This contribution is triggered by adverts and TV chefs.
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 one day of the year…apparently not!
Here goes:
1. Turkey: It’s a big fecking chicken that’s all, 20 minutes per lb plus 20 minutes at 180 degrees – jobs a good un! Get yourselves a meat thermometer £3 off the Internet 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 shit load of fresh herbs to make stuffing….( no fecking 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 squeeze 3 sausages out of their skins and mix that in with your Paxo before cooking.
3. Gravy: Jamie Oliver is copping for this one as well….
Bisto Jamie…. All you need is Bisto!
I ( nor any other woman I know) has got time on Christmas Eve to piss 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.
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 fecking things!! If your family only eats frozen peas then that’s good enough!
5. Roast potatoes:Â Yes I par boil mine then roast them in goose fat but Aunt Bessie also does the same.
6. Trimmings /Christmas pudding and the like…. Aldi or Lidl!
(oh and while we’re on the subject of pudding- if birds custard is what your family likes on the wretched thing then that’s fine – you do not need brandy butter /rum sauce etc or anything else that costs a fecking 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 bugger them off to play with their Christmas presents so that YOU can enjoy your dinner in Peace!
Adults:Â Anyone that can manage to get their sorry arse to your dinner table is also capable of helping to serve up/ sort the kids out/ clear the table /wash up /dry up etc.
And Finally…..
NO ONE…. And I mean no one APART FROM THE COOK IS ALLOWED TO GET PISSED AND FALL ASLEEP BEFORE THE WASHING UP IS DONE!!!
Rant over.
John Siddall
