All that festive stuff

[davidgillon]

Well Christmas dinner could have been a disaster, but for the fact that my sister decided to cook the turkey joint on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. We popped the turkey into a hot oven after cooking pizza for ourselves and then settled down to watch Red One, which was almost so bad it was good. At the end of the film my sister went to check on the turkey, which was now mildly defrosted, as opposed to piping hot. The oven was just as cold, no matter what the controls said. Cue panic.

Fortunately the oven started heating up again as soon as we started fiddling with knobs, and it was just 10PM, so there was just time to cook it for another 2 hours, this time with frequent checks, and still be in bed before Santa started on his rounds.

Christmas morning we went down to see my mother for a couple of hours, cut slightly shorter than expected because the care home was starting dinner at 12:30 rather than the normal 1PM, but hadn't actually mentioned that to any of the relatives. Mind you we passed the hot food trolleys on the way out and it smelled gorgeous.

So we didn't even start cooking veg etc until after 1PM - I say 'we', but in truth it was almost all my sister, I just helped around the edges. And we finally sat down to eat at 3:30ish, much later than we have in the past. Amazingly the turkey had come through its ordeal of four hours in the oven without drying out.

When we finally got around to presents it was quickly apparent Poppy the dog had more than the rest of the family together - though now my sister has to persuade her that a reindeer soft toy almost as long as she is just isn't appropriate for taking on a walk!