Monday 30 December 2013

Christmas Dinner and Table Decor

by Bex

So, I mentioned that we got a bargain bird for Christmas dinner and I'd already prepared our strudel for dessert.  Nik is always in charge of the meat and potatoes for Christmas day, he's much better at roasting than I am and I'm much better at all the fripperies (which I think are much more fun anyway!)  We always have our starters as lunch and eat dinner in the evening and after this year's lie in we ate even later than usual.

For lunch this year we had the most amazing melty cheese fondue dip (from BBC Good Food Magazine, I'll share the recipe soon if you're interested?) and our absolute favourite - smoked salmon pate with bread and crackers.


It had a layer of caramelised onion chutney on the bottom!  :)

For the Christmas Dinner table decor, I winged it this year with no specific plans.  I got out our big white tablecloth along with the green table runner I made 2 years ago.  I decided to use our African safari napkin rings (a wedding gift from Auntie Bala) and gave everyone their favourite safari animal although I still used the placenames Mum made me 2 years ago as well and added my glittered pine cones (collected in Durham, glittered in Glasgow) for a bit more of a festive twist.  I also used the hand-painted napkins I bought in Malaysia this summer.  (Incidentally, Mum if you go to the Kraft Komplex, please get me four more, they wash really well!)



To carry on the safari(-ish) theme, since I already had our wintery terrariums complete with zebra in our apothecary jars, I carried them through and used them as the table centrepieces along with our vase of white tulips and the candelabra I bought for Halloween.


To keep it festive looking, I added the more snowy trees (It had ended up being cheaper buying a full pack on ebay and I was planning on selling the extra, massive trees.  I'm glad I never got round to it!) dotted around the table with a few mini candles.



We used my new 25p grey & white bowls from Glasgow Architectural Salvage to serve the veg and my fab new vintage style jar from Ikea for the cranberry sauce.


This year we had turkey with the usual accompaniments including my fab sprouts!  (I chop them in half, steam them so they're still a bit crunchy then toss them in a wok with olive oil, garlic and sesame seeds for a few minutes.  They taste amazing!)  This was the first time I've made bread sauce and although the recipe (bread & shallot sauce from BBC Good Food Magazine) only called for a pint of milk and 100g of bread we ended up with rather a large quantity!  Nik's dad made the honey & mustard sticky pigs in blankets and did all the peeling and his Mum made the gravy and apple stuffing bites.  It was a proper team effort and we had an amazing feast :)


I love adding little twists in for some different flavours every year.  What do you all have for Christmas dinner?  Are we the only ones who split it up and feast all day?

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