Weekend Catch-up and MIss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights Recipe 17 with a seasonal twist

Weekend and H was home...we went to Oxford Castle Christmas Market  I can still smell the mulled wine, hot chestnuts, German sausages and waffles, (you can just see 'A' on the right-hand side of the Christmas Waffles stand)...then off for a look around The Covered Market

I made a variation of Sophie Dahl's Baked Apples adding lovely dried cranberries to the vine fruits to make a seasonal twist, using  Agave Syrup instead of sugar. 

Then the Ginger bread house making plan fell by the wayside. (We can do it on Christmas Eve instead). H and I got into a lovely involved conversation about family history, ended up getting out all the old birth and wedding certificates and began to write my side of our family tree...which of course is hers too. 

Thank heaven for the internet.  Within  minutes we'd found the 1901 census and confirmed that some of the family rumours about my paternal grandmother's roots were correct. So far, a number of creative people and that she and siblings were born in the North of parents and older brother from the South...why did they move? and there may be a German connection, her grandmother. I so hope the rumours about the Rowntrees Chocolate connection and the famous artists, ones are correct too...I suspect they may not be.  

It is so addictive...but genuinely I just hope to find nice honest people who didn't do anything harmful or racist, and that they all had jobs, whatever they were, and were well fed and happy and healthy...no stints in the poorhouse or gaol! 

But be warned if you try...once you begin it's hard to stop...