Talking Turkey

At least I made the bread sauce

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't cooked a Christmas dinner

On the surface, a turkey is just a great big chicken. Because of its size it may take longer to cook, and may take more stuffing, but when it boils down to it, (or should it be 'roasts'), stripped of feathers, head, feet and other basic means of identification, a turkey is just a chicken with delusions of grandeur

So, it should be simple to cook. Turn the oven on, stick tin foil over it, you might get fancy and sprinkle it with herbs and cover it with bacon to keep it moist, slam it in the oven sit back and bob's your uncle (he was as well)

Hah!

First find an oven big enough, then get up at 1 am to start the oven up, trip over the cat, fall down the stairs, swear at the cat and promise her that the next time she does that she's going to replace the turkey, slam the turkey in the oven and stagger back to bed, tripping over the cat again in the process, remember that you didn't salt the turkey, cover it with foil or any one of the one hundred seasonings you'd got planned, stagger out of bed, trip over the cat, do the business with the turkey, stagger back to bed kicking the cat in the process.

As an aside, we think that our cat is either going senile or has a death wish. She's taken to throwing herself down on the carpet in front of us. This is fine if it's broad daylight and you're not carrying anything - you just step over her. It's more of a problem if you're carrying a trayful of food or its pitch black - cats may be able to see in the dark but I can't. So far she's been lucky, but if she keeps it up it's going to be squashed cat time.

Anyway, back to the turkey. Once it's started cooking it's all downhill from there. This is the theory.

The practice is different

Now, to set the scene, we don't get a full turkey for Christmas. There's only two of us, so we cheat and get a turkey crown. This has several advantages
1) It's quicker to cook
2) You don't have to have an oven more appropriate to those people who go 'Fee Fi Fo Fum' and fall off beanstalks
3) You aren't left with a year's supply of turkey sandwiches afterwards

So, Christmas dinner should be really simple, shouldn't it.

Wrong

The problem isn't so much the turkey.

It's the sausages-wrapped-in-bacon, two kinds of stuffing, roast parsnips, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, peas, sprouts (that need shelling), carrots, cranberry sauce, bread sauce and gravy.

All these have to be cooked and brought to an exact state of perfection at the same time.

And the cat if she's been unlucky

And I haven't mentioned the starters

I tell you, it would be simpler to perform the spinning plate trick

Part of the problem is that we start running out of oven space and you have to get creative with the layout of the turkey pan, the roast potatoes, the stuffing balls and the sausages-wrapped-in-bacon

Then you run out of hobs to do the boiled potatoes, bread sauce, gravy, sprouts and peas and carrots

How you warm the plates is beyond me. Actually, it isn't - I wash them in hot water and put them in the microwave.

and in the panic of trying to boil three veg, take the foil off the turkey, baste it, turn the potatoes and feed the cat I usually forget something.

Like the bread sauce.

This year we got everything.

Including the bread sauce

Mind you, it was slightly overcooked (but I like my bacon crunchy), since I decided to ring my brother and sister about 15 minutes before E day. . But it was all there (and by the end of the meal most of it wasn't). For some reason I felt somewhat bloated afterwards (it wasn't of course, anything to do with the melon-and-Parma ham starter, or the Christmas pud and brandy sauce or the bottle or 5 of Cava)

The only problem is..
.. for some inexplicable reason my belt has slipped a notch.