Ah, Christmas!

Okay, let's rejoice. The wettest November in recorded history is over, and it's time to allow Yuletide to get into serious focus. For many food lovers, however, the Xmas feast has become a bit of a joke. Turkeys are so big they are virtually impossible to cook. Hams are too salty. Plum pud is too heavy.

To which we say: if you use carefully sourced foods and spend extra money on good wines, the Xmas feast can be one of the greatest delights of the year Sure, if you start with farmed smoked salmon, continue with a supermarket bird and finish with some own-brand pudding, you will have a dyspeptic nightmare. Add in some too-young-to-be-drunk claret, and it's a proper nightmare, especially with your father-in-law wound up by too much whiskey, your kids squabbling already over broken toys and your relatives having an even-more-impressive-then-usual argument in front of everyone. Ah, Christmas!    

But consider this: what if you have some luxurious wild salmon, properly smoked by a true artisan. Imagine a genuine free-range bird, or maybe some game birds instead. Carefully sourced ham. Organic vegetables, Irish farmhouse cheeses in tip-top condition, christmas pudding made with barley wine by Peter Ward (www.countrychoice.ie), or with O'Hara's Stout by Ditty's Bakery (email: dittybky@aol.com).     And consider your christmas wines, Pinot Noir or Shiraz with turkey, aged claret with cheese, some nice Gewurz for an apperitif, a thimble of a good Aussie sticky served cool with christmas pud. Good food like this also makes everyone happy, so harmony reigns. Ah, Christmas!    

But the only way to get this sort of magnificence is to spend time sourcing the best foods and wines. Don't let the supermarkets dazzle you into thinking that they have quality Xmas foods: they don't. For the real craic and the real quality, go straight to the specialists, and have a Cool Yule.

Photograph: Taken from "Christmas! Traditions, Celebrations and Food across Europe" by Stella Ross Collins NSPCC

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text © John & Sally McKenna
illustrations © Ken Buggy