The princess adventures

Hi everyone! Its been very quiet on twitter this weekend and that is because Matt & I hosted the “Oxmas” Christmas dinner this year. Matt’s friends from University meet up and enjoy a Christmas dinner every year and this year we put ourselves forward to host. I know I have been a bad blogger with the lack of pictures and to be honest the quality of pictures but I just didn’t have time to take them and to try and make them look impressive whilst being able to serve a lovely meal for everyone. But I thought I would give you a little insight seeing as it is blogmas to our day!

We had 20 people coming for Dinner, we thought the number was a bit big but everything would be fine right?! I don’t know about any of you but when we bought plates/glasses/cutlery/mugs/bowls we didn’t think that we would ever need a matching set of 20! I don’t really think anybody does, it is silly but it did make me feel a little less like the perfect host and a bit more of a student who is still growing through life. Saying that mind you; I’m not going to rush out and buy a set of 20 plates/glasses/cutlery/mugs & bowls just in case and we were lucky enough to have help from friends who could make up our shortfall!

Onto I think the most important exciting part of the meal… the food!! Matt was in charge of cooking the turkeys. Yes I said turkeys, we had to get 2 and in true Matt & Hayley style one of them didn’t fit in our freezer so we had to defrost it slowly over 2 days. JUST BUY CHICKEN PEOPLE IT IS SO MUCH EASIER!!! However Matt looked after his new birds, massaging butter into them, basting them, covering them so they didn’t get cold etc. I don’t actually have a photograph of the Turkey, Matt forgot to take one and before I knew it, it was out of the fridge on everyone’s plates! Along with the turkey there was a lot of food so here was our menu;

Starter

Cheesemas Tree’s

American cheeseball’s Chive & Cranberry

A selection of pre-made party snacks from Tesco (As Ina Garten says, catering for a party doesn’t mean you have to cook it all yourself. Well thats what I’m sticking to!)

Main

Roast Turkey with Roast potatoes, Honey roasted Carrots & Parsnips, Stuffing, Pigs in blankets, Yorkshire pudding & Sprouts with bacon, chestnuts & cranberries.

Desert

Christmas Pudding with Brandy Sauce

Christmas Marshmallows

Cinnamon Sugared Nuts

So here are a few pictures from the evening!

Everyone was so lovely about the food, they told me how much they enjoyed it all. A few of the items I will be making again with step by step pictures as I think they should be on everyone’s table at some point this December as they were delicious.

Hosting Christmas dinner was very stressful but it was enjoyable too, please comment below if you would like to know where I got a lot of the recipes from or what timetable I stuck to in order to get it all out on time.

I hope you have enjoyed this and I will see ya real soon for our next blogmas post.

T-T-F-N

Hayley xxxx