Christmas Day & Your Food Plan

*Sometimes we have up to 25 - 30 people for Christmas lunch so you need to bear this in mind when reading below*

Meal Planner

2 months before

Make your Christmas cake and pudding.

1 month before………..

Check table linen - do your Christmas cloth and napkins need laundering.

Polish table silver.

Clean the oven. Anything like me it won't have been done for some time and having a fire in your oven on Christmas Day is quite possibly not too good a look.

Write your lists. If I didn't make lists I would be cactus!

Shop/or put orders in for ham, seafood and turkey and other ingredients for your Christmas feast.

Check the size of your roasting dish or buy a disposable one. I usually buy 2 – one for the turkey and one for the ham – certainly saves on the washing up.

2 - 3 days before………..

Clean house! ghastly job but someone has to do it!

Clean out your fridge - make room for your goodies.Collect all your orders from the butchery, markets, wine merchants and florist.

Store your ham in the fridge in it's original packaging until you are ready to glaze it.

Tip: If you wish to serve your ham cold you could glaze and cook your ham 2 days before Christmas and keep chilled. But remember it tastes better at room temperature so get it out in plenty of time before serving it.

1 day before………..

Allow plenty of time to defrost your turkey.

Remove ham from fridge and prepare up to the removal of ham skin stage and the scoring of the fat into diamond shapes. Make sure you have the glace cherries and the cloves on hand.

Recover the rind or store in a ham bag and return to the fridge.

Glaze your ham and return to fridge prior to cooking.

Tip: If you are planning to cook both the turkey and the ham on Christmas Day and find you can’t fit them both into the oven together, do the ham first. This is a personal preference but I don't think it really matters if the ham is served at room temperature while the turkey does have to be hot. The cooking of the ham first is really just to warm the ham thoroughly and set the glaze plus add flavours, not to actually cook it as this has been done pre-you buying it. So do that first and cover it loosely with foil while you cook the turkey.

Set table

Prepare vegetables and salads and desserts. Whip cream and do anything else that that you can think of that will help you get through the day in a happy frame of mind. I find that Champagne always helps.

On the Christmas day………..

Cook the ham and cover loosely with foil until ready to carve. For its' special moment in the sun, decorate the knob on the end of the glazed ham with a fresh bunch of herbs tied with a tartan bow and put it onto a ham stand in the centre of the table. Looks pretty good. In fact good enough to eat - one of my sons so loves this aspect of Christmas that we have been known to go out after Christmas and buy him one in the mark downs to take back home to Sydney. He has even made up a song about ham called the "hammy hammy ham song!" that we all sing quite enthusiastically later in the day when we feel a little more mellow.

Cook turkey - I have only just discovered steggels turkey buffes - they are brilliant. Beautiful moist meat, no bones and fit into the oven so much more easily.

If you are cooking a whole turkey get the correct weight and allow plenty of time to cook.

Cook beef and chickens.

To carve your ham………..

Cut out a wedge near the bone. Make several slices down to the bone then cut along the bone underneath the slices to remove. This way each slice should have some of the crust with it.

When not in the process of being eaten I keep my ham in the fridge in a ham bag. However before the left over ham goes back into the fridge it is first covered by the saved rind, then it is put into the dampened the ham bag - this helps to keep the ham moist and prevent it from drying out.

The beauty of being well organised is that on Christmas Day all you have to do is go to the fridge and pull out everything you have pre - prepared, place it all onto your beautifully set table and enjoy.

This will give you to time to do anything you may have forgotten and to more importantly enjoy your family.

So please go now and pour yourself some well earned champagne. Salud..Chin Chin and all that!

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Now, You really need to think about ordering your turkey early or the following could happen to you!

Christmas Turkey – From Will and Guy’s Joke of the Day.

It was Christmas Eve in Tesco and a woman was anxiously searching through the last few remaining turkeys in the hope of finding a large one.

In desperation she called over a shop assistant and said, ‘Excuse me, do these turkeys get any bigger?’

‘No, madam, ‘he replied, ‘they’re all dead.’ boom boom!

 

copyright: a.a.gallagher 2007

for more Christmas hubs please go to

http://hubpages.com/hub/HubMob-Weekly-Topic-A-Revolutionary-Christmas-In-Rhythm--Rhyme

http://hubpages.com/hub/HubMob-Weekly-Topic-Christmas-Countdown

http://hubpages.com/hub/Christmas-Food-Planning-For-The-Big-Day

http://hubpages.com/hub/Puddings-For-Christmas