It was my first Christmas as a married woman and we celebrated it at home this year with Tim’s family. It’s the first time that I haven’t been with my family and the first time I’ve had to think about food shopping and preparations. I’d mapped out a simple plan to have a brunch of fruit salad, croissants, ham and brie cheese and a dinner of prawn and squid with salad.

The plan sounded simple but everything is in the details, right? I don’t do a lot of seafood purchasing nor ham buying so I wanted to clear up expectations with Tim before I went to the shop. How much seafood should I buy, 12 prawns? A kilo he says. So a kilo of banana prawns to cook I respond. He looks bewildered. You need to have at least half a kilo of cooked prawns he says. Really? I would just buy raw prawns and cook them. Everyone has cooked prawns! Clearly we had different expectations about what a seafood dinner involved. My family usually purchased uncooked prawns and Tim was used to purchasing cooked prawns.

Shopping at Christmas was also another learning experience. Tim suggested I

get to the seafood shop at Narellan Town Centre early on Christmas Eve. I arrived around 6.15am. As I walked up the escalator I could see some of the line already from the fish shop. Twenty people I estimated. But it was until I turned the corner from the escalator that I could see how long the line actually was. It must have been at least 200 metres long! I stood in the line for an hour. I watched as people joined the line muttering to their companions ‘We should have got here earlier!’

I was so pleased with my attempt at Christmas decorations. I avoided buying something and cut a few branches off a bottle brush in the local park. I’m happy with the outcome.

So that was my First Christmas and I’m still learning things about my spouse and my new family.

Here is the recipe for the fruit salad I made!

Ingredients

• 1 pomegranate
• 2 punnet strawberries
• 2 punnet blueberries
• 3 Apricots
• 3 Nectarines
• 1/6 watermelon
• 2 mangoes
• watermelon (1/6)
• mint leaves

Method: Cut all the fruit up and toss into a bowl. There were 5 of us at brunch and we had plenty left over.