The 12 mistakes of Christmas

At least that is how I approach the stress-fest. I ditched optimism years ago and accept that the probability of a ruined dinner and a row is high by way of insuring against Christmas calamity.

This is not because I’m one of those party-planning generals who undertakes a course in napkin origami and creative table décor in November. If anything, the strategy is based on paring it all down. I have learnt the hard way; the following these 12 fates are always with me.

1. Search the house

You did, you know you did, buy a few little handmade wooden toys in Turkey last summer, thinking they’d be perfect presents, then you hid them. Avoid the irritation of coming across them next July and turn the place upside down.

2. Resist railway travel

Thise planning train journeys must rethink. Anything – including a lift from a hated relative whose dog has bad breath – will be less traumatic.

3. Bend the knees

Osteopaths report a surge of calls from people who slip discs pulling 28lb turkeys out of the deep freeze.

4. Under-organise

Cancel the Aga/cooker/boiler service. Engineers with after-party sore heads forget to tighten vital screws or valves. Like a doomed space satellite, your kitchen infrastructure heads for collapse, transpiring just as the helpline shuts down for the break.

5. Resist recycling

Giving away unwanted presents from last year will backfire. Can you keep a straight face as the recipient opens an especially naff box of bath pearls? A relationship-busting crime is to mistakenly return a gift to its original donor.

6. Avoid obvious danger

Recalling here the fate of one of my friends who decided she could not be bothered to cook, ordered a takeaway and gave everyone a dose of food poisoning.

7. Take nothing for granted

You do not have wide-gauge aluminium foil left over from last year; nor enough candles, salt, onions, cans of peeled chestnuts or cloves for the bread sauce and glazed ham.

8. Christmas Day is sacred

Very little need be done on the day, so everyone is free to go to church. The stuffing, potato peeling, sprout preparation, bread sauce base, brandy butter, giblet stock, cranberry sauce and knife-sharpening can all be done the previous day.

9. Think big

Turkeys do not fit in conventional roasting tins. Unless, as I once did, you want to roast it after sawing it in half, buy a big tin.

10. Make stuffing history

The main cavity of a turkey is as deceptively cavernous as a Tardis. Not only is it necessary to cremate the turkey to get the stuffing remotely hot, no one will finish it. Stuff the small neck cavity, and roast the rest in a pan with turkey dripping.

11. Avoid Delia

Not the recipes but the “15-minute” planning chart. This only works without inevitable distraction, or by starting in October. And I find the

15-minute period set aside to pour a lonely glass of champagne in the kitchen somehow sad.

12. Lower your expectations

Nothing you eat on Christmas Day is likely to taste as good as the cup of tea poured early that morning.

The luxury hangover

While many corks will pop in celebration that such a thing as cheap champagne exists, be warned: there’s a painful price to pay for cheap luxury. Sainsbury’s £14 Etienne Dumont Champagne may be flying off the shelves, but is it even worth the price tag that comes in at approximately half of that charged for a £30 bottle of Moet? My own, purely anecdotal, experience of cheaper champagne brands is that they deliver agonising hangovers.

There are sparkling wines made using the champagne method that cost even less than the Dumont bottle, which I feel much more comfortable after drinking. I have bought a South African type from M&S for under £10, made with wild yeast and no preservatives, downed plenty and never suffered a glimmer of a hangover. Likewise there is organic Venetian prosecco and Spanish cava at a similar price that have little effect either. I’d like to know why but research into allergic reaction to alcohol is notoriously difficult.

For many choosing a celebratory drink, such wines have half the lure of champagne, because the magic word is not on the label. We need to get over this. The so-called great ‘Appellation Controlle” wines of France, including champagne, thrive off the buyers conceit that there is something more in parentage, while many ‘orphan’ sparkly types do not get a look in. Well-made champagne indeed has a feel good factor, but it should not be assumed that poorly made does not exist.

Sell-by dates

The 2,400 year old soup recently discovered in an ancient cooking pot by Chinese archaeologists must be past its “best before” date, though the phrase has the vaguest of meanings.

A reader writes that they have bought supermarket fruit that does not ripen before the BB date expires. I have yogurt, bought in November, that still tastes perfect, though it is officially “off”.

Apparently, the 8.3 million tons of household food thrown away every year could be eaten, the CO₂ impact would equal taking one in four cars off the road. Meanwhile, stale labelling laws do not entrust us to use our senses. I’ll be turning turkey bones into soup well into January, just using my nose as a guide.

Far Flung Christmas Food

Panic sets in as the snow threatens a delivery standstill. I have got through few Christmases without pulling a sticky Portuguese Elvas plum from its box. I will ski if necessary to London importer Rainha Santa for these greengages that were Agatha Christie’s festive favourite. In The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, their beauty is explained by Mrs Lacey to Poirot. “You arouse my gastronomic juices, Madame,” he replies. Too true, but so is the saying that snow doesn’t give a soft white damn.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/rose-prince/8210330/Rose-Prince-The-12-mistakes-of-Christmas.html