Dinner alternatives- what was yours?

[time2tork]

Today it was just me and my DP we had a whole Roast Duck in a plum sauce with Dauphinois Potatoes (home made) and greens.

Christmas pudding & ice cream for desert.

We haven't had duck in a while and it was delish!!

(We have had all the good enjoyable Christmas foods throughout December so we decided not to today)

What was your alternative to Christmas dinner?

We went utterly rogue to what we usually do ( turkey and all the trimmings etc) I was fed up of not being able to sit and play with kids as cooking got in the way m, so this year we ordered in a Indian takeaway, real treat for us lots of food and sides, I’d honestly do it again no stress, time with kids had a really lovely day

Home made turkey and ham pie (was supposed to be chicken, but I forgot to take it out of the freezer) with mash, cauliflower cheese and carrots.

No one likes turkey so we had lamb shank as the meat

Steak pie from a nearby, excellent butcher... pricey for a pie but great quality, extremely delicious, a favourite of the kids and easy to do. Sides of sprouts with bacon and chestnuts, roast potatoes, cabbage, roast carrots on pigs in blankets...was fab...

Kids had requested apple crumble and custard for pudding as none of us like Christmas pud or Yule log... easy to make ahead and freeze...we had to have it a few hours later as we were so full though.

All in all, a fairly easy, low stress meal and it didn't take long to cleanup the kitchen afterwards either...

DH used to be devoted to the Turkey. But he has been vegetarian for about 4 years now and it finally occurred to me this year (slow learner) that I no longer need to be devoted to the turkey. So i asked the DCs what they wanted and they said gammon.

Today we are having leftovers- again I always used to cook an entirely separate meal as the ILs would be coming.

I am feeling quite liberated and everything was very relaxed!

Today I have a house full but am doing a canapé buffets courtesy of m&s and the local butcher again... having a lazy Christmas!

Christmas to me is about sharing it with family, and usually if we're not doing that we go away. This year it wasn't our year for family to come to us, and we cancelled going away as I could see the covid infections going up and up, so I was feeling really flat about it and didn't want to do the whole cooking a big meal thing just for us, so I put a big piece of belly pork in the oven when we first got up and we had pulled pork and apple sauce rolls for our dinner mid afternoon. It was lovely! We had grapes for pudding, and some of our Christmas chocolate. No faffing about at all.

We did the best trick - went to mums!!! Turkey was on the menu yesterday, ham today plus leftovers

LOVE the laid back Christmasses!!

The food sounds amazing.

Beef Wellington from Tesco. Delicious but it fell apart so it was more like beef Wellington mess.