The oven timer went off at 2.10pm on Sunday 14 December and the chicken was still pink at the bone. It was meant to be a rehearsal, and rehearsals are supposed to go wrong, but I had hoped to go wrong in a smaller way. Matt, holding the clipboard I'd sent him to fetch from the shed, said, "That's why we do it on the 14th and not the 25th."
On Thursday we are hosting Christmas dinner for six: the two of us, my parents, Jackie and Steve, from Chesterfield, and Matt's parents, Kev and Pauline, from Hillsborough. Ellie is at her boyfriend's family's for the day and arrives on Boxing Day, in good time for the leftovers. Last year, in the flat above the shop, we fed each set of parents on a different day, which kept things simple. This year they share a room, one oven and my spreadsheet.
One oven, four rings
The spreadsheet has a tab called "25 Dec" with a timetable in fifteen-minute rows. The turkey crown (2.3 kg, £18) goes in at 11.30am at 190°C and comes out at 1.15pm to rest under foil and a clean bath towel in the back room. That frees the oven for roast potatoes and parsnips on the top shelf at 220°C, with the pigs in blankets and stuffing joining them below at 1.50pm. Dinner is at 2.30pm. On the hob every ring has a job, because we have exactly four: Pauline's Christmas pudding in the biggest pan, then sprouts, red cabbage and gravy.
The rehearsal taught me three things. The big roasting tin I'd planned to use won't fit with a shelf above it, so I bought a smaller one. The back left corner of the oven runs hotter than the rest, so one side of the potatoes went nearly black while the other stayed pale. And every time I opened the door to turn them the temperature dropped, which is how the chicken stayed pink. On the day the potatoes get turned once, at the 25-minute mark, by me, fast, in two oven gloves. The crown gets a probe thermometer so that nobody has to open the door to have a look.
The kitchen ceiling, patched after the leak on 12 December, has dried a shade of white about two shades off the rest. I have decided that counts as seasonal.
Where six people sit
Our back room table seats four if nobody has elbows. Jas from over the road has lent us a folding table, 1.8 m long, which went into the front room on Saturday afternoon for a fitting. It sits between the sofa and the tiled fireplace with about 40 cm to spare at either end, so whoever takes the hearth end has to go in first and stay in. Two folding chairs came with it and four of ours come through from the back room. Maureen has offered a tablecloth, which she described as "only used twice" and which has holly on it. She would like it back by New Year.
Kev will carve, as he has at every Kershaw Christmas I have been to, with his own knife, which he sharpens on his back step. He is not allowed in the kitchen until the crown is on the board in the back room. That's row 22 of the spreadsheet, in bold: "Kev carves in the back room." Pauline will be allowed in the kitchen, since she spent years feeding 300 children a day in a school kitchen, and I would like to be told what I'm doing wrong.
What it costs
The food comes to £96, or £16 a head. That is the crown at £18, vegetables and trimmings £27, cheese and biscuits £16, nibbles and mince pies £19, cream and brandy butter £6 and Christmas crackers £10. Drinks are separate and mostly arriving in Steve's boot. Pauline's pudding is free, in the sense that she'd have been offended if I had bought one. The smaller tin and the thermometer were £13 together, and they are staying in the kitchen for good.
Pickle has been told the tinsel isn't hers. She disagrees, so the bottom half of the tree is now bare and she lies underneath it anyway, looking at the lights as if they owe her something. The last line on the spreadsheet, row 38, says "find the second oven glove".
