Christmas Dinner

"What do you eat on Christmas Day?" is the question I am asked every year.  I would love to come out with some exotic menu but usually mumble something about having all the vegetables and trimmings without the meat.  It is true that there is so much to eat on Christmas Day that I don't feel I miss out at all.  Occasionally I have added a cooked Camembert as a quick and easy "main".  This year, however, is going to be different!  For the sake of writing this blog, I am going to make the quintessential vegetarian meal ... Nut Roast!  I have only eaten it a couple of times and have certainly never made it, so here goes!  I shall let you know the outcome next week.

During my married life I have had a couple of Christmas food disasters.  Once, after returning from the pub on Christmas Eve, I decided to solve our beer hunger with a chip butty.  We ate the rather sad sandwich only to find the next morning that what I had thought were oven chips were, in fact, normal frozen chips which I had merely defrosted and wedged between two slices of bread!  On another occasion we had set the turkey timer way too early and returned home on Christmas morning in rather a hungover state to the smell of a fully cooked and cooled turkey - yuk!

Before having a family I would normally offer to work right up until Christmas Eve.  It was often good fun working in an office with time for a fuddle* with colleagues.  On one occasion the Finance Director asked me the usual question "what do you eat on Christmas Day?" I replied in the usual way but added that for the rest of the family I always cooked a gibbon! Hoho! Everyone thought this was hilarious.  I had meant to say a capon, otherwise known as a large chicken.  The meat eaters would have been very happy ... no fighting over who gets the leg!

* fuddle - a communal buffet for a special occasion; often hosted within the workplace.