"A History of Christmas Food" now available in print

My book "A History of Christmas Food" is now available in print.You can order it now in time for delivery by Christmas.

90 pages
130x180mm
Published by Bretwalda Books.

Price £5 per copy, plus £3 for UK postage and packing for up to 5 copies. (£6 for overseas postage).

If you would like the book signed or dedicated to a particular person just let me know.

Payment by cheque or paypal. Make paypal payments to Rupert@bretwalda.demon.co.uk and follow up with an email to the same address. Cheques made payable to Rupert Matthews and sent to me at 8 Fir Tree Close, Epsom Downs, Surrey KT17 3LD.

Christmas today is a time of feasting, drinking and all round merrymaking. We serve vast meals that cause our dining tables to groan with the weight and our families to gasp at the luxury.
But it is not just a matter of serving huge meals. Christmas - more than any other time of year - is associated with its own special foods, drinks and eating customs.
Most Christmas foods are widely recognised. Roast turkey graces most tables, which also feature sprouts, roast potatoes, parsnips, bacon rolls, pigs in blankets, cranberry sauce and bread sauce. All that is in due course cleared away to be replaced by Christmas pud and mince pies.
Others are very personal. I grew up in a household where supper on Christmas Eve was always sausages and mash, and where the adults began Christmas Day by trooping down to the kitchen for "Grandma's Special Christmas Tea", which was consumed with much lip smacking and joking. As a tot I found this early morning ritual a bit odd, but when I grew older I learned that "Grandma's Special Christmas Tea" involved my grandmother tipping a healthy dose of whisky into each mug before pouring out the tea.
We take so much of this for granted as part and parcel of our Christmas traditions that we indulge ourselves without thinking. And if we do spare a thought we probably imagine that Christmas has always been like this.
But it hasn't. Christmases of years gone by were very different. Oh, there has always been plenty of eating and drinking going on, but what has been eaten or drunk has varied enormously.
So what did our ancestors eat and drink on the greatest feast of the year?
Read on.

Ebook available via Amazon.