Why do people piss about trying to 'ring the changes' <wince> for Christmas dinner??

[moondog]

You only have it once a year, so no, I do not want stir fried sprouts, apricot stuffed swan or ice cream bombes.
I want goose, pudding, mince pies and vast quantities of fizz.

C'est tout

As you were.

Traditional Christmas dinner here seems to be a roast, like well a normal roast but with a less tasty, overpriced bird instead of chicken or beef. Though we do add beef and/or ham.

Yorkies are a must.

The special stuff is IMO bread sauce and Christmas pudding whilst wearing a paper hat that covers at least one eye.

this year I'll be having turkey for only the second time in my life on Christmas Day (I'm 42). We always had pheasant or venison, yumyumyum (we're not actually as posh as that sounds, a friend of my mum's lived somewhere or another in Scotland where there was a lot of shooting (the friend didn't shoot though) and she would send pheasant or venison down for us every year). Never had bread sauce (I can't even imagine how you can have a sauce made of bread) or cranberry sauce or any of that malarky. Had Christmas pud for the first time last year, it was lovely, I don't know why I've held out from it for so long!

Zzzzz - Seeing as you are being pedantic/up yourself, I will clarify. To me goose and turkey (I'm a big girl, I have tasted them both) taste flat and uninteresting. I like my food to have complex flavours thanks.

Yeah Zzzzz, you're just a simple girl.........rofl

We usually had different things at Xmas when I was a child - one year grouse, the next partridge etc. mainly because my uncle would send us a brace or two of whatever he'd shot recently. It was very yummy.

Therefore, I tend to ring the changes from Xmas to Xmas, though none of my relatives shoot anymore, so I don't get a brace of anything.

I don't like turkey so we usually have chicken but DH is trying to suggest lasagne. LASAGNE FFS! And no Christmas pudding! I am putting my foot down - it stops here .

One year, in a futile attempt to impress PILs I did about 8 side dishes from scratch, puréed swede, enriched bread sauce, cranberry compote, honeyed parsnips, 2 types of stuffing, sprouts w pancetta, posh red cabbage,herbed carrots etc. Bloody ridiculous.

The children, who were about 3 and 6, ate hardly anything except the pigs in blankets and roast potatoes, and I just went and sat on the cold terrace with a bottle of Prosecco and wibbled once the food was on the table.

The amount that went in the bin was a disgrace. These days I buy in the bread sauce and red cabbage, and do a few plain sprouts and carrots, plain roast parsnips and carrots. I buy the pigs in blankets and buy good stuffing balls. And I still get a bottle of Prosecco to myself "to add to the gravy" yeah right

Zzzzz - I also love food, and cooking, but I just don't enjoy the taste of meat alone. It's just bland to me, even very strong meat like venison needs more than potatoes and veg - again, by themselves very bland IMO - to be palatable to me. I need it to be spiced , livened up in some way. The fact that I have a whole cupboard of spices, herbs, rubs, vinegars, sauces etc says it all!

Talking of the 70s. we've been asked to bring something for a last-day-of-work Christmas potluck thingy. If I make a sausage-cheese-pinapple hedgehog (complete with foil-wrapped spud), will I be fired?

I'm going to my parents' house, usually they do a traditional English roast but this year they are doing a traditional Italian Christmas dinner - stewed beef, boiled potatoes and vegetables, and mostarda (pickled fruit) - It's so much yummier than it sounds.

Lots of pandoro for pudding.