What do you judge about other people’s Christmas dinners?

[Talkingtomyhouseplants]

Lighthearted - we all know every other family apart from our own does it wrong!

Mine are:

• no pigs in blankets
• BOILED veg 🤮
• treating the Christmas cracker like a competition (we are are each person gets their own cracker prize family!)

Pigs in blankets are the best part of the dinner.

One year I was at my aunt's for Christmas. Christmas evening was 'mooch into the kitchen and help yourself if you're hungry.' At home there would be roasties, cold meat, that sort of thing, and I know she'd cooked loads of them. No sign in the kitchen, so asked her where they were.

She'd thrown them out. She threw out cold roast potatoes. I mean, I loved my aunt like a second mother, but I reeled with the shock that she wasn't the person I thought she was.

As long as there's plenty of everything and especially if I don't have to cook it I don't care.

My DF would do a mountain of food particularly roast potatoes and everyone could all have as much as they wanted as long as his DGS and I had first servings!

People put their Christmas dinner photos on here or social media and they just look so beige and bland.

Pale soft roast potatoes, not enough stuffing.
Veg that looks like it’s never seen seasoning.

I decided to change things up one year and did something else (lamb, I think). No-one seemed particularly enthused. And then! Boxing Day lunch is always at the pub and everyone - bar NONE - chose the turkey option there. 😐

Hint taken. Turkey returned the following year and never left.

I buy the smallest Waitrose bronze turkey which is size-wise essentially a big chicken, and I cook it according to Nigella's instructions in Feast. Upside down for the first half and also a lot less time than old school turkey cooking dictated for years. It's always moist and lovely.

No I hate cauliflower cheese as a side, yuk and if you hate sprouts don't have them.

Just, food that is overcooked, dry, aenemic looking, beige and boring.

Oh, and food that comes out of a packet. It's one thing to get maybe one or two elements of the meal ready made, but serving an entirely ready made dinner is wrong.

I am too, it's still one of my fav's though, just a nice pile of different veg, roasties done properly and of course a yorkshire pud on top!

Roast potatoes.. need to be done right!

carrot and parsnips have to be honey or maple roasted.

boiling veg is absolutely abysmal on any day let alone Christmas.

fucking macaroni cheese. Instant massive deduction.

Steamed vegetables, not boiled. Not everything has to be cooked in fat or honey roasted. It gets too heavy otherwise

i judge people who buy in pre-cooked veg. My mum does. She buys frozen parsnips and yorkkshires

We don’t like turkey. Much rather have a beef or ham. I would much rather have a nut roast but
nobody else does so I don’t usually bother

I must admit I have very fixed ideas about how I do Christmas dinner and what makes it ‘right’ in my mind.

That being said, I think vive le difference, let everyone do what they like and want.

And if anyone wanted to invite me round I would be delighted to do it their way and go along with whatever they do.

Sorry, realise I sound a bit sanctimonious.

Nothing really, people can eat what they like.

However, I think buying prepared pigs in blankets is the height of laziness, what's hard about wrapping some bacon around a sausage and putting it in the oven? I don't eat pork but DH and DS do, so DH makes them.

I like turkey and leftovers. I agree it's a bit dry but it makes good sandwiches and curry.

And Aunt Bessie Yorkshire puds. I married into a family that puts a jar of piccalilli onto the lunch table. I held back from my judgement there. But homemade Yorkshires are a must.

Another vote for brandy butter - but had to be home made using soft brown sugar, not icing sugar or granulated sugar.

Mum always makes it for all of us even though she is more in her 90s - and it comes in a small dish that she studs the top with slivers of almond (chopped by had rather than bought) and a Robin Christmas cake decoration and sprig of holly on the top that get washed and returned each year once Christmas has passed.
The Robin and the nuts mean that when she covers it in cling film to protect it in the fridge or transporting it, the cling doesn’t end up in the brandy butter plus the nuts are nice on the xmas pud!

I judge:

Watery gravy
Boiled veggies
No mashed potato or yorkies (utter madness to leave them off your plate!)
Sweetcorn does not belong on a Christmas dinner!!
Turkey that looks drier than the Sahara

Are pigs in blankets are a relatively new thing? When i was a kid (80s) i dont remember them.being a thing - the mini sausages and bacon were separate. Or maybe that was just my family - we still do them that way. Both can then get properly crispy. Im not sure whst you gain by wrapping the sausage in the bacon. Though im always happy to receive pigs in blankets if someone else is cooking.

My mum makes brandy butter too, in a glass dish! Not with brown sugar though - I might try that this year.
It was always one of my favourite bits of Christmas growing up, so I was shocked that DH and family never had it!

The first year at my in laws was a horror show. No nibbles at all for the entire day. No cranberry sauce.

I was used to everything on the table and everyone picks what they want. Mil plated up everything in the kitchen, added gravy and fucking ketchup to each one, then microwaved each one and bought a plate out every 3 minutes. Bil and sil had finished eating and left the table before half of us had even started. It was awful.

Ok I was wrong a few posts ago, this I would judge!

It was all perfectly adequate until paxo and gravy granules 🫣

Taking the roasted, juicy, fatty and flavorsome skin off the roast meat an…..BINNING IT.

Practically sacrilege. I love the skin.

Oh people would certainly judge mine 🤣 Since Covid we’ve had steak baguettes, seafood, pasta, pizza etc. Last year was the first in a long while where we actually had a roast (no turkey in this house though)

Having said that, whether on Christmas Day or any Sunday, the roast potatoes and yorkshires have to be home made 👍🏻

I’d love to be invited to somewhere to judge! We do it every year (both only children).

Does making my own pigs in blankets with good chipolatas and bacon earn me some credit? I don’t know why anyone would buy the little ones sold in supermarkets.