Christmas Dinner

One of the big excitements (and worries) of this past Christmas was that we were having the big dinner in our home for the first time. I have rarely made food for more than 4-5 people and I have never cooked a turkey.

So, there was some learning to be done. Lucky for me, the internet, cookbooks, and Claudia's magazines were full of tips and how-to articles that worked well for us.

We had 7 normal sized people plus Liam for dinner, so we figured on a turkey for 8 (Bernhard always eats enough for 1.5 and Liam is a 0.5) This seemed like around 5.5kg would be good. Sadly the grocery only had 4 or 6.5kg birds. We went big since leftovers are better than hungry guests.

I prepared it pretty much like I would a chicken. Clean it out, rub exterior with oil, salt, pepper and stuff with some lemons, rosemary and bay leaves. Seemed safe enough. here is the beast just about to go in the oven.
Bernhard took a moment to approve on the size of the Turkey.
For the first couple of hours, I left the bird wrapped in foil so that it would not dry out, then the last 45 min or so it was uncovered to brown up a bit. It sure did fill that oven up...
In the meantime, all the other things were being made... Claudia bought some real fresh cranberries (which had come from Canada, yay!) and made the sauce. Turned out really great.
Claudia also did a Tiramasu for dessert which I forgot to photograph, oops. Then she turned to the decorating and table setting, which you will see shortly.

I moved on to side dishes. Mashed potatoes (also forgot to take a picture) were first.

Then there was stuffing, made from Bread crumbs, butter, red onion, sage, bay, salt + pepper. Pretty easy and I have done this before.
The exciting new side dish was red cabbage, which we all enjoy, but had only bought frozen in the past. This time I was going to do it myself. So this one had cabbage, apples, bacon, onions, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and some spices.
This needed the biggest pot we had. I think it turned out at least as tasty as the frozen one, but I think it could have been a little more apple-y.
After a looong time doing side dishes, the turkey was done and brought out. I think I maybe could have taken off the foil a little earlier to get it more brown, but it was quite eatable and tasty like this.
Claudia had also spent a lot of time and thought on setting the table in a very fancy Christmasy way. Everyone's place setting was all done up like this. You can not even tell that earlier in the day Liam spilled juice on everything forcing Claudia to re-wash and iron all the table cloths... haha.
With the table all set and the food all done, we just had to set the lighting and get people in there to eat it up.
I think at the end of the day, we managed to prepare quite a nice Christmas dinner, everyone finished the evening with a very full and happy belly. I think that Ryan even challenged Bernhard for the title of most turkey consumed, something that is not easy to do at any time.