Vegetarians, look away now

So what are you having for your cmas dinner this year then? Or Festival of Baal Eating Children, however you term your Solstice celebration?

Last year we had a capon, which was so full of flavour that I went out and bought one to bring home from France with us. But what with the avian flu, I 'spect UK Customs will frown on people bringing back dead chickens from abroad. Be useful to have a dead bird to threaten people with at Luton Airport, though, so I might consider it.

I was looking forward to it again this year, but I just learned that, instead, we're having one of my in-laws' home-raised chickens - a cockerel that lived for the optimum period of time (around 100 days, I think), and is now in the freezer. I'm quite hardened to eating home-produced stuff, because I have had rabbit and pigeon in the past, but this is the first time my father-in-law has slaughtered something I might really enjoy. Mmmm!