Christmas Day- shift work

[minimammy]

My OH is working nightshift this year on Christmas Eve so won't get in until 10am ish. There is just us with a visit from my brother. Main course is usually handled by my OH. No one is going to want to cook but the restaurants are sooo expensive! What is the answer??? TIA

Yes @Emmageddon that's probably a good way of working it. Extended Christmas Day snooze, then Christmas dinner at tea time.
@LooksBetterWithAFilter that sounds good.

@Strawberrybelly 5 and 9 and will countdown. Good idea though. X

If you wanted to, you could have your big dinner on Christmas Eve and then have the left over fest of cold turkey, chips and stuffing on Christmas Day?

Buy prepared as much as you can for main, say a turkey crown, a tray of roast veg and a tray of roast potatoes. All can br bunged into the oven. You could even buy stuff in the coming weeks and freeze to spread out cost. Make starters and desserts Christmas eve morning. Set table Christmas eve

What is your OH usually like after a shift? Does he tend to want to go straight to bed or can he stay up for a bit? If so, i’d Recommend doing presents with kids in the morning, then your OH taking himself off to bed while the food gets cooked. He may have to set an alarm to drag himself out of bed for a late-ish lunch, and then can either return to bed or stay up, depending on how he’s feeling or when his next shift is. If he doesn’t have to go to work again that evenin, i’d be inclined to stay up and enjoy Christmas with everyone and then recover the next day, but he may feel differently!

For food, prepare everything as much as you can - or as others have suggested, get premade stuff in. Have everything set out and planned so all you need to do on the day is occasionally nip off to put something in the oven or put it on the boil. Simplify things as well - do only a couple of types of veg, for example. If you’re not wedded to the idea of full on Christmas roast; investigate doing something like a one pan roast (www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/775657/onepan-roast-dinner) - easy peasy.

Eh? So basically your still refusing to put a glorified chicken in the oven on 25th Dec! Merry xmas op!

If you're organised in advance Christmas dinner isn't actually that hard - either cheat (all the supermarkets including Aldi/Lidl have tasty solutions) or pre-prepare everything you can and have a very detailed timing plan (consider oven and hob space in your plan...) so you just have to put things in and take out at the required times. My first roast was Christmas dinner as my parents were struck down by the lurgy and it was easy as I had detailed instructions and all the fiddly bits were done in advance - I was about 15.

Starter is always something cold like smoked salmon or melon with Parma ham, dessert is usually much later!

@Edward4th no that's not what I'm saying. Thank you
I do a roast every other Sunday.
It's just juggling the day between cooking, letting oh sleep, making it feel special.
Thank you for all of the positive contributions.

Tbh the dc prefer a buffet to a traditional Christmas dinner because at the end of the day it is just a glorified roast. The years we do a buffet everyone gets a day in what we have and it has lots of treats we probably wouldn’t normally buy. The supermarkets all do a Christmas food order book which as well as the traditional stuff has party food type things in it. They are worth a look for a buffet type dinner.

For starters I now do party type food. Love M & S brie & cranberry parcels. Now a tradition in our house. I serve them buffet style so no sitting at the table and waiting for main course. In fact they keep everyone from getting too hungry while waiting for dinner. You could serve them after present opening and before DH goes to bed and meanwhile you can have dinner going and ready to serve when DH gets up. Ready prepared veg are great and also use some frozen veg which is fine. I now use the tin foil containers to save on washing up.