All diets work...

Tikka Mackerel on Salsa with Bombay Wedges

In this, my latest, attempt to lose weight, I am not following a particular diet plan. I am counting no points or calories, and I won't cut out any food groups. So, certainly no 'just eat xyz for a week'.
What am I going to do then? - you might well ask.

Well, I think: ALL DIETS WORK.

If you stick to them, that is. Some people claim that they did and still didn't lose weight. That's not my experience. I always did lose weight, although sometimes not as much as the diet promised.
I think what doesn't work is the maintenance. Once you've achieved your goal weight, the old bad habits creep back in, you lose the impetus to keep up the exercise, and before you know it, you're back to square one.
As I said before, one overweight person isn't like the next. I can only talk for myself, really. Even with the best intentions, there comes a point when I can't be bothered to count and weigh and add up. There comes a point when I just haven't got the time. There comes the point when I'm grateful when HE offers to cook...

After numerous attempts of losing it and putting it back on - I refuse to call it yo-yo - I have come to the conclusion that, basically, I need to stay on a diet for the rest of my life. That I have to see the whole thing as a handicap, as a dear friend of mine called it recently.

There are many, many reasons why this is difficult, one of them:

Healthy/Diet recipes are not suitable for the whole family

Of course, some of them claim to be - and maybe they are, somewhere in the universe - but they're usually not suitable for MY Family.

But if I want to keep this up indefinitely, and don't want to cook several meals, then they have to be not only suitable, but actually LIKED by my family. So, my very personal, tailor-made plan is:

• I will draw on all the recipes that I have liked from any of the diets I have been on in the past
• I will test out recipes that may fit in, i.e. suitable for all of us, and ideally, under 400 calories for the main meal
  

My men will give each main meal a rating of up to three stars.

no star = don't cook it again
1 star = we will eat it again
2 stars = we LIKE this one
3 stars = we LOVE this one

This is an adaptations from a recent Tesco magazine recipe:

(Serves 4)

4 mackerel, filleted (I bought just 3 fillets)
1 Tbsp Tikka curry paste (I used Pataks)
juice of 3 limes (I used half lime, half lemon)
1 red chilli, chopped
3 tbsp fresh coriander

For the Salsa:
1/4 cucumber, peeled and diced
4 plum tomatoes, diced
1/2 small red onion, very finely chopped
1/2 tsp toasted cumin seeds
1 Tbsp fresh mint, chopped

For the Bombay Wedges:
As many small new potatoes as you allow per person, scrubbed and cut into wedges
1 - 2 tsp Bombay spice
1 - 2 tsp olive oil

1. Soak wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes
2. Skewer the mackerel and place into a shallow dish
3. Spread with the tikka paste
4. Add chopped coriander chilli to lime juice and drizzle over the fillets, leave to marinate for 10 minutes
5. Boil water and blanch wedges for 2-3 minutes, then pat dry
6. Pre-heat the oven for 10 minutes to 2oo C
7. In a small plastic bag, combine olive oil, Bombay Mix and wedges, mix well
8. Spread wedges out on a non-stick baking tray and season. Bake for ca 20 minutes
9. Mix all the ingredients for the salsa and arrange on the middle of your plates
10. Pre-heat the grill for the mackerel, grill for 3 - 4 minutes

I served ours with Bok Choi, but Savoy Cabbage would have been equally nice. My men gave it 2 stars, so this will become one of my staple oily fish dishes. The original Tesco recipe had no extra stodge or veg but salad leaves added to the salsa and came - at 2 fillets per person - to 255 calories.
As you can imagine, my men cannot start to comprehend the idea of 'no stodge', so I added the potato wedges. Not sure what the exact calorie count would be for my version. I didn't have the wedges, and I was perfectly full and satisfied.

Tesco's were selling mackerel fillets which were already marinated, and although I did go through the trouble of following the recipe, my verdict is that you could use them straight away without the bother, especially as all that good marinade is tipped away.

At £1.77 for the three fillets, it was also incredibly cheap.

Snowdrops Keep Falling On My Head

January's birth flower, according to Wikipedia, is the carnation or the snowdrop. The little snowdrop fairy above is an approximation of what I must have looked like for Carnival. In several areas of Germany, dressing up for Carnival on Rose Monday (the Monday preceding Shrove, i.e. Pancake, Tuesday) is very popular (more about that in due time). My Mum made that costume for me when I was eight maybe, and my legs were never that thin, even then. Nonetheless, everyone was always on about what "a bad eater" I was, and on paper at least, I was always underweight.

They needn't have worried. Now, some 40 odd years later, with a BMI of 30 or 31, I'm considered obese. The struggle to get down to at least 25 has been going on for a long time, and while I managed to get even further down at some point, it has always crept back up. Whatever anybody comes up with in terms of explanations why some of us face this life-long battle, I usually just want to scream.
Why can't they see what is blindingly obvious to me? The overweight, the obese, the clinically obese are not one big group, all with the same problem(s) and the same underlying factors!!! Of course there are people who have the most outrageous diets, who totally gorge themselves on an epic scale. Of course there are people with a fully fledged eating disorder.
But anyone who was perfectly within the norm as a child and teenager (or even below, like me) may simply be a victim of a cluster of factors from within the unhealthy Western life-style. And yes, a predisposition to put on weight is another factor. Some people live that same life-style without putting weight on. Maybe some, but not anywhere near 3 stone in a year. They are, of course, the 3 stone I had lost before - as the saying goes: I keep losing weight, but it keeps finding me - and it is a sad truth that 90 % of people who lose weight put it back on!!! (No, I cannot tell you where I've got that figure from, I didn't record that.)

What makes it so much worse is:

When you lose weight, you lose weight and muscle, when it goes back on, it usually goes on in fat!

So, I'm all blubber now, and the only way to change that is the dreaded E-Word: EXERCISE.
It is the only way to increase muscle, after all. The good thing about it is:

The more lean muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate!! For every pound of muscle, your body uses around 50 extra calories per day.

But, luckily, snowdrops keep falling, which gives me the excuse for not getting into the car and to the gym...

El Dia de los Tres Reyes

is what the Spanish speaking countries call Epiphany, and this is what we saw in Spain - the three kings entering the house, very much in the same fashion as Father Christmas/Santa (who could be seen alongside climbing the walls).

I have written about the feast of the three kings before when I made the French Kings' Cake. It was very nice but also very rich, so this time I'd like to make one which is more bread than cake. See here for an overview of kings' cakes from different countries.

The Spanish Rosca de Reyes and the Portuguese Bolo Rei both fall into this category, but it is the New Orleans version that takes my fancy. First of all because the King Cake has a complete season there - namely between Epiphany and Mardi Gras - and secondly because this connection is responsible for its Carnival colours, purple, gold and green.

See here and here for more information and recipes. I'm probably going to end up with a combination recipe.

>

Snowballs on Ice

Just a snapshot in Canon Hill Park yesterday. (For the Cocktail, see below!) I was lucky enough to be able to spend the day in the snow with both my boys. One had the day off anyway, and the Birmingham schools were closed, too. Apparently, the Midlands were least affected by the snow, and nice as it was, it has to be said: it wasn't a lot. This amount would never warrant 'no school' in Germany. Mind you, the kids would be able to enjoy it anyway, with lessons finishing at 1:30 the latest. (Unless you go to a Gesamtschule , a school based on a Comprehensive; and there aren't many of those about.)
It is a source of never ending amusement to me, how there's method in this madness of maintaining the myth that it never snows in this country. Not often enough to have enough snow ploughs anyway, or any other policies concerning snow. I'm not complaining!! If this were Germany, I would have been forced last night to go out (again) and remove all snow and ice from the pavement in front of the house. As a house-owner, or a resident of a ground-floor flat, it's your liability if someone slips and injures themselves.
I think it's also law by now that, during the months of October to April (or thereabouts), cars have to change their tyres to the winter variety. Whereas here, they gave me a look normally reserved for the mentally insane, when I inquired about winter tyres!

For the Cocktail,
you need 2 shots of advocaat over ice in a long-drink glass, top up with lemonade.

Did you know that 'advocaat' is so-called because it was originally made from avocados? Want to make your own advocaat? You can check it out in an old post of mine: December 2005 - Was mache ich mit dem Eigelb? (What do I do with the egg yolk?)
[I wish I could just link it, but alas, that's far too technical for little me....] [edit, 02/09]

Leeky Pot, Parsnips and Parkin - or how to get the 60s, 70s and 80s into one posting

This is what the chicken stuffed with haggis (see last posting) looked like (1), and we all enjoyed it immensely, even though the boys had been sceptical beforehand: one communicating this with facial expressions hovering between disbelief and disgust, the other one declaring it 'bizarre'. And if I say 'all', I have to exclude my MIL, who could not make it, and the Crown Prince's girl-friend No3 (2). Not having learnt from last Sunday when he left a garbled voice message on the house-phone that girl-friend No1 has turned Vegan, he had again omitted to tell me that this girl is Vegetarian. Had I known beforehand, I could have tried out McSween's Vegetarian Haggis and made her a Savoy Cabbage Roll. As it was, she had to make do with the vegetables and mash. She really enjoyed the Whisky sauce though, which was rather delicious, even if I say so myself.

In wise anticipation, I had decided to turn the traditional cock-a-leeky soup into a Vegetarian pot-a-leeky, or 'Leeky Pot' (3), just in case, which was very well received, as was the Parsnip & Parmesan Bread (adapted from Delia Smith, recipe to follow shortly for Bread Baking Daily#16).

For the chicken, I used my Römertopf (4) for the first time in decades; my oldest recited the few lines of Burns he knew (which weren't from the ode to a haggis), and my BH played Alex Harvey (5), which was the best he could come up with in place of bagpipes.

We rounded the festivities off with the tipsy laird trifle. It was very nice, though I wouldn't use Parkin again instead of trifle sponge. I wanted something oaty, but the Parkin is too gingery, something with less of a taste of its own would have been better (Dundee cake maybe, to stick with the Scottish theme?)

________________________________
(1) In case you have noticed the tartan tablecloth: that’s actually just a piece of material, which I bought to make myself a Western style blouse, back in the early 80s. Just one of the many unfinished (in this case, never started) projects of my life. Apparently, apart from ‘Camel Thompson’ (or Mackenzie), there aren’t any brown tartans; I checked them all! The Burns one has a red background, check it out here. It’s something to do with the Clan Campbell and applies to the names of Burns, Burness, Burnes, Barnes, Burner and Burnhouse. The word “burn” is an OE word for stream, still commonly used in Scotland.
(2) The numbering system is purely chronological. It is not very likely that girl-friend No2 is going to turn up again, mainly because girl-friend No1 has always featured, however infrequently. It’s a polyamorous thing, a bit like free love in the 60s (maybe more about this some other time..)
(3) A very basic soup: onions, 2 leeks, 2 potatoes, marigold vegetarian stock, garlic, nutmeg, seasoning; but the tip taken from Alex Jamieson's Great American Detox Diet, Rodale Press, 2005, to add the rosemary and thyme only just before the blending process, was a revelation. (She is a Vegan chef and the fiancee of the maker of the film, Supersize Me.)
(4) It's an earthenware casserole dish, which was very popular in Germany in the 70s. It has to be immersed in water for 15 minutes prior to use, it goes into a cold oven, and the desired temperature is reached in 3 stages. It cooked the chicken beautifully - mind you, they were M & S 'succulent' chicken breasts, so maybe not all the credit goes to the Römertopf.
(5) Scottish rock and roll performer (1935 - 1982)

Burns Treatment

It's Burns Night on Sunday, and this year it's particularly special because it's the 250th anniversary of the Scottish Bard.

Burns, who died when only 37, penned more than 400 popular songs, and amongst his best known pieces are Auld Lang Syne, A Red, Red Rose and To A Mouse.

Auld Lang Syne is, of course, traditionally sung at the stroke of Midnight on New Years' Eve, not just in Scotland or the British Isles, but in other places of the former Commonwealth, too, I believe (1).
A Red, Red Rose is probably why Burns is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and likewise why Romanticism and the term 'romantic' is nowadays equated with 'kitsch' and roses, when really, it was much more than that, with men like Burns and Blake inspiring both liberal and socialist thought.
To A Mouse not only starts with a personal favourite, "Wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie", but also contains the much better known line: "The best-laid schemes o mice an men/Gang aft agley" (often incorrectly cited as: 'The best-laid plans of mice and men/ Often go awry'), which provided Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck with yet another unforgettable title. Incidentally, we are going to see Of Mice and Men (2), produced as a play at the Crescent Theatre tomorrow. You'll be able to read my review soonish, either here or in a new blog.
For January 25th and the so-called Burns Suppers, it is, of course, To A Haggis, which is instrumental.
According to Wikipedia, Burns Suppers are celebrated around the world, in fact, are more widely observed than the official national day of Scotland, Saint Andrew's Day, or the proposed North American celebration of Tartan Day.

The ritual of Burns Suppers (3) was started by close friends of Burns shortly after his death in 1796, and its basic format has remained largely unchanged. After the Chairperson's opening address, the company are asked to stand to "receive the haggis", which is carried to the top table by the chef to the sound of bagpipes and the guests' slow handclap. Burns' famous poem is then recited by either the chairman or an invited guest. Upon reaching the line, 'an cut you up wi' ready slight', the haggis will be cut open with a sharp knife, which is followed by applause. The company will then stand and toast the haggis with a glass of whisky.

The typical "Bill o' Fare" would be Cock-a-leekie soup, followed by Haggis, Tatties and Bashed Neeps. For afters, there'd be Tyspy Laird (sherry trifle) and A Tassie o' Coffee.

But my recipe for Burns Night is:

Breast Of Chicken With Haggis In A Whisky Sauce
(G&T Recipe #1)

My BH, forever 'stationed' in such exotic places such as Blackpool, encountered some such creation just outside the infamous seaside resort, namely in LYTHAM ST ANNES , and came to love it, so much so that he invited us up there, with the main intention to take us to that restaurant - BISTRO GERRY - so that we could sample it. (4)

I loved it, too. So, last year, I researched it, and this is my recipe -- an amalgamation of a variety of googled online suggestions. (5)


1 breast of chicken per person
ca 1 slice of haggis per person (6)
onions, thyme
2 tablespoons of oil
Sufficient bacon/pancetta/Schinken (7) to wrap each chicken breast

sauce: for 4
Shot of whisky per person (ca 25ml)
12 fl oz double cream
20 fl oz brown stock
Seasoning

Heat 1 tsp of oil in a frying pan set over a low heat. Soften the chopped onion and thyme, stir in the crumbled haggis. Set aside.

Slice the chicken breasts so that they open like a sandwich, stuff each breast with haggis, onion and thyme mixture, close and wrap each chicken breast in bacon/Schinken slices.

Cook, covered, in an ovenproof dish in a moderate oven for an hour (turning periodically), then remove the cover and crisp the bacon for about 30 minutes.

Put cream and whisky in a saucepan, bring to the boil and reduce to half the original quantity. Add stock, bring back to the boil and season. If the sauce is too thin, add a little corn flour. Pour sauce on a plate, slice the chicken and arrange on top of the sauce.

Serve with turnips (neeps) and potato mash (tatties) and green vegetables.

***

If I do go ahead with a 'Typsy Laird' Trifle, I'll probably be using Scottish raspberries and Drambuie.

***

I am not quite certain what Scotland's first ever 'homecoming year' actually means but apparently, Rabbie Burns is more controversial than you'd think. Most of the following is from news.scotsman.com.

On January 5th, Susan Smith reported that a leading historian argued, Robert Burns was a "racist, misogynist drunk" who is unfit to promote Scotland's 2009 Homecoming celebrations. The historian who pointed to Burns' moral shortcomings was Michael Fry. Clearly, other people do not share this opinion, the National Trust for Scotland for one. They will be publishing his letters from the years 1787-1789 online (each one on the day it was originally written). They kicked off in December with Burns confessing in a letter to Captain Brown that he is

"ready to hang [himself] for a young Edinburgh widow, who has wit and beauty more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian Banditti, or the poisoned arrow of the savage African."

Hmm, I think we get the picture.

PS: I have just found out that there are first-class stamps featuring Burns on sale as of today. Apparently an honour that no other non-royal person has ever achieved!
_____________________________________
(1) Interestingly, it was one of the songs that we, a class of German school-girls, sang at a school in Rye/Sussex in 1972 - presumably to show off our superb grasp of a foreign language - not at all realizing that this is a song for New Years' Eve! I wonder what the hosts thought of it. My friend, Big E, and I made quite a fuss of enacting the "And there’s a hand my trusty friend ! And gie's a hand o’thine!", and we still consider it, to this day, OUR song!
(2) A 1937 novel, about two displaced migrant workers during the Great Depression in California; very tragic and very topical
(3) All the following information is taken from here: http://www.rabbie-burns.com/
(4) 345 CLIFTON DRIVE SOUTH, LYTHAM ST ANNES, LANCASHIRE, FY8 1LP Tel: 01253 723511; chef: Gerry Soutar. Other than the terrific food, Blackpool itself was an utter disappointment. As it was, we had a room with a view in the Blackpool Hilton, only there was no view at all! Thick fog completely and utterly disguised the fact we were at the seaside. Even the tower was shrouded entirely!
(5)It's what I like doing. I like to find what you might call the essence of a recipe - the absolutely agreed components, if you like - and then tweak it according to my liking and/or requirements. The latter, for instance, may be to cut out unnecessary fat/calories or food my BH isn't supposed to eat because of his heart condition. I shall call them my G&T recipes (googled and tested) from now on.
(6) The Robbie Burns Society reckons that Macsween of Edinburgh means haggis in Scotland almost exclusively, and that's what I bought; available at Waitrose.
(7) I use Schwarzwälder Schinken from Lidl because it is the thinnest cut and does the job really well without adding unnecessary calories.

Jan, 9th
Christmas!

No, I'm not confused or mad (though my family might contest that), I know that even for the Orthodox and the Armenians the Nativity was a few days ago (1). But not only did we have snow on Tuesday (which reminded me of a late January or early February when my youngest experienced snow for the first time - he threw his arm in the air and exuberantly exclaimed "Christmas!"), no, yesterday our parcels were finally delivered! Two big presents - an x-box and a dyson - which my BH had ordered at the end of November!! -- Don't ask! It's one of those tangled webs in which every protagonist, as frantically and insufficiently as Adam and Eve in Paradise, tries to cover up their shame. With threads of narratives instead of fig leaves, as it were.

But hey, I'm all in favour of moving the feast! Further away from our birthdays for starters (mine and my first-born's on the 23rd). Then there is the much higher chance of snow in January - it is, after all, on average, the coolest month of the year within most of the Northern Hemisphere (2). And think of all the Christmas bargains! You don't even have to leave the house and join the mammon worshipping hordes (except for the groceries) - just type 'unwanted gifts' into ebay, and pay less than half price for all kinds of presents that some poor soul has gone through agonising buying decisions for, not to mention the further pain of parting with money far too good for the items, just to find their relatives and friends flogging them at the a starter price of 99p. You'd be amazed at what some people don't seem to want, or claim they already have lots of (brand new ipods, iphones, laptops)... And even more amazed by the amount of 'Secret Santa' presents, just how many people bid on them, and by how much!

But I'm digressing as usual. The above mentioned lateness and incompetence makes me feel a bit better about being behind the times again with my first January Recipe:

a traditional Kings' Cake. (3)

I wrote about the cake and the three magi in January 2006, and there is a lovely article here:

Epiphany, le jour des rois, Heilige Drei Könige, el Dia de los Tres Reyes, or even (mistakenly) Twelfth Night - call it what you will - was of course on the 6th. But various activities (see above) prevented me from baking it until the 7th, and writing about it until today. Not that I need to feel totally out of synch because of it - the whole period between Epiphany and Mardi Gras is sometimes known as "King Cake Season" in places like Louisiana. Mind you, The Louisiana King Cake is more of a bread, and because of its link to Mardi Gras, it features the Carnival colours: green, yellow and purple.

The Kings Cake I baked was in the French (and Tudor?) tradition:

GALETTE DES ROIS
(Kings' Cake)
Eric Lanlard from Good Food Live


Ingredients
125g caster sugar
125g ground almonds
125g unsalted Butter, softened
3 Eggs
1 tbsp dark rum
500g Puff pastry, (ideally made with butter)
sugar syrup, for brushing

For the egg wash
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp Milk

Method
1. In a mixing bowl mix together the sugar and ground almonds.
2. Add the butter and cream it together until thoroughly mixed.
3. Beat in the eggs one by one, mixing thoroughly between each addition. Mix in the rum.
4. Divide the puff pastry into two even portions. Roll out each portion and cut out two puff pastry circles, each 25cm across and 3-4mm thick.
5. Place one puff pastry disc on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment.
6. Make the egg wash by beating together the yolk and milk.
7. Spoon the almond cream into the centre of the pastry disc, leaving a 5cm edge.
8. Brush the edges of the pastry disc with the egg wash.
9. Place the other pastry disc over the almond filing and seal the edges together firmly.
10. Chill the Galette des Rois for 1 hour in the refrigerator.
11. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4.
12. Brush the Galette des Rois with the egg wash. Using a small, sharp knife cut the edges into a scallop pattern. Using the tip of the knife cut a sun ray pattern on the top.
13. Bake the Galette des Rois for 40 minutes, until golden.
14. Remove from the oven and brush at once with sugar syrup.
15. If eating the cake to celebrate Epiphany add a small ceramic figure to the almond mixture. Traditionally whoever finds the figure in their slice of Galette will be the king or queen.

Things I changed:
1) After watching videos on how to prepare a Galette des Rois on You Tube, I used Amaretto instead of rum, but I think, next time I'll use rum for more depth. As usual, any alcohol may be substituted - one girl on You Tube used Kirsch!
2) I used a pastry implement to make a pattern (not a sun ray, just criss cross), and yes, it's very important not to pierce the top - the frangipane will ooze out (as happened with mine as you can probably see)
3) I didn't have a ceramic figure or dried broad bean, so I used a dried kidney bean instead; worked, too.

Other things I would change:
It really doesn't need quite such a large amount of frangipane mixture for my liking. So I would use only half the amount for the same size cake. My mixture was also much softer than those shown on You Tube, so I might only use 1 egg next time.

I also need to make a note to self: 1 tbsp of sugar with 1 tbsp of water is enough for the sugar syrup.

Tastewise, I was very pleased with the result, and my BH was particularly fond of it.

So, hopefully, this will become a tradition in our household. Just remains to research the link. On TudorTwelfth Night (defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking"), a cake which contained a bean was eaten and whoever found it would preside over the feast as King of the Bean. It marked the end of the winter festival (the start of which was All Hallows Eve - Halloween), and had strong elements of the Lord of Misrule tradition (as present in the Celtic Samhain or the Roman festival Saturnalia). The world turning upside down for a day, i.e. reversing the pecking order, with those at the top becoming the peasants and vice versa, can be traced back to pre-Christian European festivals, and is still present to this day during other feast days (May 1st, in places, or Altweiberfastnacht during the German Carnival) (4).
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night or What You Will also features elements of reversal, such as Viola dressing as a man, and Malvolio, the servant, imagining that he can become a nobleman.
Interestingly, it is recorded as having had its first performance on Candlemas Day 1602, the festival which some cultures deem to be the real end of the celebrations. This is why the greenery put up at Christmas is taken down at Epiphany in some European cultures, whereas in others it remains up until Candlemas. As if there were not enough confusion without this (5), it is further complicated by the circumstance that the exact date of Candlemas depends on whether you ask Western Christians, Orthodox Christians, or Armenian Christians. Maybe a bit more about that in February...

But before that, there's Burns Night...

____________________________
(1) More about that and Candlemas further down...
(2) Charlemagne called it Wintarmonath (winter month), the Finnish call it the month of the heart of winter (tammikuu), and the Czech go even further by calling it leden, meaning ice month. (cf Wikipedia)
(3) The Gâteau des Rois in Provence or the Galette des Rois in the northern half of France and Belgium.
(4) You'll just have to wait...
(5) Telegraph, Jan 5th, 2009, Christmas ends in confusion over when Twelfth Night falls (By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent): "...many people believe Twelfth Night falls on Jan 6, at the end of the 12th day after Christmas, and so keep their decorations hanging in their homes for an extra day. The difference in opinion is said to be down to the fact that in centuries past, Christmas was deemed to start at sunset on Dec 24 and so the 12th night following it was Jan 5. Nowadays, people count from Dec 25 and so assume Twelfth Night falls on the 6th.
Adding to the confusion, however, most of England's churches remain decorated beyond Twelfth Night so that they can use crib scenes in Epiphany services." ... "A spokesman for the Church of England said: "Twelfth Night is the night before Epiphany and is the night, tradition says, when Christmas decorations should be taken down."
And this is just the confusion about Twelfth Night/Epiphany! I have found online opinions which suggest taking the decorations down as early as Boxing Day!! That's preposterous, of course, and would only make any sense in those cultures where they go up as early - apparently - as Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday in November)! In Germany, where the tree isn't brought in from outside until the morning of Christmas Eve, discarding it on Boxing Day would be an awful lot of expense and effort for an awfully short time!
Well, my decorations are down but not packed away yet, as would befit our forever chaotic household, in which it is forever Christmas (more about that some other time...), but which, according to another superstition I found online, is a very bad omen: "My grandmother said to take them down by New Year's Day or you'll be lazy all year"! (It would explain the story of my life...)
In Germany, by the way, there was a special refuse collection for Christmas trees on January, 6th. So unless you wanted to dispose of it yourself, you made sure it was bare by Twelfth Night. Not that I've ever heard anyone call it that there! But I did come across a mentioning of The 12 Dark Nights recently..., so maybe a spot of further research is needed!