Dear Charioteers, I thought you’d like to see a picture of the Christmas dinner my wife so lovingly made for me. N0, it is not a Scottish delicacy, but a type of crisp bread. It is known in Italy as a pizza. In my house I called it a pizza hardboard. (I thought all of you north of the border might be amused.) Actually this was a pizza I had put in the oven for my son and I thought it merited a photo shoot.) Can anyone here recall a Christmas cooking disaster? Anyways, wishing you all good health and continued good living for 2016. 
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Boadicea's Chariot 
Mama mia! A more culinary 2016 to you all! 🍴
Nice napkin ring.
Good to see you again PG! Love the picture. I take it no one was prepared to try it? -:)
I can remember a ‘near’ disaster. I used to put the Turkey in the oven to start cooking at 1.00 a.m. for five hours. However, one year, having over-celebrated Christmas Eve, I got up late Christmas Day to find that I’d started cooking at 5.00 a.m. for one hour… Christmas lunch was very, very late that year
Then there was the time I decided on a quiet lunch with a couple of friends. I bought a whole pile of very expensive eye fillet… they wanted their steaks ‘well done’. I cooked their steaks to my definition of ‘well done’ and then cooked mine – blue, ie just dead. What they actually meant was incinerated somewhat like your pizza and resembling a bit of leather fit only for re-soling a shoe. After a further half hour of cooking – I refused to continue. In the meantime, of course, my steak was totally and utterly inedible. I have refused point blank to cook a steak for anyone else ever, ever again!
Now, I don’t cook Christmas Dinner – we go to my daughter and enjoy whatever she puts in front of us…
I do hope you didn’t eat this? Totally carcinogenic!
Can’t imagine why you allow a child to eat this on Christmas Day! Disgusting at any time of year but Christmas Day???
I don’t do cock ups on food. Pre planning, lists, and having certain things done in advance take care of it.
don’t get out of first gear for under 30 covers! Things like mince pies and sausage rolls etc can be cooked straight from the freezer, much better fresh. Veg done the day before and bagged up ready for cooking. Desserts that freeze such as roulades, The devil is in the detail!
My gawd, CO, how I hate experts! Perfection is SO yesterday…. 🍷🍴🍮🍷🍷🍷🍷
CO, please explain the difference between planning and pre planning. It reminds me of book stores that implore you to pre order a book rather than order a book. Is there a difference?
You realise of course that this is purely for the benefit of Janus who hates perfection.
As evry fule kno, you can pre order a book before it is published. You can simply order it too but it might take longer! Perfect, eh? 😱
So would this pre-ordering require planning or pre-planning?
In this case, pre-planning starts in September when one makes the constituent parts of festive food.
You cannot make mince pies without mincemeat and I have no intention of serving that filthy shop muck that purports to be mincemeat! So, mincemeat is made in Sept to give it time to cure. Christmas puddings are made in October so that they may age. Christmas cakes are made in November to give them time to be infused with brandy, I don’t do dry cakes!! I would call that pre-planning. None of these things are essential to Christmas but if you want them as part of the festivities then you cannot make them the day before or even in the month of December!
This year I had several to Thanksgiving dinner, a dozen to dinner in the first week of December. Thirty or so to a Christmas party on the 20th and then we went out for Christmas dinner to friends in Canada. I did the desserts. The planning for the actual meals starts mid Nov. Lists of every occasion are made, guests, dishes and shopping lists. With a bit of careful planning I had two free turkeys for having large bills at the grocery. Menus are deliberately designed to include not too many items that have to be done on the day. Things that can be made in advance and frozen are done so. Thus the whole thing becomes a gentle stroll in the park, something is done most days, everything is made fresh from scratch, I don’t eat shop crap! No one breaks into a sweat or gets out of first gear!
So before you all get too clever about preplanning and planning have you ever given a thought to how good fresh food restaurants actually run? It isn’t at the last minute I assure you.
I have actually been making the same mincemeat recipe for 48 years, every year like clockwork, every September. personally I don’t know how people can eat half the muck sold out there, it is very curious that my most constant guest is the owner-restauranteur of one of the most successful restaurants in the County. One wonders why? This year he carried of a quarter of a Christmas cake with a grin from ear to ear. Not to worry I make several! Can’t actually be bothered to make only one of anything!
Perfection is never yesterday! Anyway what else have I got to do now that I don’t have five acres or a 25′ greenhouse?
Just kidding, Christina.
Sipu, as a pre eminent planner, I pre fer pre cocious pre planning as a pre requisite of and pre parations.
CO, in the early days of the internet, people would have said that I had just been flamed.
flambeed darlink!
Game, set and match to Christina for her most recent fizzer! Close the thread – there is no way back from that.
OZ