrate, I hope you have some beautiful things planned for the month of December, I know we do!