Christmas Dinner with Less Stress
Christmas is coming again! Busy cooks will prepare turkeys, geese, hams and tofurkeys to serve in vast quantities. We’ll devour all kinds of appetizers, vegetables, fruits, salads, breads and desserts, according to people’s varying traditions.
You can create less stress for yourself over the holiday in small ways. Many of those ways involve the foods you serve. Caution: The “human factor” of stress is always present, especially around Christmas, so one of the best things you can do is keep your sense of humor, even about food!
Our grandparents and great-grandparents spent their working hours in factories or on farms, while we tend to spend ours in offices. Our bodies don’t require the heavy meals they regularly ate. We now consume more than we produce. Be honest here! How much of the food you plan to serve did you plant, harvest, preserve or butcher? We don’t need all the trimmings anymore, especially since they end up around our waists and hips!
Cutting down on your consumption for the holidays is a great place to start your “de-stressing.”
Plan
Start ahead of time. If family and friends usually bring food to your dinner, find out what they’re bringing. Make a list. Then add to the list everything you normally serve.
What’s on your list that everyone will miss if you scratch it off? What’s on it that almost no one will miss? You can cross those things off your list. If Aunt Sophronia’s creamed onions that no one eats are on that list, consider asking her to bring something else this year, perhaps a jar of pickled onions. Explain to her and others that you’ve decided to cut down on the amount of food that’s wasted and to make things easier for those who have to watch their diets. That may help avoid hurt feelings.
Remember, you want to reduce the number of things you'll be serving!
Shop for your dinner ingredients as soon as possible. Having everything on hand before Christmas arrives means no one has to make a last minute trip to the store. Don’t forget to include the things you’re not out of yet, but will be by Christmas.
Delegate
Ask others to bring things like salads, vegetables, relish platters, pasta dishes, rolls, desserts, fruits or cheeses, etc. You could even ask someone to bring paper plates and cups to eliminate both dusting off your good dishes and having so many dishes to clean up afterwards. This will cut down your time in the kitchen and the stress that comes with trying to get everything done at once.
Design
Design your dinner with the following in mind:
- • Instead of traditional appetizers, serve a raw vegetable platter or glass of juice. • You can prepare some things ahead and refrigerate or freeze them, as appropriate. • Think about stuffing your bird with vegetables. Onions, celery and carrots are good basic vegetables to add flavor to your turkey. Loosely stuff both the neck and body cavities. The vegetables are less dense than bread or rice stuffing, so your bird will cook faster. You can also process them in a blender/food chopper to add to your gravy. • Cutting up the vegetables takes far less time than making a traditional dressing/stuffing/filling: more time for you adds up to less stress! • Your bird will also cool off faster if you stuff it with vegetables. It can either be put in the refrigerator sooner, or the meat stripped off the bones for serving later. Boil the bones for soup stock. • Use a packaged stuffing mix: it saves time and work. The most popular (US) brand also comes in a low-salt version for those who should avoid high sodium intake. • If you serve a bird with dressing/stuffing/filling, don’t serve two kinds of potatoes. Turnips, rutabagas or parsnips make good alternatives. You can also serve traditional pasta dishes as potato substitutes. • Serve only 2 or 3 vegetables without cream, butter or cheese sauces. (Fewer calories and easier clean up!) • Choose one dessert to serve after dinner, and add a cheese and fruit platter (prepared by your local supermarket or deli to save you time and lower your stress level). • Choose 2 – 3 desserts for serving later with leftovers. (That’s when you really get to taste them — when you’re not too stuffed to enjoy them!)
Prepare
Set your table the day before, if possible. Use smaller plates to serve children or seniors (they can always ask for seconds). Whether you serve buffet or family style, plan ahead where the various items will go on the table or buffet. Just remember that, no matter how many things you plan to serve, there will be at least a dozen other things you either forgot, or that someone “just had to bring.”
Enjoy!
When Christmas dinner comes, you’ll have time for your guests. No one will leave your table hungry. You’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve served a lighter and healthier meal while keeping your sanity intact. Well, most of it.
Reducing the number of dishes you serve, encouraging others to bring things and share in the preparations, as well as advance planning will help keep your Christmas dinner less stressful for you and more enjoyable for everyone.
Who knows? The men or kids might even offer to help clean up! (Yes, Virginia, I live in a fantasy world.)
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