A date with Sarah-Kate; Kate’s home truths

Overindulger Sarah-Kate needs a good Spanxing!

There’s absolutely no reason to use Baby Jesus’ birth as an excuse to devour anything unlucky enough to cross your path – but on Christmas Day, I just wake up super-hungry.

And no matter what I eat, I stay that way – until Boxing Day. And you’re talking to someone who doesn’t even do ham. Or trifle.

But the Ginger might start me off with a little something croissant-y for breakfast because it’s a holiday, and in our house we worship butter almost as much as anything else.

For morning tea there’ll be chocolate. I’m not usually a chocolate hog – it can sit in the fridge for months – but come December 25, I’m on it like a fly on manure. I do have standards – it needs to be dark chocolate, not dairy. And that’s pretty much it. Although if I’ve played my cards right, it will be a very particular truffle from Patagonia Chocolates in Queenstown – a pinot noirsoaked cherry suspended in a dark chocolate ganache and dipped in decadent 71% Belgian chocolate.

I’ve eaten dark chocolate truffles the world over and let me tell you, there is none finer than this little Central Otago beauty. On Christmas Day, a glass of pinot noir might be a suitable morning tea drink to accompany it (or, more accurately, them) but as I don’t drink red wine, bubbles it is.

It’s a good idea to have a brisk walk before lunch, although I personally have never managed it because

I’m too busy instructing the Ginger on how to stuff a turkey. I do it for sport really as stuffing things other than myself is not my forte, but I do love to see his face get redder and redder as I continue my string of helpful suggestions.

“Oh, no, I don’t eat walnuts any more – you’d better pick them out!”

Or, “Goodness, it didn’t look like that when Nigella did it.”

Even better, “I think you could fit more in. No – more. No – more. No – more.” How I Iaugh!

Anyway, then it’s time for me to peel the potatoes – the only job I am allowed to do myself as apparently even I can’t bugger it up – so we can parboil and then roast them until they’re deliciously crunchy on the outside and fluffy in the middle.

I am a Lynch of obviously Irish extraction, so I can eat a lot of potatoes. Like, it would freak you out if you could see them all in a pile, but I eat them in shifts so no such unsightly image exists.

When it’s time to sit down, I merely toy with other vegetables because really after that, it’s all about the meringues, which are the potato of the dessert world. I can eat a lot of meringues but eat them in shifts so no such etc etc.

By the end of Christmas Day, it’s all I can do to scarf down a sourdough turkey sandwich or two perhaps with some Proper Crisps and a return to the bubbles.

Then I wake up and it’s a whole new day and if Santa has been listening, there’ll be Spanx.