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Recently I made a fantastic pie and thought I’d share the recipe because it doesn’t seem to be on the BBC site anymore!

Source: “Nigella Express” by Nigella Lawson.

Ingredients:

3 rashers of bacon, cut into strips
1 teaspoon garlic oil
1/2 cup of mushrooms
1/2 lb of chicken thigh fillets, cut into pieces
2 Tablespoons of all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 Tablespoon of butter
1 1/4 cup of hot chicken stock
1 Tablespoon of Marsala (I used red wine vinegar)
1 sheet of all-butter ready-rolled puff pastry

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. In a heavy-based frying pan, fry the bacon strips in the oil until beginning to crisp, then add the sliced mushrooms and soften them in the pan with the bacon.

Turn the chicken strips in the flour and thyme (you could toss them about in a freezer bag), and then melt the butter in the bacon-and-mushroom pan before adding the floury chicken and all the flour left in the bag. Stir around with the bacon and mushrooms until the chicken begins to color.

Pour in the hot stock and Marsala, stirring to form a sauce, and let this bubble away for about 5 minutes. Take two 300ml pie-pots (if yours are deeper, don’t worry, there will simply be more space between contents and puff pastry top) and make a pastry rim for each one - by this I mean an approx 1cm strip curled around the top of each pot. Dampen the edges with a little water to make the pastry stick.

Cut a circle bigger than the top of each pie-pot for the lid, and then divide the chicken filling between the two pots.
Dampen the rim of the pastry again and then pop on the lid of each pie, sealing the edges with your fingers or the underneath of the prongs of a fork.

Cook pies for about 20 minutes turning them around halfway through cooking. Once cooked, they should have puffed up magnificently.

(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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When I saw the trailer to Fred Claus, I was excited, this seemed like a fun Christmas movie that would have tons of good laughs and had a great plot. Now I waited ’till the weekend after this film opened, and I heard nothing but terrible reviews about it, so I was very scared to see it. But the way I looked at it was some people have different opinions, nothing to worry about. So I saw it tonite with my boyfriend, and I have to say that honestly, for what it was, this was just a fun Christmas movie. True, it’s cheesy and the jokes are a little dumb at times, but it was all in good fun.

Fred Claus is the older brother of Santa Claus, quite frankly he’s getting a bit tired of all the attention Nicholas(Santa) gets. It’s tough being the brother of a saint. But when he gets into a bit of trouble with the cops, he asks Nic for help and Nic gives it to him, but Fred wants more money, Nic tells him alright, if he comes up to the North Pole to help him out with the work. Fred comes up and decides to shake things up in the North Pole with the elves, but it couldn’t come at a worse time when Santa is being examined for his business and could possibly be shut down.

Fred Claus was a cute holiday movie, like I said, it’s nothing special, but I thought it was fun.

(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)

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It has become cool, trendy, hip, silly, crappy, needless, sad and useless of late to post pictures of yourself on the internet. Nothing new in that, but the cool thing here is that you take a picture of yourself every day, for lets say 5 years, you thrown them all into a little software application, add some music and you’ve got yourself a 90 second video of those 5 years to remind yourself and the rest of the world how crap tose 5 years were cause you actually found the time to take that picture of yourself. The Simpsons has always been topical and last night they caught onto this 1 pic a day fad. It turns out Homer Simpson knows how to work a camera and his 39 years in one minute looks like this.

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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Here is a litte breakdown of my top five favorite (well current favorite) Christmas films:

5 - National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

If you want to ‘feel’ all Chritmasty, then look no further than buying National Lampoon Christmas Vacation. Everything from the opening music to the ending titles sums up the most favourite time of the year.

It’s Christmas time and the Griswolds are preparing for a family seasonal celebration, but things never run smoothly for Clark, his wife Ellen and their two kids. Clark’s continual bad luck is worsened by his obnoxious family guests, but he manages to keep going knowing that his Christmas bonus is due soon

4 - Home Alone

This megahit that made Macaulay Culkin a household name–and still causes me to wince when I’m in the presence of gallon paint cans–is a tightly plotted and very funny tribute to upper middle class child abuse. Chris Columbus helms this ruthlessly crafty comedy, and from the moment the house lights go down, it’s pedal to the metal.

An eight-year-old boy named Keven McCallister was accidentally left behind when his family rushes off on a Christmas vacation to France. Meanwhile, two bumbling pair of burglars named Harry and Marv known as the “Wet Bandits,” are trying to break in to steal all sorts of valuables. Tonight Keven has become a home security system while he is rigging a bewildering battery of booby traps. It’s all up to Kevin to save the house and set out booby traps before Harry and Marv steals everything in the house!

3 - The Nightmare Before Christmas

A Christmas movie as only Tim Burton could do one. If you’re familiar with his work, then his gothic look at the holiday through the eyes of a Halloween character who has Santa-envy.

Jack Skellington is the King of Halloween, but is about to discover something news. Jack becomes bored and tired with the same routine every year, and takes a walk into the woods, in which he discovered a door leading to Christmas time. Christmas time is amazing to Jack, but he doesn’t fully understand the concept. Now, he want to bring Christmas to everyone, and is planning to take over the job from Santa. Problem is, the real world isn’t used to Jack’s lifestyle, and it’s not going to go to plan for Jack at all.

2 - Scrooged

Another take on the Charles Dickens classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s somewhat dated from the time in which it was filmed, but at the same time there’s a dark comedy to it that is timeless.

Frank Cross runs a US TV station which is planning a live adaptation of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. Frank’s childhood wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, and so he doesn’t really appreciate the Christmas spirit. With the help of the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, Frank realises he must change.

1 - It’s a Wonderful Life

Truly one of the finest films ever made. It’s message still resonates after nearly 60 years. It’s central themes of love, appreciation, loyalty, and sacrifice are valuable reminders any time of year. I saw this film for the first time when I was about 8 years old and even then could understand why it had become a tradition in many households at Christmastime. Like many other Christmas-themed films, this one reminds us to pause and take in our surroundings. It is unfortunate that such films are only celebrated once a year, but that particular trait also adds a certain degree of rarity to its charm.

George Bailey spends his entire life giving up his big dreams for the good of his town, Bedford Falls, as we see in flashback. But in the present, on Christmas Eve, he is broken and suicidal over the misplacing of an $8000 loan and the machinations of the evil millionaire, Mr. Potter. His guardian angel, Clarence, falls to Earth, literally, and shows him how his town, family, and friends would turn out if he had never been born. George meant so much to so many people; should he really throw it all away?

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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