Christmas food should be all about being naff, give me box trifle and squirty cream any day

I AM yet to find anything more satisfying than a table that’s groaning with Christmas food.

Pastry vol-au-vents oozing with creamy coronation chicken and shop-bought mince pies smothered in delicious squirty cream straight from the can.

5

5

There is something intoxicating and nostalgic about a boxed Bird’s Trifle Kit and the simplicity of scattering hundreds and thousands across the top once the jelly sets.

Or sipping Babycham from a glass rim that has been dampened and dipped in sugar like my parents did in the Eighties — thinking they were posh — before polishing off a box of mint-flavoured Matchmakers.

Recreating these simple festive pleasures year on year feels like a trip down memory lane.

It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that retro party foods like the vol-au-vent are making a comeback.

They’re a design classic, as well as delicious. They’re a creamy, sturdy food and a small reminder of parties gone by with parents, aunts and uncles that are no longer here.

Christmas fare, no matter how naff, is packed full of nostalgia and takes me back to my childhood growing up in Carlisle.

Fond, deep-rooted memories of happy Christmases with my mam Grace, dad, George, and brothers Dave and Bob.

Standing next to Dad at the kitchen sink on Christmas Eve is one of my favourites.

Him shelling sprouts while we sang along to Jona Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry.

When I talk about my dad, I’m never sure which tense to use because his Alzheimer’s diagnosis five years ago has taken from us the man he used to be: The man who was witty and good company, but lived in fear of the Christmas “pop in” — an influx of kindly neighbours dropping off cardboard selection boxes.

I used to think his vegetable prepping was him being industrious, but the cosy kitchen with its four-bar fire became a place for Dad to hide.

Really, his only job was to make sure the turkey — or The Bird, as he called it — wasn’t eaten by the cat.

Christmas was never the same after Dad began showing real signs of Alzheimer’s.

It was like walking on eggshells, wondering if all the excitement and visitors was too much for him.

But as I walk around the supermarket now stuffing After Eights, Chocolate Oranges and his favourite mince pies into the trolley, it’s a lovely reminder of days gone by that I’d give my back teeth to live through again.

Christmas fare, no matter how naff, is packed full of nostalgia and takes me back to my childhood growing up in Carlisle

Grace Dent

Back then, Christmas in our house was a metal tub of Quality Street that teased us from under the tree because Mam had banned us from touching it until December 25.

There was also something decadent about a Terry’s Chocolate Orange that sent me doolally. I would sneak off to my bedroom to eat it all by myself.

Mam was obsessed with bread sauce, and I’d be dispatched into Carlisle to find a sachet she made up with milk just to pacify Gran and Grandad, who couldn’t possibly eat a Christmas meal without it.

It usually went untouched, a curdled wash of wallpaper paste left on the kitchen side for days.

In our house, dinner was served at 1.30pm with a mad scramble to clear up in time to watch the Queen’s Speech at 3pm. It rarely went to plan.

🔵 Read our Christmas 2021 live blog for the latest news and updates

I remember the excitement in the Seventies when an uncle came over with a never-before-seen home-made chocolate gateaux. Me and my brother spent the rest of the day gloriously chipping away at it with a knife.

In the Eighties, Christmas was smaller and homespun and that’s when Dad introduced his infamous — and surprisingly delicious — turkey curry.

I remember walking into the kitchen to find him elbow-deep in a vat of powdered curry mix and leftover bird. He didn’t bother with rice.

At some point in the Nineties, I had delusions of grandeur and introduced the starter course to the annual family gathering.

It was packet smoked salmon draped over the plate. In our heads we thought THIS is what people were eating at Sandringham.

What is it with Christmas that makes us feel we must go one better with food?

Roast potatoes cooked in goose fat and sprouts mixed with bacon — all of a sudden, your granny is the visiting ambassador of Bolivia.

It’s hell, but a delicious hell because Christmas would be dull without it. And Christmas food is about being together.

When we lost Mam to cancer earlier this year, I started questioning how much we actually enjoy recreating the traditions of past Christmases. It sometimes feels like I’m at war in my head.

I am hosting this year and although it won’t be the perfectly executed dinner — things will be forgotten and things will be burned — there will most definitely be lashings of Oxo gravy to go with the packet stuffing.

Every year, I suggest to my family that we won’t have turkey because I’m not sure if any of us really want it.

It’s hell, but a delicious hell because Christmas would be dull without it. And Christmas food is about being together

Grace Dent

Everyone talks a good game with their, “why don’t we do a roast topside of beef?”. But it’s odds on that someone will turn up at the eleventh hour with a turkey they discovered in the “whoops” section of the supermarket.

After all, if the kitchen isn’t scented with the sumptuous smell of turkey fat, is it even Christmas?

It will be tough, the first without Mam, and now Dad in residential care — that’s why it’s so important for me to be supporting Alzheimer’s Society’s vital work this Christmas.

But I will visit him with a bar of Cadbury Fruit and Nut, which has always been “our” chocolate.

People ask me if he remembers who I am, and in flickering moments, I’m sure he does.

This Christmas, I will raise my glass of Malibu and pineapple and propose a toast to our dear parents and all the memories from the wonderful Christmases past.

• Grace is hosting the Alzheimer’s Society’s virtual Carols at Christmas tomorrow to help make sure no one with dementia faces Christmas alone and without support.

5

5

5