Christmas at Annabel’s It’s the little moments of joy and happiness

There’s something about the layers of uncertainty surrounding this Christmas that, much like the last one, there are lyrics from old war-time Christmas songs that hit a little harder this year. Someday soon, we all may be together, if the fates allow. I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams. For millions of families around the world, that was the battle during last year’s festive period and for many families in Aotearoa, it’s the same story this Christmas.

On the day of her chat with The Australian Women’s Weekly, celebrated celebrity cook Annabel Langbein tells me that her 29-year-old son Sean is one of tens of thousands trying to win the MIQ lottery – 22,000 Kiwis trying to make it back for Christmas on that day alone.

Sean, a doctor working for the Covid-stricken NHS in the UK, caught the disease himself last year, then developed a really nasty chest infection on top of that. It has not been an easy couple of years, and this is his fourth attempt to get home to visit his parents Annabel and Ted Hewitson, and his sister Rose, 27, who has been living with her parents in their Wanaka home, along with her long-term boyfriend Hamish, 29, since late last year.

That war-time comparison may seem a little steep, but with a global death toll in the millions and almost every single person alive now affected by Covid-19, it is safe to say we are living through “an event”. And when it came to Rose starting her research for her new cookbook with Annabel, Summer at Home, that sense of historical context was one of the jumping-off points: what do people want to cook and eat, following – not to put too fine a point on it – a global disaster?

“I was looking into periods of history, like the Great Depression or following World