Homemade pâté was an obligatory Christmas dish. My mum used to add carrots and parsley roots. My husband had his own recipe for a very meaty pâté which his grandma and mum used to prepare. Both of them are excellent, but recently I haven't prepared them. We try not to prepare too much food, so that afterwards we can eat with pleasure rather than duty. A few times I prepared also fish pâté and celery pâté.

This time I used my favourite red lentils. Lentil pâté is easy and it has the same texture as meat pâté, so with clean conscience I can also recommend it to vegetarians. Feel free to alter the recipe as required. Add nuts or cranberries and make your own yummy version.

The basic recipe comes from www.zjadam.pl.

Ingredients (25cm cake tin)
250g of red lentils
2 carrots
1 parsley root
half a small celery
1 onion
a piece of fresh ginger
3 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Although the date has just changed and the amazing night of fun has passed, we can always find an opportunity to make something yummy and beautiful. If it is an equally simple dish – even better for us.

This dessert taught me submissiveness and patience. It is easy to prepare, but all the time it got on my nerves. It turned out that I didn't have some of the ingredients, even though I could have sworn I did have them, and I don't want to tell you how often I had to clean my kitchen. I didn't give up and prepared the dessert. We all found it yummy. For me this excellent taste was the taste of ... patience. A few times I had a half mind to bin everything and go to a bakery.

Ingredients (cake tin with recess):
250ml of 30% sweet cream
500g of mascarpone cheese
2 teaspoons of caster sugar
150g of white chocolate
200g of dark chocolate drops
fruity icing
300g of cherries without stones
3 tangerines
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of gelatine
chocolate icing
150g of dark chocolate
100ml of 30% sweet cream
small pieces of pomegranate

A few days before Christmas, every housewife does everything she can to plan and prepare treats for the Christmas table. Meats, fish, salads, pâtés, dishes with cabbage – on the first day everything is excellent, the second is great too, and even on the third day we eat heartily. After that, we gradually get fed up with these excellent, longed-for dishes. Every year I try to prepare meals in such amount to finish everything on Boxing Day and start preparing new delicacies. Sometimes I make a success of it...

Today I would like to share with you the recipe for using roasted or boiled meat. You may use any meat which you have after Sunday or Christmas dinner. Duck, turkey and even chicken will taste great. Try it.

Ingredients:
6 pieces of pita bread
500g of roasted or boiled meat
half a red onion
1 yellow pepper
a fistful of minced chives
6 leaves of Chinese cabbage or iceberg lettuce
half a chili pepper
3 tablespoons of olive oil
salt and pepper

I can't get rid of the Christmas atmosphere. Cinnamon is so warming and smells so homely that it is difficult to resist. To mark the end of the Christmas holiday I quickly prepared some final gingerbread cookies. Today the cookies weren't for cutting out and decorating but were something like small gingerbread pillows – crunchy outside and soft inside. They weren't too sweet and the lemon icing perfectly suited them.

Fortunately, I prepared 50 cookies from one portion of dough, because before I took the second portion out of the oven the first one was almost gone.

The recipe comes from https://gotuj-sie-do-gotowania.blogspot.com.

Ingredients:
150g of brown sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon of cocoa
2 teaspoons of spices
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
260g of flour
150g of 18% cream
half a teaspoon of baking soda
peel from one lemon
peel from half an orange

The end of 2017 was meant to try our patience. One after another we got ill and I was fed up with it. Fortunately, at least during Christmas we were healthy and we were able to spend this time with the whole family. We had to spend New Year's Eve with wipes, raspberry juice and ascorbic acid.

To warm up and fortify our weakened strength I prepared garlic soup. Smooth and mellow with crunchy croutons, it was really good. I recommend it.

Ingredients (for 4 people)
soup
2 heads of garlic + 3 cloves of garlic
3 big potatoes
1 onion
2 bay leaves
3 allspices
1 litre of vegetable stock
2 sprig of thyme
1 tablespoon of butter
100ml of 30% sweet cream
salt and white pepper