Chicken bald back

[Space Chick]

 

We usually have croissants and or, brioche, and or panattonne(sp) for breakfast with some champagne and coffee.

 

We always have croissants for breakfast at Christmas too

[majorbloodnock]

majorbloodnock thankyou! everyones so lovely and helpful and friendly on here

 

My pleasure.

 

I'm desperately searching for G/F cocktail sausages that dont come with £12 delivery charge!! i think we will have to do with chipolatas unless i can find a friendly butcher

 

If you can get chipolatas easily, then once again you're most of the way there. Just open one end of each chipolata to allow the sausage meat to ooze out, then, starting from the other end, pinch and twist the chipolata into cocktail sausage sized lengths (I reckon you'd get 3 per chipolata). Collect the excess sausage meat that gets squeezed out the end and you can either incorporate it into your stuffing or make some scotch eggs on Boxing Day.

 

I'll have a packet mix on standby just incase

 

If even your failures don't taste better than a packet mix, I'll use them as a condiment for my hat whilst I'm eating it.

[Alis girls]

Good grief MBC do you eat that in one day. I wouldnt be able to move

[Lozmk1]

majorbloonock to the rescue again! your a genius!! why didnt i think of that?!! thankyou ever so much! eeh your so clever do you wanna come do my xmas lunch?haha, found a nice easy recipe on glutafin this morning for breadsauce AND it says it will keep so i can make it on xmas eve and just reheat on xmas day! my mums also offered to prep all my veg for me when she gets here on xmas eve so i should *fingers crossed* have a fairly stress free day so long as i can get the timings right.

[C&T]

so long as i can get the timings right.

 

I find Steaming veg is great for timings, and less stress. You don't run out of room on the stove, with various pans either not boiling when they should be or boiling over and making a mess everywhere. Just switch on the steamer, and add the different veg at the right time, and it will switch off at the right time - and no boiling water to burn yourself with (or thats maybe just me.. thank goodness for aloe vera plants..)

 

And also I prefer the flavour of steamed veg!

 

Good luck with whatever you do though!!

[majorbloodnock]

so long as i can get the timings right.

 

I find Steaming veg is great for timings, and less stress.

Agreed.

 

And also I prefer the flavour of steamed veg!

Agreed again.

[chickencam]

If I were you I would see if you can get hold of a hostess trolley. We bought one when the children were small so that we could have hot food and fed babies. It really comes into it's own when entertaining because you can put things in there as they are ready then eat when you have had chance for a G&T and to take breath.

 

We bought our's after seeing it advertised in the small ad's of the local paper.

[majorbloodnock]

If we're moving into the territory of general advice.....

 

• Given Christmas is in Winter, it's highly likely it'll be somewhere between 2 and 5 deg C outside. That's the right temperature for a domestic 'fridge', so if you need to keep anything cool, you can generally use your shed as one great big refridgerator over night.
  
• Remember that white wine of any reasonable quality doesn't need to be chilled as such; just a few degrees colder than room temperature. In fact, too cold and you'll lose the ability to taste its finer qualities, so keep the white wine in a cool area of the house, thereby once again recovering valuable 'fridge' room.
  
• Whatever meat you decide to roast, it'll seriously benefit from some standing time after it's come out of the oven, so that the fibres can relax. Personally, I often put my veg on to steam just before taking the meat out of the oven.
  
• Whatever disasters may occur, your sense of perspective gets better after a glass of wine (red, by preference, and don't skimp on the quality)

[C&T]

*Whatever disasters may occur, your sense of perspective gets better after a glass of wine (red, by preference, and don't skimp on the quality)

 

 

Couldn't agree more!!!!

 

(just not too many, otherwise one disaster could become multiple... But that is just personal experience... )

[Rhapsody]

See above comment re bottle of Bolly

[Cinnamon]

.......................had my first Christmas Dinner sandwich today & thought of this thread while I was enjoying it

[Seagazer]

.......................had my first Christmas Dinner sandwich today & thought of this thread while I was enjoying it

 

I love those!

 

We always have croissants for breakfast swiftly followed by champagne whilst I help OH preparing the dinner. I always make the bread sauce via Delia's receipe and my kids all love it. In fact I might make more this year as they love it cold in sandwiches the next day.

 

I also made my own cranberry sauce last year which also went down really well. That was Nigellas I think.

 

I'm weird in that I have to have King Edward potatoes for roasties as I just think they fluff up lovely.

 

Hmm making me very hungry.

[Chook n Boo Mum]

Despite my personal feelings about bread sauce I usually end up making it, much better than a packet mix any day...though I have never tasted it as I make it

 

Sha x

[missuscluck]

Mmmmmm. I love a good Christmas dinner My must have with the turkey is a good red cabbage casserole. Made in advance then frozen then you can just heat it up on the day.

[Blackrocksrock]

I have ordered 2 x frozen boned and stuffed pheasants for xmas from donald russell online butchers they are quite local to us = I have also their fillet tails in the freezer which are the end cuts off the fillet steaks and they are gorgeous - only 2 of us so will only need one of the pheasants and all the trimmings and love bread sauce.

[Yorkshire Pudding]

Goose here this year, with mountains of 'Daddy's roast potatoes' done in the fat, sausage meat stuffing and cranberry stuffing, red cabbage with apple, roast parsnips and as many other veg as we can think of!

 

Followed by home made Christmas Pud with cream.

 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............

 

Boxing day was usually bubble and squeak with cold meat (including that cherry-coke cooked ham), but this year Mum is cooking it, and Dad has revolted - so its' roast beef from the same farm as the goose and sausagemeat.

[Cinnamon]

I have decided that we are having a change this year

 

We usually get a turkey from M&S,but none of us really like it that much,& there are only 3 meat eaters in the house.

 

So this year I am going to serve a nice ham joint with all the usual trimmings.Its a much nicer meat hot & cold & I know that the cold leftovers will be used up in this house

There is a nice sounding recipe in the Waitrose Christmas recipe book (only £1!), so that is what we will be having this Christmas

[majorbloodnock]

I have decided that we are having a change this year....We usually get a turkey .... none of us really like it that much.....So this year I am going to serve a nice ham joint with all the usual trimmings.

 

Excellent. I'm almost tempted to start a subversive movement to wean people back off turkey as a Christmas dinner and on to food that's really special enough for a celebration. Turkey's OK, but especially now it's had years of selective breeding, it's hardly more than an outsized chicken (but not as succulent), and there are far more interesting flavours available to play with.

[Rhapsody]

Cinammon, you reminded me of this Xmas tale.....I normally source a turkey from a small-scale Organic farm, but the year we moved to the farm (on Dec 21st!) I didnt get around to it and ran into M&S and bought their Organic FR bird, thinking the quality would be comparable. It wasn't, even though it was the same price it was tasteless flabby and cooked dry (and I only cook mine for 3 hours max, a la Nigella) my teenage gastronomes were horrified-NEVER AGAIN!

Last year we got ours from Secretts in Milford and it was fantastic I always cook a ham joint in cherry coke too, yummy.

[Cinnamon]

Ham is wonderful - it smells great when its being cooked & is nicely festive if its all studded with cloves,I think

 

I am actually really looking forward to Christmas dinner this year now

[chickencam]

We try to buy a bronze turkey, they really are special, they taste nothing like a supermarket bird. They are really gamey and moist and only take 2-3 hours to cook for the size we buy which is usually 5-6 kg. Only turkey will do for us, but it has to be a really good free range bronze. KellyBronze are still the best, if a little pricey, but it is meant to be a feast. They did give me heart failure a couple of years back when it didn't come until about 5pm on the last delivery day

[Seagazer]

We get our turkey from an award winning butchers near here and they are really nice and tasty but I do feel we should take out a small mortgage to pay for it

[chooklady]

Our Christmas day starts with scambled egg with smoked salmon and granary toast for breakfast after stockings. Then when the family arrive we have bubbly usually Cava, Marques de Monistrol is my favourite, champagne is over rated i think. Plus lots of nice nibbles, this is around midday-ish. Then dinner is about 4pm onwards. We don't have turkey OH isn't very keen. This year we are having a slow roated shoulder joint from our Gloucester Old Spot, roasties, apple sauce etc. We always have a starter forgot to mention that, and a choice of puds. I feel hungry now!

[chickencam]

We picked up a waitrose catalogue today and OH is quite tempted by the free range three bird roast, but it is £120 which is very steep even for Christmas dinner . His arguement is he has always wanted to try one and it is stuffed so we won't need to buy seperate stuffing. It would also make delicious cold cuts.