As I said just after Christmas, we have always held a long felt want for a festive hamper but never dreamt we'd ever receive one in real life, let alone two, but this year Hugh (Darrell's best friend and mentor of all things what are de rigueur and a la mode) made those dreams come true ............
What can I say? Everything in them was just too wonderful for words. One or two of the savoury items have already been much enjoyed, but the rest have been safely put in the cupboard for exotic supper times, as have the wines for when we are entertaining and Darrell is cooking up one of his legendary roasts with all the trimmings!
Nothing says luxury more than when it has been tied up in black ribbon and everything in our said hampers was so adorned, Darrell was in seventh heaven. The first thing that we were tempted to chow into was the box of chocolates (during Celebrity Mastermind). They didn't come with a menu, unless we lost it in all the unwrapping excitement, but they did not disappoint ....... no chocolate was caste back into the box because the centre was not to our taste, they were as Nigel announced "Truly the food of the Gods" ...... or at least us!
The boxes of luxurious and creamy Cornish sea salt and rich and velvety chocolate fine fudge also did not disappoint and were our reward, with a small glass of sherry, after a particularly gruelling tidy up session when we got back from The Homeland.
We are rationing our truffles to keep the tangible and palpable feeling of true opulence lasting for as long as we can .......
...... savouring each and every chocolaty morsel of the evocative and romantic sounding French truffles "Fantaisie" .......
...... and the other equally wonderful other bag of assorted white, milk and dark truffles for which we seem to have lost the bag. Darrell has popped one in Nigel's pocket each day when he has been out on the school/nursery run this week to keep his pecker up especially on the boring bits of his outward journey!
We are keeping the white and milk chocolate raisins for when Young Master Bertie comes over as they are a particular favourite of his. Tom the Scientist always treats him to a few grams of these delicacies if he has "been good" during a visit to the hairdressers. It will be nice for him to enjoy a few more without getting a cold head first!
This leaves us with a bar of milk chocolate to share with Iris while watching an episode of My Little Pony or Whisker Haven, which is a true, devoted uncle type joy (?????)!!!!!!!
And the hampers themselves? Well, the wicker one has already been purloined by Darrell for ornamental/decorative purposes and the cardboard one with it's magnetic fastening will be used to hold our Christmas lights, so every year when we get it out memories of it's long eaten contents will come flooding back! Happy, happy days .......... oh, and did I mention ....... that the white chocolate coated strawberries were also, to quote Darrell, "tres tres formidable"??/!!!! What are we like?