Christmas Dinner (preparing in advance)

Gettingtherequickly wrote: »

No idea on what to do as starter, so any ideas on that front would be fab:)

We don;t have a starter as such. Once all the lunch preparations are done, around 11am, we have smoked salmon on thinly sliced HM granary bread, washed down with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot.

I'm toying with the idea of doing Christmas dinner for me DH and DS this year :eek:

However I don't want to spend Christmas eve and day in the kitchen, want to spend them with my boys.

I have a day off work on the day before Christmas eve and will have the house to myself. If I cook all the veg will if keep in the fridge till Christmas day?

I'm thinking of doing mash pots, roast pots, roast parsnips, swede and carrot mash, sprouts and cauliflower cheese on the 23rd.

I will cook the beef in the slow cooker overnight on Christmas eve and then the Turkey, sausages in bacon, yorkshires and gravy Christmas morning.

What d'you reckon experts? Will this work?

I've mentioned it before, but thought I'd post again in case people are coming to the thread late, through threads being merged or whatever: we have our main Xmas meal on Xmas Eve, and it works brilliantly for us. A few friends have started to do the same, and all of them have thought it worked out really well.

I have six children, and I want to spend Xmas Day with them - playing with them, having fun, enjoying family time, relaxing. I don't want to have to spend the day in the kitchen. And I don't want to cook a big meal that none of the kids eats because a) it's mid-afternoon and they're not ready for their main meal, and b) they've been munching on chocolate and other things all day!

Instead, I do some prep ahead of time, then cook on the 24th. I spend most of the day in the kitchen, but I really enjoy it - there's no rush, so it's more relaxed, and the kids aren't busy with their gifts, so they tend to hang out while I cook - helping me with bits of the cooking, and in-between cooking tasks I have time to sit down at the kitchen table and play games with them. It's a lovely, stress-free day. When we sit down to eat, it's about the same time we always have our evening meal, so we're all ready for it - so everyone eats better and I don't get cross because I feel like I wasted all that effort ;-)

We do crackers and hats and jokes and the whole shebang, and it really makes us all feel that Xmas has started. We also do candles and dim lighting, which works much better in the evening when it's dark than it does in the daylight LOL

After dinner and cleanup (which the kids are more willing to help with because they're not itching to get back to their presents), it's not long until bedtime.

I make plenty of food and put the leftovers away in such a way that it's easy to get them out and put together a plate of food - no massive turkey carcass in the fridge, instead it will be cut up and refrigerated in smaller containers. And then on the 25th, we can have leftovers - but it's an easy dish-up-and-heat-up deal, so nobody is stuck in the kitchen, and we can have a real family day - and again, its relaxed and stress-free.

I have a friend who hosts her parents and siblings on the 25th every year, and now she makes Xmas dinner on the 24th too, for her, husband and children, then brings out leftovers for the 25th. She makes one or two items fresh on Xmas Day (roasties and something else, I think) but the bulk of the prep and cooking is all done on the 24th, so again, she's not stuck in the kitchen while everyone else enjoys Xmas Day. Another friend has had to work overnight on the 24th every year for the last three years - her shift starts at 8, so she does the meal on 24th too. They eat between 5.30 and 7.30, then the rest of the family clears up while she goes off to work. She gets home at about the time they're getting up, and having the food out of the way means she has nothing else to do all day - and if she falls asleep on the sofa at lunchtime, it doesn't matter at all :-)

This is a really interesting idea blueberry pie and it makes sense with lots of children who really just want to play all day. I'm not sure I could convince my family to do the same but I would quite like to!

I am thinking of cooking my turkey on christmas eve and then put it in slow cooker with gravy on christmas day. Has anyone tried this and if so does it taste nice?