How to plan Christmas dinner not get stressed and enjoy yourself.

Christmas is just around the corner, do not panic it’s only food.

Here are my top tips for trying to get the Christmas dinner on the table with out you ending up in a nervous wreck. I remember a long time ago I was a guest to some ones house who was cooking Christmas dinner. Back then it was unusual for me as I normally would have been working but not that time. I turned up a bottle of wine in hand to find the lady of the house as stressed as a person with OCD and nothing to do. The husband was looking for salvation in cooking sherry. And the children wonder if all mummies and daddies did this at Christmas. Things where not going well.

So as you do if you’re ill and you see a doctor everyone looks at the doctor to save the day, every one looked at me. The truth was we needed more time to cook the turkey and every thing else was just about ready. Not a big problem and easily sorted by carving the turkey a little under cooked laying it in a try of boiling water from the kettle and putting it back in a very hot oven . And as it went out I remember the youngest son saying ,  I do not know why every one gets so upset its only food.

With that in mind here are my tips

1. Plan your menu, know what you are going to do and if you are going to do some thing tricky have a trial run. Better to change your menu than ruin the day.
2. When inviting people who you do not know or have never cooked for find out if they have any special needs such as vegetarian, lactose-intolerant , gluten free diet or just fussy.
3. Make a note of what you are doing, write out your recipes and set them to one side so you can find them when you want them.
4. Work out from the recipe how much it makes and then how much you will need.
5. Now you know what you want to do and how much you need to make then think about how much it will cost and is it in your budget. If not rethink your menu.
6. Make your shopping list, But first check your cupboards to see what you do have first, you never know you might have already.
7. Make a prep and running list, split all the jobs up that you need to do and then put them in some kind of order and take them on one at a time. Think about defrosting, re-heating and plating up
8. Check that you have the equipment you need to get the job done. Think about that you have to do and pan your stages of cooking. If you need the oven and it is full of turkey then you will have to work round that. You need to be able to manage comfortably, if you cannot then time to rethink your menu.
9. Make as much as you can in advance, as the days grow closer start to make some thing.  The more you can do in advance the better it will be on the day.
10. The day before just check every thing you have done and every thing you are going to do. Make sure that you have all the plates, glasses and pots that you will need.
11. And finally if you get the offer of help then take it, but that is as long as they are going to help. If all they are going to do is stand and criticise or just chat then you do not want then in the kitchen.

And finally on a persona note do not start to early on the sherry , as form bitter experience of my own afterwards,  you have a good time but others tend to get annoyed about it .