Help please - last minute food panics!

[whateverfloatsyourboat]

I work freelance and have been really busy this month, so haven't even started to think about Christmas food, apart from the turkey on the 25th.

My parents are arriving (from abroad) on the 23rd and staying till the 28th. It is traditional here (Austria) to also have a nice meal on the 24th, so I basically need easy, delicious, meal ideas for 4 evenings (cooking for 6-8 people). Some puddings would be good too - will probably do a tiramisu one night, maybe an apple crumble or something.

I still have to do a whole day's work tomorrow and have to wrap all presents etc, so time's getting tight.

Can you help me with some brilliant, stress-free ideas please?

Anyone?!

Why not get a few joints of meat from butcher or supermarket and just rub with butter/ oil, salt and pepper and some appropraite herbs i.e. lamb and rosemary or buy the ones that are already stuffed/ seasoned and so all really ahve to do is put in oven. Then roast root veg and pots together and put in oven along with joint and do some greens and gravy. Or if you want even easier could buy frozen roasts and some of those roast veg packets from veg section in supoermarket that already seasoned and you just bang in oven. You could also buy pre made gravy!

Whole fish is also an easy option and fishmonger will give you herbed butters which you can put in a roasting bag or inside fish when in oven.

If you want to try something more elaborate have a look on www.allrecipes.com where people have tried, tested and rated the recipes so you can be sure they are good. It also has a shopping basket where you can choose recipes and it will generate a shopping list of all the items you need and you can search by ingredient.

Good luck!