How Was Your Week? Catering Chaos and Foodie Failures

If we were having coffee, I’d ask if you had a good Christmas or holiday.

I’d tell you the morning after we returned from the UK, we hit the ground running on a mammoth food shopping expedition. Successful? Yes, sort of, except despite visiting four, yes…FOUR supermarkets, there was not a Brussels sprout in sight. I even sent out an SoS to my sister who, staying with us for Christmas, and en route from Spain might have more luck. No joy.

Not to concede defeat on the sprout front, Mr P tried our local supermarket. SUCCESS! Erm… Holy Moly, they were 6.99 for 500g. He bought two bags just in case we ran out. I had a moment. €14.00 on sprouts. I wanted to ask why, because in truth, you can only eat so many sprouts without suffering from embarrassing gas at inopportune moments.

In case you are wondering sporuts are a tradition in our household, and Christmas is not Christmas without them!

Catering – the best laid plans and all that

My sister and her hubby arrived shortly after we got home from the dentist’s late afternoon appointment, but I had prepped a simple meal of lasagna and, for dessert, poached pears earlier, so there was no stress on the catering front.

They kindly bought us a Seranno ham and other goodies.

Christmas Eve, I thought I had everything mapped out down to the last millisecond! How wrong I was! I had planned to cook Bacalahau com Natas, but as I hadn’t cooked it for a while and never for guests, I decided to stick with Christmas Eve tradition and cook roast gammon and dauphinois potatoes. Simple, right? I prepared the dauhpinois potatoes the day before and had them partially cooked as my French son-in-law had taught me. Unlike last year, when the potatoes smelt and tasted like burning plastic thanks to using Elmlea Cream, which is not cream (who knew?) and we had to throw them away,

Foodie Friday: Let’s Talk About Ultra-processed Foods

This year, determined to avoid disaster, I used proper culinary cream.

The meal should have been simple. All I had to do was slow-roast the ham, finish cooking the dauphinoise potatoes (about 45 mins) and cook the veg.

We played games on the PS2 and Wii while the meal was cooking. Ready to serve, I tested the potatoes. Rock hard. I had a moment. Resisted a meltdown. Announced dinner would be about another 45 mins . Turned off the rest of the veg and prayed it wouldn’t spoil. Cauliflower and broccoli are not forgiving.

Another 45 minutes later, I tested the potatoes again. Surely they had to be cooked by now; they were almost cremated, but still hard.

Mr Piglet had the meltdown on my behalf. Everyone was hungry. I decided rather than ruin the meal, I would make buttery mash and a white cheese sauce. 45 minutes later and over 1/12 hours late, the dinner was finally served. No one dared mention the overcooked veg or the gloopy, lumpy white sauce. Lucky, I would have eaten them alive as my stress level was off the Richter scale! WHOLE

Lightning shouldn’t strike twice in the same place, right? Wrong!

Christmas Day and the roasties refused to brown. Not only that, but my meat thermometer, which has a magnet, attached itself to the roasties cooking tray and ended up in the oven, where it welded itself to the cooking rack as it melted. Oh Joy!

So dinner was once again late as we all waited for potatoes.

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Despite the foodie failures, it was lovely to spend Christmas with my sister. On Christmas Day, we opened presents while drinking Baileys, eating mince pies and Christmas cake – another Christmas tradition. I know some like to stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve to open presents, but I need my beauty sleep. *laughing* Do you stay up until midnight or open presents on Christmas Day?

After the present opening ceremony, we took the champagne and the stollen cake to the beach and met up with friends and neighbours to trade festive cheer, and some even donned their swimwear and took a dip in the sea! I love this local tradition, and this year the weather was especially kind with bright blue skies. I think my sister enjoyed it too.

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That’s it for this week’s weekend coffee share, and my thanks to Natalie for hosting.