DH and I take it in turns to see our families at Christmas. We only just moved from a tiny flat into a house this year, so have always gone to our respective families for Christmas. We've always helped out with food prep etc where we can, but this year, as we have the new house, and more importantly as it's my family's turn, I decided I wanted to host. This is now starting to make me panic!!
DH is probably a better chef than me, but I do 99% of the cooking - note the distinction. I wash as I go and use less stuff - DH gets gravy on the ceiling even when not making gravy, sort of thing. Anyway, I can just about manage a typical Sunday roast, so was planning to go down that route and add a few trimmings. However, two main issues. I've no experience of cooking for more than 4 adults, and for Christmas, we will have 5 adults and two small children. I know that doesn't sound like too much more, but here's the second issue - we haven't got a lot of cooking space, as it were. The oven is quite small so if I do a large chicken, that's the whole oven taken out of the equation - no room to roast spuds etc simultaneously. So we have a smaller oven and more people than I'm used to therefore more food, so I'm struggling to work out how to get everything hot and to the table at the same time... Plus you can't really fit four pots on our hob at once unless they're all tiny, so I can't even just boil everything else! Advice please!!
Some background/extra info: I have to do chicken as we don't like turkey and can't do red meat as my parents won't eat it unless it's practically black, and even then aren't keen. So there has to be enough chicken for 7 people (as the two kids have huge appetites), and the usual accompaniments of roasted everything else. Last year at MIL's, BIL did most of the cooking, and got around the oven question by serving the beef cold. This was weird (never had cold meat for a roast dinner before) and wasn't very nice (obv we didn't say so and complimented the chef as to be fair, he'd done a great job, just not quite to anyone's taste), so I definitely don't want to go down this route. Whenever I've done Sunday roasts (at least 6 whole times in my 32 years!), the meat has gone in first and everything else fitted around that, and then it's all ready and hot at the same time.
So, kitchen equipped as follows: small fan oven, four-ring gas hob, microwave, kettle, toaster... Planned menu: chicken, roast potatoes/parsnips, veg, sausages, sausage meat, stuffing balls (needs to be lots as we all love these). Basically, everything apart from some of the veg needs to be roasted. If I don't roast potatoes etc, people will be distraught. Not kidding, all my family love roast food... So has anyone got any ideas re timing/juggling etc for how I can successfully produce the other oven-cooked bits without buying a second oven (not enough space or money)? Can you microwave roast potatoes...?? Help!!