15/12/2025
Just in case anyone is stressing about Christmas Day, I want to share some top tips for dinner.
I have concluded that the inevitable stress of Christmas dinner is created by adverts, supermarkets and TV chefs - it's a Sunday dinner for goodness sake!!! 🙄 We do it quite happily 51 weeks of the year but can we, the consumers, be trusted to manage by ourselves on the one day of the year that matters most to a lot of us? Apparently not!
So, here goes...
1. Turkey - It's a big chicken that's all, 20 minutes per lb plus 20 minutes at 180 degrees; jobs a good un! Get yourselves a meat thermometer for £3 off the internet (or free with a Hibbert's turkey 🙌) poke it in the offending bird & if it says 75 degrees or over its cooked! 👏🏼
2. Stuffing - regardless of what Jamie Oliver says you do NOT need 2lbs of shoulder of pork, onions breadcrumbs, pine nuts and a barrow load of fresh herbs to make stuffing! There’s no wonder he's bankrupt if thats what he spends to make stuffing! 😜
What you need is Paxo and a kettle! If you wanna liven it up a little you could squeeze a couple of SW sausages out of their skins and mix that in with your Paxo before cooking. 😉
3. Gravy - Jamie Oliver is copping for this one aswell. I, nor any other woman or man I know, has got time on Christmas Eve to mess about roasting chicken wings and vegetables, adding stock and flour, cooking it for another half hour, mashing it all up with a potato masher and then straining the whole sorry mess to make gravy.
Oxo, Jamie. All you need is Oxo & boiled veg water! Oh, and a little flour and water for thickening if you like your gravy to represent gravy and not wee! Or even a tub from the SW freezer at Iceland.
4. Vegetables - Never mind faffing round shredding sprouts and frying them with bacon and chestnuts to make them more palatable. If you don't like them don't buy and cook the things!! If your family only eat carrots & frozen peas that’s absolutely fine!
5. Roast potatoes - Yes, I par boil mine & then roast them in fry light but Iceland have some in the SW freezer 😉
6. Christmas pudding - Forget about M&S pudding, get yourselves to Aldi! And if birds custard is what your family like then that's fine - you do not need brandy butter / rum sauce or anything else that costs a fortune and takes 2 hours to make!
7. Family...
Children - Feed the little blighters first separately, if they only want turkey with tomato sauce - fine leave em to it, it doesn't matter. Once they are fed, send them off to play with their Christmas presents so that YOU can enjoy your dinner in peace!
Adults - Anyone that can manage to get their sorry bum to your dinner table is also capable of helping to serve up, sort the kids out, clear the table, wash/dry up etc.
And Finally...
NO ONE and I mean no one, APART FROM THE COOK, IS ALLOWED TO
FALL ASLEEP BEFORE THE WASHING UP IS DONE!!!
🎄Merry Christmas!🎄Borrowed with love from a friend 🎄