6.04 /// Roasties, Lego, And The Devil’s Parsnip

The holidays can be both soft and sharp: twinkly lights and full plates on one side, memories of long shifts and missed days off on the other. We lean into that tension and make something honest from it—quiet routines, home cooking, and small rituals that turn a winter’s day into a warm one. From the joy of an Ulster fry with fresh soda and potato bread to the debate over parsnips and the triumphant mountain of sausage stuffing, we explore how food becomes a language of care when words fall short.

We rewind to childhood: the Argos catalogue, the Mega Drive years, and learning what it took for parents to stretch a payslip into magic. Then we fast-forward to a world of online convenience, where shopping takes seconds but the high street grows quiet and our step counts shrink. It’s a candid look at what we’ve gained, what we’ve lost, and how a few intentional choices—like walking to buy something local or donating from an overfull cupboard—can restore a sense of place. Along the way, there’s Lego building, Die Hard on in the background, and those gloriously tacky foil garlands that make a room feel like 1995 in the best way.

Hosting stays at the heart of it all. Cooking a joint ahead of time, glazing ham, crisping roasties, and laying out a table for family who’ve been working shifts—these are the moments that turn a holiday into a home. We talk about gratitude that moves beyond sentiment: giving to charities that show up at Christmas, sharing leftovers, and noticing the people who don’t get the day off. It’s a simple blueprint for a kinder season and a better year: less polish, more presence; fewer grand gestures, more everyday generosity.

If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who loves a good roast potato, and leave a review telling us your non-negotiable holiday tradition. Your stories help shape the next one.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Aimless Holiday Mood
• 2:30 Show Format And Expectations
• 4:05 Working Through Past Christmases
• 7:20 Childhood Gifts And High Street Memories
• 11:40 Town Decline And Online Convenience
• 14:20 Family Finances And Taking Turns
• 18:30 Hosting, Cooking, And Sharing Food
• 22:20 Ulster Fry Traditions And Baking

Transcript

Stephen: 0:05

Hello, welcome to Infinite Brothers. More than usual, I have no idea what I'm gonna talk about. Christmas time is to work on the sugar carbohydrate microphone. Welcome back to another episode of Infinite Prattle. The character from South Park. And I'm not stoned because I don't do that sort of thing. But I do kind of feel like he looks on the hat. Um Yeah, tired, full Content. Um but yeah, it's um It's a weird time of year, Christmas, isn't it? It's a strange time of year. You know, it's a time for for giving, but it's also a time for people to chill out and kind of overindulge a little bit. But while also overindulging while thinking about poor people who haven't got a lot, um it's a real juxtaposition time of year. Um That was really cynical of me. Uh anyway, welcome to the podcast. Uh, if you haven't joined me before and you haven't listened or watched, uh watching is a new thing to this season. Uh never done the YouTube video podcast before, but I'm attempting it and I think it's going well. Um I talk bollocks a lot. To be honest, that's that's literally what the premise of this thing is. It's prattling, it's me thinking of a subject and just rolling with it. So yeah, so don't expect um too much from it. It's a brain out kind of time, uh, and you'll probably hear things that you'll you know feel in sync with and at zen with, and uh and some things you might disagree with, and that's all that's all good. We're okay to disagree with things in this world. That's that makes us human, and that's what makes things, you know, move along and progress. You know, it's okay to have your own opinion on things, honestly. Anyway, Christmas. Um let's talk about that because yeah, I've mentioned it in the intro. I really didn't know what I was gonna talk about today. Had a few things floating on my head, but yeah, Christmas time, let's let's kind of delve into that a bit. I did a Christmas episode a few years ago, I think it was when the podcast was still called Steven Speak, uh, which will also confuse new listeners because I changed this the name of the podcast on series four. It's a slick move for me, uh, marketing-wise. Um anyway, um yeah. I I'll just tell you what I've been doing. Shall I? So I'll just tell you. Uh so this year I I booked Christmas off. I haven't really had many Christmases off since being an adult and being in the world of work, uh, probably since the age of like 17, really. Uh and I'm 42 now, scarily enough. Uh I can only remember really having like a couple of Christmas days off, and we had a short trip over to Ireland a few years ago, where I took a few days off of Christmas when I first changed roles uh into the job I'm doing now, which is more office-based. Uh, but I still wasn't off the entire Christmas time, like the entire entirety the entirety of Christmas. Um and last year I I pretty much worked all the way through Christmas. I had a big project commissioning, and it was kind of my responsibility to be there and help manage the side that I manage. So it wasn't really um it wasn't really a Christmas for me. Had I had one day off in ten days, and while it was a massive experience in my work life, it was a little bit depressing to not it weirdly it was worse from going from office work to then working over Christmas than it was when I was on shifts and on call going to work over Christmas because it's it's I think it's in the back of your head it's kind of expected. And I always knew that some Christmases there would be work commissioning and stuff like that, and I have to be on call, but it's always a bit of a jolt. And um when I was on call in my previous role with instant response, that happened quite a lot, and it was just expected. And we had we had one year I was called out constantly, and uh we bought um or Sarah bought a uh Christmas Monopoly set, which I actually still not played, and we kept getting it out over Christmas, and every time we got it out set up, I was I was called out on a on a on a job. Um so I think it's it's got a stigma attached to it now. So um yeah, so uh it's it's one of them times for me that is kind of when you're a kid it's very, very happy and exciting, and you know, you can get presents and what Santa brought you. Then you become old and you realise that Santa's spoiler, Santa isn't real. Um and it's your parents' mind. It does lose something, it kind of loses something in that fancy s fancy realm of magic, but it also then turns into kind of like you realise how much your parents do for you, and that's that's nice, but it also puts a lot of pressure on you as a child, I think, sometimes. If you if you're a morally like straight child, I would say, and you and you kind of think what what your parents are going through to afford these things. I mean I was I was blessed as a child, like I didn't come from a a a like a a poor background or a single parent house. Both my parents had jobs for the majority of my early teen life. My mum kind of stayed at home until I was about eight or eight or nine, really, and then she went back to work. She did child minding and stuff like that, and she had many jobs, so we're we were a two-person income, and whereas we didn't have loads of disposable income. My mum always made the money stretch. Um, my dad did long shifts. Uh he worked on the railway the same as I do now. Uh he got me onto the railway. Um, I've probably mentioned that before. Um, and yeah, I I they were grafters basically, and they made the money stretch. My mum's always been a good cook, so she would not buy pre-packed food where possible. Uh sometimes for ease she did, but she would make things from scratch, we'd have leftovers, and I I'm I'm I I'm very blessed in that way that you know, even though we never we didn't always get what we wanted, they tried the best to give us the next best thing, or you know, we didn't really make lists or anything like that. I mean the Argos catalogue was a big thing when the Argos catalogue um for people from other parts of the world that don't have the shop Argos, it was basically like a a catalogue. It was a it was a it was a high street shop, but they had a catalogue. And you couldn't order online or anything like that back in the day. Uh I am of an age where I remember having to go to every single shop separately to get what you wanted. No Amazon, no online shops, you had to go out and physically shop, which was actually nicer, it was a nicer way to be, I think. Um it's brilliant having Amazon and all these different things that you can just click on, but it does make you lazy, and I feel it doesn't help my health to be honest. I think that when I had to go walking and and shopping, and you get all these conveniences added on, and all the conveniences, it's kind of like the wall-y thing, um, uh, where they're all in in like wheelchairs and everything's brought to them and everything's automated, and they're just they just get become fat and lazy. I feel like that's happening to me. Um and it is super convenient, and you can get really good deals, but it's killing the high street, and and crew crew, the town I live in, is is dying on its arse, basically, to coin a phrase, um, in the in the shopping world. Um, and it used to be a thriving little town and markets and everything, and it's really a shame, but I mean I've added to that by by not shopping there because it's just so more convenient to just pop on your phone or your computer and just purchase something. Um but yeah. We I mean I got a Mega Drive one year, um, which is Mega Drive 2, uh a Genesis 2 for people in America. I think they got the Genesis 2, didn't they got the Mega Drive 2? I'm not sure actually. But it was the it was the Genesis, but that Sega released like a slimmed down version of it, as as these companies do. Um and I I always wanted a Mega Drive as it was called in the UK, and uh I remember mither. It's the only thing I probably think I actually mithered them for and got told off for because all my mates had one and I didn't have one, never had my own like home computer or anything like that. I had a Game Gear, if anyone that that remembers them, it was basically Sega's version of the Nintendo. Uh had a colour screen, it was brilliant, I loved it. Eight batteries like anything, it was terrible. I think six I think it took six double A's, maybe even eight, and they lasted like an hour at the best. It was terrible. Um in Iron Side I can see why my mum and dad always insisted I plugged it in everywhere and wouldn't buy me batteries for if I was on battery rationing basically. Um but yeah, I I I got that one yeah, and I think that was probably one of the presents that stands out to me the most because uh it was a very expensive present, and I never really asked for huge things as far as I'm aware. I never I don't feel like I did at least anyway. I got I got like a set on track to one year when I was very young. But because there were two children, my brother's a little bit older than me, um we we kind of took it in turns to get the better present. So one year he would get something quite expensive, or more expensive at least, and I would have lots of little things, and then the following year, if there was something I wanted that was a little more expensive, then it would be my turn, and vice versa. And that's kind of how they worded it. They couldn't afford to give us both a computer, or they couldn't afford to give us both a bike. Um, and I think it was kind of good that we were staggered ages as well, because he was getting into stuff before I was, so I was still into toys and stuff like that, and happy with like I'd play my my mum made me like a a homemade sweet shop one year. She bought me like the bowl, like the little uh glass jars and stuff. I think she had them in a cupboard actually. But she made like a little it was basically a shelf out of uh cardboard and crepe paper and then filled the little jars up with sweets. I think it was Christmas or her birthday, I think it was Christmas, and uh she bought me a little till I was happy. I th I it was amazing. I didn't even I don't think I I think part of my brain knew that it was probably homemade, but I wasn't bothered um because it was well wanted. I wanted a little sweet shop set up and a little till I could pretend to sell sell sweets to people and um I don't think I ate any actually um very very very bizarre. This is huge by the way. That this I bought I bought this because obvious for obvious reasons. It's I don't even know how anyone holds these Stanley Cups. I filled it the other day and it was so heavy to hold. Crazy Yeah, so that was kind of like my Christmas in the sense of present giving. And there's gonna be a vlog going out uh on New Year's Eve, uh showing off a couple of Lego sets. I recorded that before I recorded this. Uh I was trying to get ahead of myself so I could actually plug that in this episode, see? Getting better. YouTubers coming out in me. Um I'm very lucky the fact that I I can get presents like that nowadays. Uh but back in the day, you know, I was I was very lucky as well. We we weren't I wouldn't say we were spoiled, but we weren't without things. Um I would like to say we were quite level-headed in that sense. Um but I would also say we were probably better off than a lot of people, um, because people didn't have two parents that were going to work. Sarah's story of growing up at Christmas is vastly different from mine, and I feel when she talks about her Christmas, I feel sometimes that I was spoilt. Um because she had one parent bringing her up, sometimes her mum wasn't working, because she was looking after her and stuff. So it's like it's a it's a bit of a a jarring, ajarring sensation to to know how other people kind of function at Christmas. We all know it's not just about presents, like it's about seeing family and friends. Um and we love to do that too. Um but Christmas Day, we don't really venture out. We we like Christmas Day just to be about us. We always cook since we've moved into this house, we've always cooked for Sarah's mum and brother, uh, because they're normally working, and um so we've we've always tried to accommodate them. Um even during COVID and stuff, we we we we made food. Uh the first Christmas we could like have people around, we chose them. Uh and it and it's just a lovely experience. I love cooking for people, it's it's a very personal thing. Um it's it's something that I feel I feel like to fill someone's belly is is a I don't know, it's something you can't match. I don't I think giving someone some Lego is great, but if you provide someone with beautiful food that's tasty and um give them sustenance, I think that's even better. Um maybe that's the Irish in me, uh the you know the host. Uh and this year is no it's no exception, I actually tried a few things this year. I um got up really early the day before Christmas Eve. So Christmas Eve was on a Wednesday this year. Um and we were doing something Wednesday afternoon, so I thought I don't want to be rushing around all day Christmas Eve trying to trying to prep stuff. So I actually cooked uh our turkey joint and our ham joint uh the day before Christmas Eve on the 23rd and made a nice honey mustard glaze for the for the for the ham. I make turkey uh sorry stuff sausage stuffing. So my mum used to always make sausage stuffing on Christmas dinners and occasionally on Sunday dinners. Um it's kind of a thing in the UK, is we have a roast so on a Sunday, so it normally consists of like roasties, roast potatoes that is, uh, some sort of meat, beef or or chicken generally. Sometimes people have pork or lamb, but generally beef or chicken, I think, is kind of like the most popular, popular ones. Um and then people also have um vegetables, so root vegetables, so carrots. Sometimes people roast sweet uh roast roast um parsnips. I love roast parsnips, a bit of a division on Christmas Day for us. Um me and Sarah's mum love parsnips roasted, and her brother and Sarah hate them, so we have to keep them separated. Um the devil's phallus is what Michael calls them. So uh, and I I would eat the devil's phase every day if they were parsnips, so I don't care. Uh and you can quote me on that. Um roasted parsnips, obviously, not just plain old straight out of the ground parsnips, you know, that would be weird. Uh so um but yeah, that then and gravy and there's loads of different other things you can put in. Some people have like cauliflower cheese, which is like roasted, like boiled then roasted cauliflower with loads of cheese, like a like a white cheese sauce. It was like a batchmel, batchamel uh cheese sauce. Um, but there's quite a variation in this country, but then at Christmas you have extras, so people have stuff in, and they'll have maybe sausage stuff in, which is what I do. Uh, we don't have sausage sausage stuff in all the time. I would be very fat if I had that. I could eat that every single day. It's one of my favourite foods. Favouritist? Is that a word? I don't think it is. Um and I I just love it. I just could eat that every single day, and yeah. I just make my mouth fill s with saliva just thinking of it. And I made loads this year, I made a massive amount because I wanted to give some some spare to Michael because he he he's very he's very critical of food and he likes my stuffing, and uh as as a as a kind of homage to his his uh praise, I wanted to make him some extra this year. But I don't feel like it was enough for him. Um I have to make him a massive batch of inextra. Um but I I must have made like four or five pounds of stuffing. Um and yeah, it's just it's just it's just lovely to be able to provide food for people. And I I even got up really early on that day actually and made a fresh soda and fresh potato bread. Because I've never never done that before. And I I live in England and my mum's Irish and and uh we can never get good soda and potato bread in this country. And I've always had a tradition since I was living on my own. Uh it happened a couple of years after living on my own. I think I went over to see mum and we had we uh she did me an Ulster Fry on Christmas Day and that was it. I was like, oh my god, Ulster Fry on Christmas Day, then literally don't eat until your Christmas dinner. Oh, that's like the best combo, it's like the best day ever. So since then it's always been a thing where I I make a um an ulster fry uh Christmas morning, which is basically an English an English fry up pretty much, but you have potato bread and soda bread on there, and sometimes white pudding instead of black pudding. Um so mine consists of bacon egg, mushroom beans, um fried bread, fried potato bread, uh potato bread. What else have I said? Brown sauce is is a must on it. Mushrooms, does that say mushrooms? And an egg. Um and black pudding. Does it say black pudding? I don't know. Anyway, unjumble all that, and that's my breakfast. Um but you can very rarely get the Irish stuff in this country that's any good. And if you can get it, it's pre-packaged, it doesn't taste the same, or it's not as fresh. So this year I was like, you know what? Potato bread's quite simple to make. I've seen the recipe before. Always said I'm gonna have a crack of that. Potato bread's super easy to make. I thought, why haven't never tried it? So I thought, you know what, let's go out and get some flour, uh, some um buttermilk, and I made it. And I must admit, the potate the potato bread turned out brilliantly, it was delicious, it tasted nothing like the stuff you get in the shops, it was so fresh. And the same with the soda bread. Um, never made it before, it rose lovely, the the the consistency was beautiful, and yeah, like patting myself on the back there, I felt uh that I did a good job. And we've been eating it since um that day, like pretty much, and we've only just finished it today when I'm filming this this podcast uh and recording this podcast, and it's what day is it today? What date is it? It's it's a Saturday today, so it's it's the 27th, is it? The 27th? So it's lasted like five days, uh, and it hasn't gone mould, it tastes just as fresh. So I'm I'm very impressed. Um but on Christmas is quite quite basic. We say we don't like to be bothered Christmas Day, uh we don't like to go out Christmas Day unless we maybe take the dog for a walk. Um we get up normally quite early. I'm quite an early riser on Christmas Day. I don't know why, whether it's I'm excited to open presents. I generally know what I've got nowadays, though I'm an adult. Uh but yeah, I was up this year at 25 past six. Um didn't really have anything to do because I'd already done all the meats, it was all in the fridge. Uh the only thing we had to do is really the vegetables and the roasties and the gravy. Um which we can all be done like right before you make in the you know, can done an hour and a half before you're gonna eat. Um yeah, so we came downstairs, made a brew, uh, lovely cup of tea in the morning, uh, opened the presents. Bert loves to open the presents, he he loves to help you rip off the packaging. He's actually quite gentle unless he gets too excited, he was very excitable this year. Um so we had a lovely morning just opening presents. Um we chilled out. I I made Tony the toucan, which you can see in the vlog on uh on Wednesday. Um and yeah, just had a really lovely just chill that day, just a snack. Uh the things that me as a British person considered to be Christmas. We watched a couple of things on on the internet, like we watched a couple of YouTube videos, we watched a what have we watched a film, I'm sure we did. I can't remember what we watched. Oh yeah, we I watched Die Hard while while building something. Lego, uh, because that's a Christmas film. Uh, I won't be told anything different. Um I will, I don't really care if you don't think it's a Christmas film. It's just set at Christmas. I understand that. Don't come at me. You can come at me, I don't care. Um whatever. Uh so yeah, I I uh I had just a lovely Christmas. Sarah loves Christmas. Uh we got like really old traditional uh decorations this year, so I wanted to make it a bit special. We've been on about trying to like make the tree look a little bit different. We had some white lights and I bought like colourful lights for the tree, and we bought the old foil uh decorations that go around the room. So years ago, this was like a thing in the UK, these foil um collaps they like concertina uh into each other, and you just string them up, and they they look so tacky, but they just make me smile. It's that's Christmas for me when I was a kid. Um the arguments of them getting them down and then opening up nicely because my mum had had them for so long, and when one broke she'd go mad even though they were like 20 years old or something stupid. Um and they're super fragile, but it that's that's what Christmas was as a kid for us. So this year, while Sarah's in hospital, I I did an online order and ordered a few. Got these like stick-on um snowflakes for the windows and decorate the windows, and yeah, so it looks it looks kind of Christmassy this year downstairs uh in our house. There's a few things in the loft that I need to sort out. There's we've like got like four other boxes of stuff in the loft that we would normally put out, and the last couple of years we haven't. I think Sarah's a bit annoyed about that, but it always faults me to get everything out of the loft because she can't. And um I'd love it just to be more accessible. I'd love it if there was like a hidden Christmas cupboard with all the stuff in there, and you could just open it out and she could just get to it and decorate it and everything. And I think it's like I don't know if it's like a man thing, maybe some women are like this as well. Um it's the process of putting getting stuff out and putting it away. I love it when it's up and it makes me so happy, and it's lovely to have a little twinkling fairy lights. I mean in my house when I lived alone, um, because when you live alone you can do what you want, it's your own house. I had fairy lights everywhere, very much like on the Jimmy Eat World music video, I was kind of inspired by that. There's a music video, um, I think it's the middle, is the song's called, and they go through this house and there's fairy lights everywhere, and I kind of did that in my house. I had a rope light going up the stairs, I had fairy lights around archways and my doors, like round my bed and stuff like that. So, like at night time we didn't really turn any main lights on, or the all the LED fairy lights went on, and it looked really cool. So my house kind of looks semi-christmassy all year round. Um, yeah, so I I do love all that. Uh it's just the process of getting things in and out of the loft. Um, but then now the big thing comes, I've got to recover from eating all this food. We've got loads of leftovers in the fridge, we've got loads of turkey meat, and uh you do feel very grateful. I feel very grateful. I've been clearing out some of the cupboards in the kitchen. I'm gonna make some donations to some local charities with that to help people less fortunate. Um I always like to donate to a couple of charities at Christmas. So when I was out and about, some charity was asking for some donations, so I had a spare tanner. Don't normally carry cash, so threw some money in the in in the uh the old uh Salvation Army. They do some great work at Christmas. And it's just it's just um It's a time for reflection. I think that when you sat there with a massive full belly, like you have to take some time to think about you know the people that aren't doing that. And it's I don't want to put down on things, but that's kind of what it's meant to be about, really. Like we forget the meaning of Christmas. I'm not really religious. Christmas for me is a a potentially a day off, and at times we eat lovely food, and that's really what it is, and if you get some nice gifts, it's a bonus. Um but yeah, we need to be nicer to people in 2026, I think, is is m is what I'm taking forward, and 2026 hopefully is going to be a good year, and uh we'll we'll we'll do some do some nice things and hopefully you can join me on the things we talk about on this podcast. Uh but I've rambled for long enough about Christmas and and and things like that. But let me know in the comments like what you do at Christmas. Do you have a set pattern like I do? Um, do you like to venture out on Christmas Day? Do you not like to stay in your own house? Do you go abroad or on a holiday at Christmas? Because a lot of people do that now. Um let me know. Um and again, if this is your first time, thanks for tuning in. Hope you will again. Go back and check some other episodes. I'll put some uh you can go back on on the on the podcast uh app that you're on, or you can I'll put some links on the YouTube videos up here somewhere, and uh you can go check some other videos out. But uh thank you very much for for listening and watching if you have been. And uh yeah, just remember to keep prattling, and I'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01: 24:40

Thanks for listening to InfinitePrattle with your host Steven. Follow me on the social network at infinite prattle and don't forget to subscribe. Thanks very much.