To believe that preparing Christmas Dinner is actually not that difficult ?

[rookiemater]

I'm probably going to be flamed for this one, but I just can't quite get the levels of excitement generated about having to make Christmas dinner.

It is as hard or as easy as you want to make it. If you feel that Christmas is not special without Nigellas brine soaked turkey and Heston's ludicrous christmas pudding then fine,knock yourself out but don't then complain about how hard it is to cater on the big day. If like me you are fairly lazy then you go to M&S and buy it all ready made, bung into the oven and hey presto a few minutes effort produces a lovely meal. Perhaps the taste is not quite as good as if it was prepared from "scratch" but is certainly miles better than what you get in most restaurants.

I would imagine the same effect can be generated by visiting Tesco or Asda, but I always associate M&S with Christmas.

I actually find it much easier to do than other meals as at least you don't need to devise a menu plan. In fact I like Christmas dinner so much that as we are going to SIL's this year I have bought and froze all the ingrediants so we can have them at some other time of year.

So really is it that hard to make a turkey dinner?

sorry rookie, my sister's doing it this year, but I am taking the cauli cheese and my beautiful(ish) gingerbread house

cuddly. It just does you no good. I've learned that the stressed hard way. When you've finished wailing and waving your arms about you've still got the actual situation to deal with, so getting stressed just delayed you and made it more difficult and time consuming. When you think of it like that - what's the point?

Anyone not do cauliflower cheese?

Ah see our gingerbread house turned into a gingerbread shanty, all I had to do was stick the stuff together how was I to know that melted sugar turns into rigid cement within 30 seconds.

Some people have the creative cooking gene, I'm not one of them, though I do dabble sometimes. Therefore best way to cope is to make it as easy as possible.

MrsDingDong, the secret for hot meals, according to Delia, is boiling hot gravy ( £2.99 per tube from M&S in our household). Scorching hot plates help as well.

I never do cauliflower cheese. It's a totally separate meal, surely?

Very wise words Hec(ate?).
Most things are easy-if you have a modicum of organisational ability.

Christmas dinner involves nothnig more than some planning and timing.
Call me old fashioned but I enjoy cooking for my family.
Can't think of a nicer place to be than my kitchen, peopel coming in and out to talk or help out, glass of something nice, good tunes blasting out.

I have never heard of cauliflower cheese on christmas day but I heartily approve of the idea as I LOVE cauliflower cheese.

No cauli cheese here can't stand it! Love doing Christmas dinner and agree its not that hard so long as you can juggle the timings and have enough roasties

I love cauliflower cheese but tend to have it as a meal with cruty bread.

Cheese sauce& gravy

No cauliflower cheese here, cheese and roast dinner a very strange combination, love it as a separate meal though. Plain cauliflower fine with roast though.

No cauli cheese here can't stand it! Love doing Christmas dinner and agree its not that hard so long as you can juggle the timings and have enough roasties

Is broccoli acceptable with Christmas lunch?

It's a bit of a create family tradition (which is why I'm taking it DSis was going to leave it out and Dad, and DH actually, would have been devastated). Lots of people say it's odd, but the dish is always empty at the end of a meal, no matter who's here.

oops!

God, I love cooking Christmas dinner. Love it! I cook it wherever I am, but in my own kitchen, with lots of champagne and no real time pressure, is best.

I do make it a bit of an extravaganza, but that's the fun of it. Nothing is difficult in itself - it's all easy to cook - there's just a lot of different easy things.

(And we do cheesy leeks rather than cauliflower cheese).

I did two Christmas''... the first was when dd was 11 months, didn't sleep at all and was a complete nightmare and i was newly pregnant and damn near collapsing with exhaustion. The next year i had 2yo dd and 6 month old ds1 and woke up with mastitis on Christmas morning.

dp can't cook so i had to do everything and missed half the day when i would have preferred spending time with the kids... dinner was ruined by a screaming baby both times and we were up all night cleaning with a non sleeping baby to juggle. As well as that i felt like death the second year and had no-one to fall back on.

Since then we've gone to my parents every year as we live closer to them now and it's lovely not having to be single handedly responsible for whether food is on the table on the day. I actually get to play with my kids now and it's far more enjoyable!

There's still loads of prep apart from food though and i agree with Hec.... stressing about it just makes it worse... I chill out and do things bit by bit and trust that if there are a few tiny details no quite done that Christmas won't be ruined as a result!

YANBU - I don't understand why everyone doesn't just follow my example - simply marry a chef and get him to do it all.

It's not stressy exactly, but a bit difficult fitting everything in one oven. I never do it for less than 15, often more, and again, with starters (2 types), and extras, and 2 types of meat, it is a bit more than an average roast.

YANBU - but then DH does it all . M+S special this year. And Cauliflower cheese is LUSH with gravy Diddl.

I don't find it difficult, but I love to cook! have spent today happily making the chicken liver parfait, and currently have the red cabbage in cider bubbling in the kitchen, filling the kitchen with lovely Christmas smells (has christmas spices and clementines in)Cheesecake base is also done.

Will do a few more dishes tomorrow night, then on the day, very little stress for great reward

And yes, create, I am another cook who must have a glass of something in my hand at all times while cooking. Maybe that's why I love cooking so much...

Cant understand the fuss myself, it is just like cooking any other roast dinner, not hard at all.

There are always threads like this and I just find them so odd. My Christmas dinner is nothing like a Sunday roast. Completely different! And massively time consuming because the whole point is to make it myself!

Some of us eat stuffed poussins every week though Bonsoir, with little quail egg starters and lobster canapes. It can get dull though, I agree.

YANBU - it's a roast dinner, with a few extras, crackers and pressies. The only reason I do anything on Christmas Eve towards it, is I don't want to spend my Christmas Day doing boring veg prep, even if it is with a few drinks! But I do beef, not turkey, which is so much easier. The worst thing is trying to fit evryone and everything round and on the table. Only 5 for lunch this year - no probs.