Christmas and I’ve cooked my own goose - again

Published Dec 22, 2010

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Honestly, I’m a strong woman whose mantra is: “There are two ways of doing things - my way and the wrong way.” Nevertheless, with the arrival of Christmas, my tried-and-tested master plan for dealing with life goes out of the window.

I’m not unique. Highly capable women everywhere, who normally multitask without giving it a second thought, feel the same. Capable, uncomplaining females, who manage the school run in all weathers, pitch up at the local carol service bearing cakes and can deal with the endless delivery men expecting Christmas tips, will have, with four days to go, started feeling so annoyed they could scream.

Within 24 hours (if this year follows the pattern of the past decade), we will have entered the first period of non-speakers with our partner, the jumbo pack of headache pills in our handbag will be half-empty, and that secret bottle of Prosecco hidden at the back of the fridge for emergencies will appear magically to be drinking itself.

And you wonder why most women don’t love Christmas quite as much as men? Here’s why…

THE FRANTIC FORTNIGHT

This year I wrote a book called Don’t Let The B*****ds Get You Down to cheer people up because we’re bombarded with patronising advice. And Christmas is when this blizzard of “expert” advice reaches fever pitch and leaves you feeling unable to cope.

People who call themselves experts are on the TV and radio, in every magazine and newspaper, giving their top tips about creative gifts you can make yourself (ha ha, as if we have time). They offer advice on how to cook a mouthwatering menu, what to wear to the office party and not look like a trollop, and how to decorate your home and tick all the right eco-friendly boxes.

But if these experts are convinced it’s all so easy, why do I feel like I have an iron band tightening around my head?

Why have I already bought tangerines and nuts and forgotten where I stashed them? Why have we got six huge bags of sultanas for the Christmas puds, and mincemeat we never got around to making? Christmas is not my finest hour.

THE CAR-CRASH CUISINE

Let’s start with the Monster Meal itself. Don’t ask me why, but the run-up to Christmas sees me carefully collecting dozens of ways of dealing with a goose, cooking the spuds, making coleslaw, and roasting a ham, culled from every newspaper and magazine during December.

I also have a pile of yellowing cuttings featuring celebrity chefs from Delia to Nigella, Nigel and Gordon, all telling me that only they can offer me a simple but delicious Christmas banquet.

Many of you will have done the same as me, stashing recipes in envelopes and plastic folders and waiting for that magic moment when we select the best version for the most important meal of the year. Why are we suddenly experiencing a collective lack of confidence in our culinary skills? Why do we need Delia or Nigella to act as our helper?

Let’s face it, there are countless times during the year when we cook poultry, conjure up fluffy roast potatoes, glaze a ham and serve delicious Brussels sprouts. It’s hardly a task as formidable as raising the dead or making the dog speak French.

This year is exactly the same as 2009 and the year before. Every night I sit in bed, riffling through my scraps of torn paper with their magic celebrity chef recipes, planning menus, drawing up detailed shopping lists, trying to evaluate which is the right way to make crunchy coleslaw and whether I should soak the ham.

No wonder I’m down to sleeping four hours a night. It’s this insane pursuit of perfection that women are so burdened with at this time of year.

One chef proposes I should cut the legs off my goose and cook the ruddy bird in three sections, mincing up some thigh meat to make dumplings. That’s so complicated I am curiously drawn to it, knowing the process will be the culinary equivalent of climbing Kilimanjaro.

Last year the annual row about how to cook the goose lasted throughout Christmas Eve and most of the next morning.

It didn’t help that we’d invited two chefs to lunch, and each was keen to offer their own opinion. In the end, there was only one way to cook the goose - the quick way.

Do you shove the stuffing inside (like Delia) or not? It’s decisions like this that reduce normally able women to tears. As for roasting the potatoes: Even if my guests want them crispy, they can just sod off.

As for sprouts, I’ve grown my own. They have taken hours of love and nurturing.

They cannot be boiled, they cannot be tainted with cream. They can only be steamed for a couple of minutes.

In my mind, they are so precious I could eat a plate of them, and b****r the rest of the meal. Sadly, no one else feels the same way.

When it comes to the mince pies, I like to remember a time when I bought mine at the baker’s every December.

Then, shops came up with the notion of “luxury” mince pies. Suddenly, those old-fashioned normal pies seemed flat and dreary.

Forget making your own, no matter what Delia says.

WHAT ON EARTH DO MEN DO?

What is it about men and Christmas cards? Their hands are constructed so they can drive cars with gears, operate heavy machinery, put up shelves (if you’re lucky) and masterfully take command of the television remote control. But their 10 digits cannot, ever, write a Christmas card. They don’t “do” buying the ruddy things either, or even addressing envelopes, and (like every other year for the past decade) I have been reduced to forging my bloke’s signature on about 60 cards.

I am very tempted to have a rubber stamp made which says, “This card is brought to you by the most important person in our household”, but I realise that is just too inflammatory.

As for the whole “art” of giving appropriate gifts at Christmas, it reduces me to a rage. Men only ever buy presents for you and their mother, and that’s about it. As for buying unusual presents for them - what a nightmare.

The rest of the year, I pride myself on carefully planning my shopping, sticking to a list, not indulging in impulse buys.

But Christmas means SAD has set in, and I spend at least an hour a day trawling the internet for interesting gifts I’ve spotted in magazines. I am wasting the time when I could be having a relaxing facial or massage. Instead, I’m logging on to bizarre websites, registering as a new member and inventing a password I am bound to forget, giving my credit card details, painstakingly ordering something, only to have the system crash at the very last hurdle, leaving me snivelling in rage at my computer keyboard.

I tried to buy a whole smoked eel on a website, panicking when I pressed the wrong button and almost paid for six by mistake. Even I don’t know half a dozen people who would be happy to unwrap a smoked eel on Christmas Day.

To reward myself for not giving up as I endeavour to shop for my nearest and dearest, I indulge in what I call “feelgood rewards” - in other words, presents for myself. In the past two weeks, I have bought two pairs of shoes, a sequinned top and some face cream. Let’s be honest, we know and like our own taste better than they do anyway.

Is there anything more smug than the bloke who proudly announces: “I don’t know why you get so steamed up about Christmas, it’s so easy when you’ve got a list - I’ve done all my shopping already.”

Funnily enough, there are only ever two people on his list. I’d like to whack him over the head with the smoked eel, but it hasn’t arrived yet, and probably won’t materialise until the New Year.

TREE WARS

Aside from the hell of present buying, there’s the tiresome business of finding time to decorate the house, and that really means the tree - yet another part of the Christmas ritual that’s designed to induce a breakdown.

We’re overwhelmed with the tyranny of choice. There are fake trees which cost a fortune, but which are supposed to be “eco-friendly”.

Are they eco-friendly if they were made by slaves in a polluting part of the Third World and shipped here from thousands of miles away? I don’t know.

Even real trees come in so many varieties. They are blue-green or bottle-green, the needles and branches can look fine or stubbly. All I know is you end up buying the most expensive one because you’ve fallen for the sales hype about it lasting until New Year.

Then, after Christmas, you search high and low for the refuse collection schedule you hid in a drawer and realise there will be only one day out of 365 that you can get rid of that tree, or you’ll be reduced to chopping it up and hiding it in your wheelie bin, hoping not to incur a fine for incorrect recycling.

Choice isn’t liberating - it’s what makes Christmas so horribly complicated and time-consuming.

THE FINAL PUSH

When it comes to those last exhausting hours, each year follows the same pattern. By midnight on Christmas Eve, I will be making stuffing and shoving it up the goose’s bottom. I will be wrapping presents and discovering the jug I bought my best friend is broken.

I will be boiling a ham while slurping Prosecco and vowing to do things differently next year.

The man of the house, on the other hand, will be snuggled down in front of the telly, munching a mammoth slab of whole nut chocolate his mom gave him and dropping bits all over the carpet, watching the Dave TV channel or his beloved boxed set of Bottom, laughing uproariously.

I will resist the deep-seated urge to strangle him with my sodden tea towel and go to bed in a huff. Next day lunch will be three hours late and we’ll be comatose by 7pm.

Season’s greetings to you all!

* Janet Street-Porter’s Don’t Let The B******s Get You Down is published by Quadrille. - Daily Mail

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