Christmas Cooking

Christmas is one of the holidays during the year when the entire family gets together to enjoy the occasion and have a sit-down meal. It is also a hectic time of the year. Shopping for gifts, decorating the house, and planning the meal for the big day can create chaos and stress. During the season, leading up to Christmas day, friends, family members, and neighbors drop in. You not only have to prepare the meal for Christmas Day but also have special foods, cakes or cookies, or some type of appetizer, when people drop by.

If only one person does the cooking for this occasion, it will indeed create a lot of stress. Some families rotate the responsibility by having dinner at one family's house one year and at another family member's house the next year. Others prepare a dish for the dinner and bring it with them to the house where everyone will eat on Christmas Day. This takes some of the stress out of holiday cooking.

You can prepare parts of the Christmas meal ahead of time and freeze them. This will take a lot of work out of preparing the meal on Christmas Day. Usually, preparation for the main course, turkey, will start on Christmas Eve. Many cooks like to marinate the turkey in herbs before baking.

To make life a bit easier, you should prepare lists of things to do. You should start your list right after Thanksgiving. This gives you plenty of time to get your shopping done and to start preparing the items that can be made ahead of time.

One of your lists will be a shopping list so you can stock up on the food items and ingredients you will need. If dinner guests are going to bring a dish with them or drop it off before Christmas Day, you will want to make a list of the names and the dishes and when to expect them.

You will want to make sure you have enough of other household items you will need such as toilet paper for the bathrooms, garbage bags for trash, paper plates, paper cups, napkins, and cutlery. You will also want to make sure you create a place for these items so they are readily available when guests drop by.

You should make a list of the decorations, invitations if you are having a party, gifts, or games you may need to purchase.

Creating a to do list will make things go much more smoothly during the holiday season and create less stress for you when the day arrives.