As you can no doubt tell from the title of this post, it’s the big one – the one about that I teased you about on the About Jenny page, the time when I monumentally screwed up Christmas dinner.
Perhaps it would have been easy to forget about it if I had just made it for myself and possibly even if I had made it for me and my boyfriend I would have been able to live it down. Such is life however, this particular year when I decided to cook Christmas dinner I made the rather braze and stupid(in hindsight) decision to not only make it for just Nick and I, but my mum, dad, nick’s mum and dad and a handful of my friends! Good job Jenny well played old girl!
It is important to explain that this was the very first time I had ever cooked anything as big and complicated as a Christmas dinner from scratch. What the hell was I thinking? I don’t even think I have the excuse that I was high or drunk at the time when I invited my nearest and dearest to watch my float so high and fall so low!
Start As You Mean To Go On
Preparation is half the battle when it comes to cooking and having a clear plan in your head or even better, on paper if you want to cook a gorgeous and mouth-watering Christmas dinner. What the hell was I doing drinking bucks fizz and lounging in my sheep design onesie? Clearly that was the first sign that things were not going to go well for me and Mr Turkey.
I remember Nick telling me that I should start to think about getting on with the preparation and I said in my infinite wisdom “Don’t worry hon, I have it all under control” Did I heck! I guess I was living off of the arrogance that I was going to achieve something special with this Christmas dinner rather than actually getting on with the task at hand!
From Bad To Worse
I went to peel my potatoes and was really bored so stuck my iPod in its dock and turned the speakers up so I could blast out my favourite tunes as I did the boring prep for the meal. At that point it was all going well and I was feeling nice and relaxed and ever so slightly tipsy! I put the potatoes in a pressure cooker so I could par boil them before roasting them.
That was when the first problem happened. As I was getting into my music and dancing round the kitchen I forgot that I was meant to listen out for the pressure cooker whistling, so I could turn it down when the water came to the boil. I just about rescued the potatoes and everything went downhill from there.
I forgot to keep basting the turkey when it was in the oven and burned it. I would love to say that I have no idea how I forgot, but I know only too well that the reason was I was busying entertaining my guests instead of taking care of the actual food I was going to feed them.
So we had burnt chicken, potatoes that were mush and burnt, served with undercooked and cold Brussels sprouts.
Even now I can’t look at Christmas food adverts without thinking back to that horrible moment when Nick said “I’ll get us some chips!”