Cooking for the Holidays

Well, I've just finished the majority of my Christmas cooking: potato dauphinoise, sprouts with pancetta, parsley carrots glazed with butter and orange blossom honey and clementine cake.

Only things left on the day will be the ham in Coke and turkey.  The rest is a simple re-heat.

*raises her glass of Bailey's*  Here's to a stress free Christmas lunch!

Great! I've already made my cranberry sauce, Italian Christmas Cake is already baked, chipolatas are wrapped in bacon, stock is made for the gravy, and now off to prep the sprouts and parsnips. All I should need to do tomorrow is the roast potatoes and putting the turkey and trimmings in the oven.  Plus we have cranberry orange cake and pumpkin ginger nut muffins to snack on that I made last night (along with shop-bought mince pies, After Eights, and assorted biscuits), and I think I'm gonna go make some sausage rolls for tonight's cheese plate and snack tray thingy.  Oh, and I'm gonna lift my Bailey's in a minute, too! 

So I am in the middle of making Boxing Day Christmas dinner.  The finalised menu:

Starters-
Fruit and cheese board (why wait for dessert for some of the best food?)
Savoury crackers
Gluten free bread*
I might put out the pickles ** and the ham * (Coke ham I made for yesterday), but Mr. A is afraid there won't be enough meat for the main meal  
Chocolate chip cookies

Main meal-
Heat and serve rolls
GF Bread *
Roast beef*
Sausages wrapped in bacon
Nut loaf
Sprouts and butter *
Yorkies
Roasted Potatoes *
Herb and garlic roasted carrots and parsnips *
Scalloped corn

White and red wine

Pudding-
GF Christmas cake *
A spongy sort of cake

Brandy
Coffee


*GF
**Some are gluten free

Hoping stress day goes well for us.

http://www.allaboutyou.com/food/Mushroom-and-Cranberry-Nut-Roast/recipe

It only has 2oz of nuts in the whole recipe

Cheesebiscuit and anyone else who may be interested:  We made the above recipe for Christmas Day dinner.  I really liked it!  Because I also don't do eggs, we substituted olive oil.  Hubby thought it was a bit oily, I don't know if using eggs would have made it less oily, so if you or we ever make it again, I'm thinking just a tiny bit of oil (or maybe just one egg, instead of two).  Maybe more bread crumbs would have made it seem less oily.  Anyway, I liked it just as it was--very tasty and festive looking with the cranberry topping!