So Monday morning had me up bright and early, quickly tidying my little kitchen for the lovely Henrietta from Woman’s Hour, who came to record a ‘through the keyhole’ type piece for a future programme – to be broadcast before Christmas. I was very excited, as since I was accidentally catapulted into whatever you might call this these days, my friends have been teasing me: “You’ll be on Woman’s Hour next!” they said. And they were right!

So Small Boy and I made some 24 tree biscuits together to hang up. I blogged the recipe here, and all of a sudden felt like Christmas was landing in my lap. It’s been a bit of a non-event in my household for the last few years, so it comes with a certain excitement this year – the first year since SB has been old enough to appreciate it, that I will be able to carve out what will become our family traditions – and firstly, the making of soft spiced biscuits.

On Tuesday, I had a meeting with the BBC in the morning about a future project, and then straight to the House of Commons for an emergency meeting on the future of the Independent Living Fund, with Ros Wynne-Jones from the Daily Mirror, Disabled People Against The Cuts, and Mary Laver. We met with MPs including Kate Green, Shadow Minister for Disabilities, to show a film that Mary had made (with Ros, False Economy and Moore Lavan Films), depicting her life with severe rheumatoid arthritis, and the impact that reducing her care would have under proposals to reduce or remove the Independent Living Fund. Mary’s film is here, and I blogged about it in more detail here.

On Wednesday, I was up at 5am and worked all day until I got home at 11pm, and unfortunately that’s all I can say about that! Oh, I hate secrets, but I can assure you I will spill all of the beans as soon as I am able to!

On Thursday, I cooked my Christmas Dinner special feature for the Guardian, a starter, two main courses, and dessert – and used some bowls kindly lent to me by my friend and ace local potter, Richard Baxter (below) – you can check out his work at http://www.richardbaxter.co.uk/

On Friday, I woke up early early, because I had curry to cook for many, many people. Back in the day I used to hold informal fundraising dinners once a month for a local gay women’s group, either all you can eat curry in the colder months, or an all you can eat tapas and Mezze affair in the warmer weather. I’ve missed it – the gathering together of a large group of people, some of whom know each other and some of whom won’t, and feeding them up, while raising some money for charity in the process. So, my great friend Juliet and I have decided to give them another go – because I’m not busy enough! Ha ha.
I cooked 12 different dishes, including my peach and chickpea curry, spinach and lentil daal, and spiced spinach potatoes from my blog. I’ll be blogging the recipes from the night later on this week, so if you fancy holding your own charity supper club, here’s a good place to start. (For more details, see this post)

On Saturday, the WOW Petition finally reached the 100,000 signatures required to generate a debate in the House Of Commons – just before the 12th of December deadline. Thankyou to everyone who has signed it, tweeted it, shared it on their Facebook pages etc, especially in the final push these past few days. Now we wait to hear what happens next…

On Sunday, I had a fridge-freezer delivered that someone had advertised on Facebook, and as charming as it has been living out of a Coca-Cola red mini fridge for the past month or so, I missed being able to batch cook and freeze things, and also my bags of frozen veg from the supermarket, especially green beans and spinach! So that’s plugged in, with a bag of each nestled in the bottom, and thus ends my busy and altogether quite secretive week… I promise I’ll reveal all of everything as soon as I’m able to – gahhhh! 🙂

Today is also the day that the Mirror Christmas campaign launches, Give Our Kids A Christmas, which I am 100% behind – I’ll blog about it shortly as it deserves more than a sentence at the end of this!

And finally, I’ve mulled some wine, made some chilli and some tarts, and been tweeted a photo of a fellow Tweeter’s christmas tree, which I am hilariously sitting atop as the fairy – ho ho ho 🙂 Which reminds me; I should probably put my own tree up too… The photo is below, cropped so I’m not putting accidental photos of other peoples children on my blog. I think I make a pretty cool fairy. 😉

And now to sleep, before I turn the page of my diary and see what awaits me for the week ahead…

Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/agirlcalledjack