Planning your Christmas dinner can be a bit stressful. If you have to cater for more than you would usually it can become a series of calculations as to how much turkey and of course how many sprouts you may or may not need.
Waitrose have taken all the hard work out of the equation this year with a Christmas Dinner calculator :
You simply input how many people are eating and it tells you exactly how much you need of each ingredient. I used it last weekend prior to buying ingredients for a mock Christmas dinner and it works really well. I used it to calculate the amounts of turkey, sprouts, potatoes and pigs in blankets. I included my two children and it allowed me enough for a leftover Christmas dinner pie – because you NEED some kind of leftover dish on Boxing Day right? It did mean I didn’t have mounds of leftover sprouts or carrots and every thing we bought was delicious from the chantenay carrots to the honey and rosemary sausages wrapped in bacon and of course especially the turkey.
Because I was short on time I opted for a butter basted Turkey breast with a smoked bacon lattice. This was incredibly easy to cook and I just popped 3 halved clementines snugly into the foil cooking tray. It was easy to carve and looked spectacular on a serving dish on the table.
For sides I made my Sensational Sprout Recipe, mashed potato, my Ultimate Roast Potatoes
And these carrots
Christmas Chantenay Carrots:
500g of Chantenay Carrots
3 tbsp of butter
3 tbsp of brown sugar
1/2 a nutmeg grated
Parboil your carrots in a large pan of boiling water. Set aside. Put a large frying pan over a moderate heat and gently heat your butter and sugar. Now add your carrots and sauté in the sauce until tender. Pour into a serving dish and grate the nutmeg over the top.
I also made some mince pies with a twist by adding cranberry sauce to the filling and with the leftover pastry I made some festive Christmas treats for the girls:
Now Christmas dinner isn’t complete without a little sparkle and wine is it..?
Along with traditional Bucks Fizz we had a gorgeous bottle of red on the table, a bottle of Prosecco and another bottle of red mulling away in the slow cooker which filled the house with the smell of Christmas.
Why not take the hassle out of your alcohol shop by getting everything you need in a festive box from Waitrose Cellar. We received the Festive Mixed box which includes three red wines, two white wines and a bottle of Prosecco too.
On the Waitrose Cellar website there are also larger mixed boxes which would last the full festive season:
As well as this trio of extra special bottles in a beautiful dark wood gift box:
* We were reimbursed for the cost of the ingredients and gifted a festive box of wine for review purposes.
The christmas dinner calculator is so clever! It would be a tragedy to have enough just for the day and not have leftovers – they’re often gone too soon in my house!