For this Christmas, the older daughter, Emily, and her fiancé Craig, have hosted 2013 Christmas Dinner for everyone for the first time at their new home. It was a real family affair - there were Emily and Craig, the hosts, Craig's mum and dad, Christine and Tom, and Craig's grandpa David. There were Emily and Maria's dad, Frankie and his partner Eileen and then us, my husband Peter, myself and Maria, the younger daughter. Unfortunately Maria's boyfriend Dale could not join as he broke his foot and not mobile and Craig's sister Gillian was working, poor souls... working on Christmas Day however helping people for good cause! Oh, and we must not forget Emily and Craig's cat Bailey who was getting separate cat's version turkey for Christmas dinner!
So, back to the real deal, the Food! Emily is a Civil Engineer and is currently in a project team that is working on a very big and well-known project here, so as one may expect, she has executed everything in a military precision, in line with her own project management of Christmas Dinner plan. The resulting footage was the meat-eaters' culinary delight of traditional Christmas dinner with everything on a plate.
I must say that although I do not eat meat, what was on her plate looked really delicious.
For my husband and me who are non-meaters, Emily served us lobster thermidor with a little help from dear M&S. It was delicious.
There were so much food for Christmas at Cremily's. The menu for the day was as follows:
Prawn Cocktail
Chicken Liver Pate
Sushi Platter
*****
Frank's Home Made Lentil & Vegetable Soup
*****
Turkey Breast with stuffing & Roast Ham
Lobster Thermidor
*****
Side Dishes
Roasted Potatoes
Potato Croquettes
Roasted Parsnips with Honey & Mustard Glaze
Julienne of Carrots
Brussels Sprouts
Pigs in Blanket
Yorkshire Pudding
*****
Apple Crumble Cheese Cake
Christmas Cracker Chocolate Mouse
Cheese Platter and Crackers
So, for starters, some people had pate (sorry, I forgot to take photo!) and some had prawn cocktails.
I made Sushi Platter earlier in the morning for Emily as appetisers so that people could nibble too. I know it was rather random and eclectic, but hey, why not "East meets West"?
Emily's dad Frankie made a pot of Lentil and Vegetable soup, which was very tasty. He normally makes this using ham hock however as my husband and I don't eat meat, he made the soup using vegetable sock cubes.
After the main course, we were so full we could not eat desserts right away. I also realised that we missed the Queen's speech but no one seemed to have minded. Some of us then played the board game, Articulate. This game is a bit similar to Taboo. We know it's only a game but it was so funny to see people being so animated, getting so panicked or being under pressure whilst the clock ticking, trying to come up with answers and ended up saying wrong thing (which I am not going to repeat here). Emily told me that I was so hyper that at one point I was shouting in mixture of English and Japanese! I did not realise that at all!
I enjoyed that game and wanted to play again but unfortunately we had to go home when the game finished. It was almost 9pm and we had to rush home to feed our cat Yuki who would be starving and wondering where we were.
The next day, my husband and I were invited back to Emily & Craig for afternoon tea, well actually I invited ourselves to theirs, ha ha ha, to eat the dessert we missed the previous night and pick up wine glasses we forgot. We had Christmas cracker shape chocolate mouse, which was not too sweet and light but very delicious. I really enjoyed this one!
Emily was eating cheese platter so I also tried some of the cheese with crackers - pickled onion flavour and smoked cheese. She bought these a week ago at Christmas market in Glasgow. I liked the pickled onion's one, which can be quite addictive! Just looking at the photo makes me want to eat it again!
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| Pickled onion cheese (front) and smoked cheese (yellow one in the back), both by Snowdonia Cheese Company. |
Emily and Craig's Christmas Dinner was a huge success! Being an engineer, Emily had to have a plan. She did a lot of prep work a night before and earlier in the morning and in the afternoon, she switched on her oven and followed her plan. You must give her credit as she was on schedule in line with her plan below, without much of sweat from any pressure from cooking for everyone other than the heat from the oven.
She said that the dinner starts at 3.30pm. Yap, the starters were served at 3.30pm and she put parsnips into the oven! She reheated Frankie's soup at 3.45pm, which was served at 3.50pm.
We must remember also that behind the great project management there is delegation and great team work going on. Craig was busy doing dishes between the courses (as they don't have dish washer so he had to wash plates and cutleries and dried them straight away for the next courses!), so well done to Craig-san too!.
Emily was really looking forward to the Christmas and she decorated their living room with lovely Christmas tree.
Well, we all enjoyed the dinner, the company and the evening with lots of fun (especially Articulate game and what people uttered as answers to the questions under pressure would be something we would keep talking about as funny memories in many many years!).
I wonder if Emily and Craig would host another dinner next year. I would not mind salmon next year, hint hint...
Merry Christmas to you all and that's all forks!
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