Christmas Dinner

Last year I did the M&S Christmas dinner, four of us shared the cost and it was glorious. Loads of vegetables, roasties, mash, beautiful free range turkey crown, bread sauce (although I still made my gallons of the stuff) 2 x puddings, lots of extras.

Tiggy, the girlfriend story, my youngest DDS brought a newish girlfriend home for Christmas. After dinner my DDH suggested that all the youngsters washed up and dried up. They all disappeared into the kitchen except Alice, Alice sat on her bum and refused to move. My son came and beckoned for her to come into the kitchen and help - her reply was 'In my house we never wash up we have servants to do that!!!' My son answered ' In THIS house there are no servants and you will help' She did go into the kitchen but stood sulking by the doorway. He finished with her that night.

Her family lived on an island off the coast of Jamaica. They owned a large Colonial house and had black servants to run around after them. Thank goodness she did not become a member of our family.

BREAD SAUCE: come out from behind the sofa NOW!!! mine has no chopped onion but is made with onion and clove steeped milk, a bay leaf thrown in for good measure, bread (of course) black pepper,nutmeg, cream and butter stirred in at the end. Love it, love the smell when it is cooking, it is the smell of Christmas for me.

I have cut the meal down to basics, turkey, ham, stuffing, sprouts, roast potatoes and gravy, no other veg, bread sauce or anything fancy. I then prepare the whole meal, bar actual cooking, on Christmas Eve, starting at 3.00 so that I can listen to the service of nine readings and carols form Kings College. the turkey gets put in the oven on the delayed timer so that it can start cooking without me worrying about remembering to do it.

Nevertheless even this planning can still end in disaster. One year when PiL were alive I prepared the turkey in the morning as DH went off to collect his parents, who didn't drive and they arrived earl afternoon. When I defrosted the turkey I thought the skin was slimy and it smelt, but DH said I was worrying unnecessarily and it was OK. As there was no room in the fridge and it was cold I put it in the garden shed to keep cool. PiL arrived, MiL went out to inspect the turkey and came flying back, it stank to high heaven and had blow fly.

It was 3.00 on Christmas Eve in the mid 1970s. DH and I put turkey in boot and drove immediately to shop where we had bought it. DMiL walked straight to local butcher, he had no turkeys left but she bought a pair of pheasants. The shop was mortified, they had bought one batch of frozen turkeys that were not from the usual supplier and mine was the fourth brought back. They were in the process of closing when we arrived and had one uncollected turkey left, which they gave us.

We then had to defrost the turkey fast. It involved up ending in a bucket and regularly pouring very hot water around it and inside it. We succeeded in defrosting it thoroughly in three hours and Christmas lunch then went on as usual. We ate the pheasants on Boxing Day.

DSIL will not be home from work until after 10.00pm on Christmas Eve and will be back at work by 3.30am on Boxing day, here the big meal is usually eaten on Christmas Eve but not possible with us. DSIL will not have any alchohol after 3.30pm on Christmas day.New years timings will be the same. No turkey as my Uncle owned a turkey farm so ate it a lot as a child, and I can't stand the stuff now, only eat it in a curry.
So I have no idea yet what we will be eating, but i have a leg of lamb in the freezer.

I remember actually enjoying my first Christmas alone after I got divorced. My son was at his father's (and new wife's.) I had been invited out elsewhere but didn't feel that sociable so after a pleasantly unhurried day I went to bed early with a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates and a good film. A concerned friend phoned to ask how I was and upon hearing the above was quite jealous as her mother-in-law and daughter were currently yelling at each other. I have since acquired another husband and the usual Christmas catering duties but I often remember that one quite fondly.

Sounds like a New Year I particularly enjoyed. DH and I had been invited to frieds near Kingston and I hate all that forced "Should Auld Acquaintance" jollity but hadn't been abe to come up with a good enough excuse. Just before we were due to leave I looked out of the window and saw thick fog!! So we took a bottle to bed with us (no not a hot water one) and watched The Manchurian Candidate and it was great!!
Still had a hangover the next day though

We had Christmas on our own a few years ago and I hated it. We were supposed to be staying with DD2 and her family but she went down with Swine 'Flu, my mother had a urine infection and the kennels where I normally send our dogs had lost our booking!

DH tried his best to cheer me up with a lovely breakfast in bed but I missed everyone so much.

I woke up on Boxing Day thinking, Thank God that's over.

Things got a bit dodgy last year when I succumbed to norovirus the weekend before Christmas. My son (ex chef) was ready to come over on Christmas morning and organise the meal, but fortunately I had recovered by then and even more fortunately DH didn't catch it in spite of his damaged immune system.

My sister cousin and I were woken up on Christmas morning by firemen standing by the bed. The fire in the grate had burned down into the cellar and the whole cellar was on fire. I was only 7 and would probably have been more impressed by a fireman in my bedroom had I been 15 or 16

When i go to SILs I take charge of the veg prep and boss the men around on xmas morning. (SILs' go off to church etc)
They come back and I back away rapidly.
They always do at least two starters for some unaccountable reason (no-one then wants any dessert as the starters are a normal-sized lunch...)
So my advice is don't get drawn into starters. and yes, delegate veg, table and washing up. And maybe serving up, which is a job i hate (getting ratty by then)
My mother once dropped a half-cooked goose on the kitchen floor - have you seen the amount of fat that comes out of a goose.... a tidal wave of the darn stuff. My sons once grilled a goose (an expensive "organic" goose) by turning on the wrong oven setting and then adjourning to brighton beach to watch the swimmers. We returned to the smell of singed goose, not roasting goose. Still, the lads pulled the thing together in the end. Several times they announced "I will do the roast potatoes" - then started doing them and went to pub.
But my best advice is bring up some sons so they kick you out of your kitchen an insist on doing the whole thing

My Christmas Dinner this year will be prawns and some exotic fish on the barbeque with lots of salads and cold meats, preceded by a visit to the beach for a swim - to heck with a dried out turkey and a game of Monopoly
.......but, I always return home feeling I have missed out on a 'proper' Christmas. Christmas isn't Christmas without frost or snow, carol singing in a candle lit church, present opening round a real pine tree and the cook swearing about an overcooked bird or an undercooked Brussels sprout!

In the almost 42 years we've been married, I (with some help from my husband) have cooked the Christmas dinner on nearly all of those years. I would love love love for someone else to have full responsibility for Christmas dinner - it's so exhausting.

If we have known of people on their own at Christmas, we have invited them. Our first married Christmas, my husband went down to the pub with my dad and invited back for Christmas a patient from the local psychiatric hospital. She enjoyed the meal very much, even though we all had plates perched on our knees because we didn't have a dining table. For several years we invited a neighbour and his son. My mum disapproved as our neighbour was very eccentric and less than fastidious about personal hygiene. More recently, I used to invite an elderly friend of mine as she absolutely dreaded Christmas because both her sons were living abroad. Now she's gone out to live in Canada to live near one of them. So, we're back to just the family again.

I love the family all together and am truly thankful that I'm not, like many people, alone at Christmas - but I am a little weary of doing the dinner.

JessM, evidently I did the right thing! Mind you, one of mine is a trained chef who doesn't share his kitchen gladly!

Just read Mishap's question re: the viability of a year long frozen turkey and the wonderful answer - what a relief! I'm in exactly the same position and will take the plunge and go for it as this year's feast. What a relief! I felt really guilty at the thought of having to dispose of it in the bin.

How we're going to fit everyone in for Christmas dinner though this year I'm not sure. We only have 1 baby now and 11 other people of various ages to sit around our table. Game of sardines, anyone?

There was one year when I didn't cook at Christmas which was a wonderful relief until I realised that I hadn't planned for the rest of the holiday period without any left overs!!! It's easy to cook a Christmas dinner but it's the quantities involved that get me.

I would really recommend Jamie O's mixed roasted game birds from his 'Jamie at Home' book - pheasant, guinea fowl, partridge, wood pigeons, quails or whatever combination you want - he does it with polenta but we did it with mixed mashed veg and red cabbage - - pile it all up on big platters and everybody just digs in. Makes dinner slightly less formal tho' so may not suit everybody.

Well done anno. Little festive glass of something, feet up and let someone else (if a man even better) sweat in the kitchen. Perfect. I'll be in Ireland with my sister and in her case the nieces will probably take over the cooking while I go for a nice walk, urging my sister to come too and stay well out of range
Going to the pub while someone else cooks a viable option as well if you want to keep well clear.

I am just glad to have survived the Christmas dinners my mum and my aunt cooked.

The turkey......fresh, never frozen put in the oven early Christmas Eve left to slow cook overnight.

Veggies put on a low light in the morning, copious amounts of salt added to the water, anything green had a pinch of bicarbonate soda for good measure so it didn't lose it's colour during the cooking process.

This reminds me of Victoria Wood who,in a monologue, said her mother puts the sprouts on to cook in October.

Do you remember the advert where a mother in a risingly hysterical voice is putting all the Christmas lunch out on the table, two or three kinds of potatoes, three veg, sausage and bacon rolls, bread sauce etc etc etc. Then a voice says 'where's the turkey' - and we are left to realise she has completely forgotten to cook the turkey. I still have a giggle when I think of it.

annsixty it's true, in fact veggies were cooked by this method on an all year round basis. Of course we now know that adding bicarbonate of soda destroys the vitamins in the vegetables (so I believe).

Mum always over catered so, the left overs went into a huge black frying pan to be fried to a crisp and served with bacon (always fried never grilled).

Flower

My mother always bought too much food at Christmas. I remember when my brother got married his wife asked him what she should get in for Christmas, he said to ask Mum what she was getting - then halve it!
I do remember overcooked sprouts though - hated them, now they are one of my favourite veg, as long as they still have a bit of crunch!

sunseeker grin DH grew very fond of mums sprouts, personally the only veggies I like mushy are peas.

I don't really 'get' Xmas Dinner. It's the same sort of thing as you cook any day of the week, obviously with a few more tit bits. Hubby and I only bother if we have family company or obviously get invited to someone's home.

We like going to the pub and 'scooping up' an odd waif and stray who has no big plan for a Xmas dinner either. We have had some great Xmases and the spontaneity of it all means you never know how it will turn out. We have never been on our own to date and we have had some cracking laughs and shared good food and plenty of drink with many kind hearted and amusing friends. It always amazes me how many people either are on their own or those whose family will not be with them for one good reason or another. People enjoy bringing their bits and booze and mucking in in general.

Perhaps we are lucky because we live in a village so everybody knows each other, it's a bit like Dibley without the Vicar.