CHRISTMAS MARKETS, BAKING AND BOOKS / EMMA'S SUNDAY DIARIES

Just to let you know, this is the actual state of my house right now because the Elf on the Shelf has arrived. The Elf on the Shelf is back and my son my son has decided to get all the tanks out and just point them at the Elf on the Shelf. So, that's what my house is currently looking like at the moment. And the elf has stolen my star from the top of the tree. So that's where my star is at the moment. Poor mousy. Poor little mouse. Good morning everyone. Welcome to another Sunday diary from me. My name is Emma. These are my Sunday diaries where I basically just post about my life here in London, my life in the garden, things I'm cooking in my tiny little Victorian terrace kitchen, and then places that I go in the week. So, if that sounds like your jam, do hit the subscribe button. I am very much enjoying making these little Sunday diaries, just little snippets of my life. That's basically what they are. And you guys seem to be enjoying them, too. So, I'm I'm going to keep going over Christmas for as long as I can today and for the rest of this week. It's going to be very Is this camera straight or not? Cuz that's going to really irritate me when I'm editing. All right, that's a little bit better. Is that better? No. Sorry. Things like this really irritate me when I'm editing the vlog and I just see that the camera's like wonky. Today and for pretty much the whole week, the weather's going to be atrocious, appalling, disgusting. Um, it's already really dark. I've got my back door open and you're kind of like positioned in the doorway. So, I'm sorry if it's a little bit noisy, but it's either it's a little bit noisy in the background or you literally cannot see me and I'll just be like a silhouette. So, that's sort of the choice that I've got at the moment. Either you can hear me but you can't see me or you can see me and you can just about hear me. Welcome to the UK. I'm also wearing quite a dark sort of top which is isn't really helping. I can see on the camera it looks a little bit dark and miserable. But you know what? We've just got to roll with it. But I'm not sure how much we're actually going to be able to get outside into the garden this week because it's currently raining and super windy. Uh which isn't ideal. I do want to show you Winchester Christmas Market, which I think I'll do a little bit later on in the vlog. We're gonna start with a little bit of baking. Today is actually December the 1st. And my kids have opened up their advent calendars. Very exciting. Um, the elf is back. Oh my gosh, the elf is back. My kids are nearly 14 and 11 and a half. They still insist on having the elf come every single year. And you know what? Every year I'm just like, "Oh, I just can't be bothered to do it again." But then every year I think this could be the last year. It hasn't been the last year so far. My my one of my children is literally a teenager and the other one is about to become a teenager and they still want the elf. So I don't know when it's going to end, but I am very very aware that one day it will end and it's it's breaking my heart a little bit. So I am doing the elf this year. If you don't know what the elf is cuz you don't have kids, you're very lucky that you don't know what the elf is, let me tell you. It's basically the elf on the shelf. He comes every year and then he basically does silly things around the house to make the kids laugh every morning. Um, he's sort of supposed to be watching them and keeping an eye on them for Santa Claus, but my kids are a bit old to believe in that. But what they really enjoy is just me moving the alphabet and doing silly things. So, oh, I do it to myself every year. Right, we're going to make something. Oh, there's a train. There's a train. Because it is December the 1st, we're going to start with a super Christmassy but very easy recipe. Um, which hopefully you'll be able to see in my very dark kitchen. So, let's go. This is super easy, by the way. Anyone can make this recipe, right? Can you see or hear or either because if you can do one or the other, we're winning. We're on a winning streak. If you can do one of those two things, right, we've got some dish roll puff pastry sheets. This is readymade puff pastry. this. Fold it in half. Slice down the middle. Right down the middle. Right down the middle. 10 points if you can tell me the movie of that quote. Right down the middle. Right. We got ourselves some Nutella. Some Nutella. I didn't say this recipe was going to be at all healthy. It's completely unhealthy, but it's December, so that's okay. Sometimes as well, I feel like my recipes are not rocket sci rocket science at all. Like a lot of my recipes are very simple, but sometimes I find that just watching someone else do it, even if it's a really simple recipe, it kind of just inspires you to get baking yourself and just give it a go yourself. That's why I've started sharing more kind of simpler recipes because when I watch them on other YouTubers channels, it inspires me to get in the kitchen and do something. And I think that's just a great thing really. So, I'm hoping this kind of just inspires you. You can do this with your kids as well. If you've got kids, if you don't have kids, you can't do it with your kids. Do it with someone else's kids. Just find some kids and ask if they want to make this with you or just make it yourself. I don't know. I don't know why you'd need kids to do it. I mean, I'm not doing it with kids right now. Anyway, let's stop talking about kidnapping other people's kids. And fold this back over the top. Now, the only thing with this recipe is we're going to have some leftover pastry. And my mom made these the other weekend and she said, "I didn't know what to do with the leftover pastry." So, we're going to have to try and think of something to do with the leftover pastry. Take our little Christmas cutters and we're just going to cut them out. You can see where I'm going with this. But yeah, I see what my mom's saying. There's a lot of leftover pastry. So, let's cut all of these out and see what we can do with all the leftovers. I've also got a stocking. Those are my three Christmasy ones. Oh, I'm cutting it the wrong way. Ow. All right. So, I'm sort of thinking if I just roll it all up, it can be like a Nutellery kind of marly effect to pastry. It's just going to be all Nutellery now. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Or maybe it was. Maybe it will be okay. There's absolutely no way I could waste this amount and throw it away. There's no way. It's just too much. Right. And then we'll just recut them out. We'll just cut them out with this. Right. Pop them onto here. I'm going to leave a bit of space between them because they are going to puff out a little bit. It is puff pastry, so they will get bigger. So you can use um an egg like a whisked a whisked up egg or you can use some milk over the top. They both pretty much do the same thing which is just to make it go nice and golden brown on the top. Just gives it a nice bit of a shine. Makes it look a bit better. Like I said, this is very simple, but hopefully this will kind of just inspire you, give you a bit of Sunday morning inspiration for baking. All right, wish them luck. I'm also, while they're baking, going to quickly throw together a quick soup, but it's not for today. It's going to be for tomorrow because I've got all this butternut squash and sweet potato left over from lunch. It's had a little bit of garam masala thrown over the top of it, stick it in the oven, and then I've cooked it for lunch basically and had it as something else, but I'm going to turn the rest of it into a soup. So, I'm not going to throw too much in this because I can't be bothered. What we'll do is we'll just literally throw this into a pan. I don't know why I'm using this pan, by the way. It's not really a soup making pan, but there we go. Readymade chicken stock here. So, I'll throw that in. This goes off tomorrow. So, if it goes off tomorrow, we shall use it today. Can I open it? No, I've opened it. Hallelujah. Oh, it smells lovely. Stick that in. Go. We can heat that up. Make that nice and hot. Okay. So then, oh my gosh, steamy. Whiz it up with this. Right. That has truly gone everywhere. And I really regret not using a deeper pan. Um, but it is because we've used what we've used. So, we just put a bit of cream in this. I will probably end up because this is quite simple. Um, I'll probably end up Oh god. using some pasta in this for tomorrow and turning it into a bit more of a pasta sauce. Um, but that looks lovely. That is really how simple a soup can be. It can literally just be some veg, some chicken stock, a little bit of cream, and whiz it up. Let's see if I can get it into here without spilling it. No, I can't. My god. Just going to go for it now. Okay, there we go. Guys, guys, I think we've had a cooking disaster. I've actually I haven't had any cooking disasters on this channel yet. Oh no, I think I've burnt them. I think I've burnt them. I think I had the heat up too high. Oh, okay. Okay, so looking at these, the ones that are have got the plain pastry on the top and the Nutella in the middle. Those ones look perfectly done. Like literally, I've just got them out on time. They look gorgeous and beautiful. The ones that have been mixed with Nutella, they haven't really worked. They've kind of shrunk. I tell you, of all the things I was expecting them to do, this was the last thing I was expecting from them. I'm really surprised. I really just thought they cooked the same way, but that that's everything I know about pastry then, which is pretty much nothing. There we go. We'll just make it snow. Make it snow on the top. No one notices when you cover things with icing sugar. It looks fine. They look delicious. And hopefully my kids do love them. And hopefully that's given you a little bit of baking inspiration this morning. My god, the weather outside is literally frightful. The weather is frightful. The radiator is so delightful. I've never been so happy. But we had basically in our loft extension, you're sitting on the world's biggest radiator known to man. We accidentally ordered a huge radiator. The builders were laughing at us. They were like, "You don't need a radiator this big." Let me just tell you, this loft gets freezing in the winter time. And I've never been so grateful for a gigantic radiator. Just one of those mistakes that kind of sort of paid off in the end. I just wanted to quickly share my thoughts on this book with you because and I know normally I wait till the end of the vlog to talk about books, but my goodness, I've never ever ever got through so much of a book in one night as I have this one. Maybe Harry Potter when they used to be released when I was like 12 years old and the new Harry Potter would come out, I would sit there all night reading. But since then, no book has gripped me gripped me as much as this one. This is I who had never known men. There's not so many like chapters. It's I think it's sort of in parts. I think there's three or four parts to it. Um I got through the first kind of part and I couldn't stop reading. So I got through the second part as well. I'm halfway through the book. Um it's I just never read a book like it in my life. It's a complete hidden gem. It actually says it on the back that it's like a hidden gem. And for ages and ages, this book just did not get the credit that it deserved. And when it went viral, I'm always very skeptical when a book kind of goes viral on Tik Tok or Instagram because I'm like, is it really that good? You know, are people just talking about it because they're talking about it? Blah blah blah. Yes, this book absolutely deserved to go viral. It's insane. I've never read anything like it in my life. And buy this book and read it. It's amazing. I love it. We went to Winchester Christmas Market and I'm going to do this in the wrong order cuz I haven't shown you it yet. Where's the book gone? I picked up a book. I've never heard of it before, but I picked it up. I read the blurb and I was just like, that sounds like a little bit of me. It's called Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy. Um, let me know if you've read this. I mean, the cover itself is stunning cuz it's like a a wintry scene. So, perfect for the like the winter time to read a book like this. It just sounded really really gorgeous and lovely and I'm very very excited to get stuck into it. So, let me know if you've read this book. That's where I am right now. Um, this one will be finished by tonight. I will finish this book. I literally just want to read it all the time at the moment and having to pull myself away from reading. But anyway, here's the footage from the Christmas market. Right. Once again, guys, they've had to choose between being able to see me and being able to hear me. So, um, the builders are out doing whatever they're doing. So, you might hear a bit of building noise in the background, but I've got the door open. Just let a little bit more light into the room. It's 11:00 a.m. This is 11:00 a.m. in the UK. Welcome. Welcome to a Victorian terrace. I'm going to do some baking today. I'm actually going to make some biscuits or cookies, like chocolate cookies, but I'm going to make them Tererry's chocolate orange cookies. Um, I saw this recipe online ages ago. This Tererry's chocolate orange has just been sitting in my kitchen for the longest time. I don't know how I refrained from eating it. Orange chocolate is like my favorite chocolate, so I'm very proud of myself. But we're going to make cookies out of them. This is my Christmas apron. I actually I forget about this every year. I forget that I own it and then every year I find it and it's just a lovely surprise. Sounds like me, huh? Um, how am I going to show you? You know what? I'm going to put you in the doorway so you can see this. This is the This is the apron. How absolutely gorgeous. Look at all of the little Christmasy things like the nutcracker. I think it is the the nutcracker based on the Nutcracker ballet. It's got big pockets. It's got a red ribbon. It's my favorite. I picked it up from a garden center absolutely ages ago and honestly, I've never seen it since. I've never seen it since. So, unfortunately, it's just one of those rare finds a garden center that's there one year and then never to be seen again. But I love it. I love it. Right. Okay. Cookies. Right. I've tried to Christmasify this little area. I've got some lights now. There. That didn't really do anything, did it? Did that do anything? Not really. There. See, I tried to Christmasify it and Christmasify it. Christmy it a little bit. I've got the recipe here. So, we need butter and sugar. These really grew. My goodness, look at the size of them. And then the idea is to put a piece of Terry's chocolate orange on each one and it sort of melts in. And then obviously because they're cookies, they kind of harden up a little bit. So we'll just do that. Oh wow. Yeah, they're really melting in. It feels You know what it feels like? This is going to be a really really weird thing to say, but I feel like we've said enough weird things in this vlog for this to be acceptable. It feels like it's going into lava. Like molten lava. It's kind of dropping in. Wow. Oh, wow. The rain is really coming down out there now. It's very cozy in here, though. It's very cozy. Take it. I'd rather have snow, but you know, beggars can't be choosers and all that. Malarkey, these look incredible. This is the Robin book that I've been going on about in my a lotment vlogs this week. By the way, um I think I've mentioned it a couple of times just because the robins are so active at this time of year and I'm always talking about them. So I got this book by Steven Moss. It's called The Robin, a biography. It's just about a guy who followed a robin for a year. So it's a year in the life of Britain's favorite bird, masterfully narrated by one of the nation's most loved nature writers. And yeah, it's just all about the robin. And it's just so lovely to read. There's so many lovely little phrases in this and stuff. and it you really like you can just hear the robin singing when you're reading it. So, it's a gorgeous book. It's also got loads of really beautiful illustrations and then some poetry in there as well. So, it's a really lovely read for this time of year. It just wouldn't be Christmas without a ridiculous amount of sugar and chocolate. Oh my gosh, it's delicious. Look at that. My autumn grown sweet peas are looking so good. So long. But I haven't pinched them out yet. So I think I'm just going to pinch them out. And all that means is I'll just pinch off the top down to the first set of leaves. I think I'll just do that now. And that will help them to grow nice and bushy and hopefully give me more flowers. The broccoli is looking so amazing. I'm so glad I left it a bit longer, but I do feel I do feel like it's reaching its sort of limit now. This one here looks a little bit like it might flower soon. Each of these little green balls on your broccoli is basically a flower bud and it will flower into a beautiful yellow flower, but you don't really want that to happen if you want to eat it. So, you need to harvest it before that happens. And it's hard to know when the optimum time is because you want it to get as big as possible. or I do anyway. I want it to get as big as possible without flowering. So, I think we could go a couple more days, but I will keep checking. Right, we do seem to have a little bit of a break in between the rain. Um, it's been raining pretty much non-stop today, but it's just cleared up. So, I thought I'd just get out here and check on what's growing. So, I've only got two metal raised beds filled at the moment. The other two I need to fill later on. But to be fair, it's mainly going to be filled with compost and then the spring crops are going to be planted straight into it. So, I don't really need to worry about them just yet. These beds have got autumn winter stuff in. So, let me show you. All of this over the top of it is to stop the cat from pooing, but actually he hasn't been back because it's been so rainy. So, that's a good thing. Um, this is Calibri doing really well. Then we've got some onion and garlic here. The garlic is amazing. Garlic is doing so well. I'm so happy. It just seems so so happy in this bed. It's just incredible. And then next to it in the other bed, this bed here is completely filled with broad beans. The thing is is I had this trellis over the top of it to stop the cat. And unfortunately, what this trellis has done is stopped the sunlight from getting to the broad beans. So some of them some of them have not grown very well. They've gone a little bit too long and spindly. I think we call it leggy when that happens. I'm hopeful that they will recover. I've taken it off now because my cat defender things, the little noise emitting things are keeping the cat away really well. This this one here at the front, his stem just looks a little bit too long to me. Little bit gangly compared to like this one here at the back. You see what I'm seeing? Can you see that? It's the same with this one here. And I'm being really fussy because well, I just am. I still think they're going to be absolutely fine. But yeah, I could just notice they were going a little bit leggy. So, I've taken it off now. But they're all coming up. Look, we've got complete germination, which is brilliant. Might actually just take this bit off because I don't think cats poo in beds where it's filled with crops. I think they like a clean empty bed. So, might take that off just where the garlic is. Yeah. Cuz that's pretty full now, isn't it? Let's see how we go. I might have made a big mistake there, but we'll see. Look what's happened to my bamboo fence. This has happened uh twice so far, which is very frustrating. A lot of people told me it would happen it'd fall down. Um but we did have very strong winds and until then it has survived really well. So I'm going to prop it back up again. Oh dear. statement. It's definitely not a long-term solution, these fences. I mean, they were quite reasonably priced, as you can imagine. It is just basically bamboo. They sort of just give me the privacy that I'm after in the garden at the moment. it. I think the long-term solution is going to be to put our own fence up on this side. And we will do that in due course. Trust me, we will. I do actually really like the look of the bamboo. I think it's a really nice color and a really nice texture for the garden. All the plants look really nice against it, but like I said, it's just a bit flimsy and it's just not long-term solution. Anyway, I'll probably have to leave the vlog there. I'm not sure how long it'll be or anything or if I've done anything of interest to you this week, but if I have, maybe consider giving this video a hype or a like or even just subscribing to my YouTube channel. I'm so close to 50,000 subscribers. It's unbelievable, mindblowing that that many people want to subscribe to my channel, but thank you so much if you're one of them. I'm going to be back next week hopefully with a slightly longer vlog. Got some things planned to do um Christmy and in the garden as well. So, join me next Sunday or you can join me on my a lotment plot I think on Wednesday. Weather depending guys. We'll just have to see what the weather does and how it goes. But I would like to get down there to ventilate my greenhouse and also to feed the birds. So, we'll do our best to get down there. But anyway, thank you for watching. Hope you enjoyed. I'll see you next time, guys. Bye.