Calculating Christmas Dinner with Waitrose

It’s finally December.  The countdown to Christmas has arrived and Christmas has most definitely come early in this house, thanks to Waitrose who are lending a helping hand to the important job of doing the online shop for Christmas dinner.

The Waitrose Christmas Dinner Calculator is a clever idea and you can choose from between 2 and 25 people just by moving a marker and it tells you what quantity of the Christmas dinner essentials you need to buy.

Once you have your required quantity, you click on the ‘Shop’ button to find all products in that range and you can add them to your shopping basket and go back to the calculator for the next thing on your list.  If you prefer to shop in store, you can use the calculator to help prepare your shopping list.  There is a great selection of Christmas products and the turkey and meat selection in particular is impressive.  The selection of turkeys are not available until at least mid-December (check the website for availability) so I opted for a large free-range chicken.   There are lots of pre-prepared food that just need cooking and as it was a mid-week meal that I was planning, I chose a lot of these to see if the quality of the meal would be affected by cheating a little.

Once you have your basics, you have time to go off around the Waitrose site and peruse the wonderful selection of food and drinks that they have on offer this Christmas.  I spent far longer than I should have looking at the desserts and one of my favourite ranges from last year is Heston from Waitrose and some of the Heston desserts look amazing. Party food was next on my list, shortly followed by mince pies and crackers.  For just over £70 I bought the main ingredients for the dinner, starters, dessert, mince pies, crackers and a few extras and I was pleased with how far the money went.  There are hourly delivery slots available and delivery is free, if you are shopping online.

Even though it was a little early, the delicious food and the crackers soon got everyone into the Christmas spirit and the meal was absolutely amazing.  The party food that we used as a starter, went down extremely well but the main meal was the main event.  The children declared the chicken as the best they had ever tasted.

Having used the Christmas calculator to help with the portion sizes, there was plenty of food for everyone and enough left over to make a meal with the following day, so the portion sizes are generous.  

Nobody noticed that i had cheated a little by buying oven-ready frozen roast potatoes and frozen Yorkshire puddings and the prepared vegetables save so much preparation time.

Even though there was not a lot of room left, we still managed to squeeze in a pudding.  The children enjoyed the Christmas cupcakes and chocolate and almond truffle brownies but the ‘pièce de résistance‘ for me was the sticky toffee and apple pudding from Heston which is a spectacularly good pudding which I am going to buy again for the big day.

So that was the food but of course Christmas dinner wouldn’t be the same without a glass or two of something nice for the adults to enjoy and Waitrose Cellar have the perfect range of festive cases of pre-mixed wine which give you a selection of some of their best wines.  We were sent the Our Christmas Favourites case which are six bottles of wine which are the buying team’s favourite picks.

This is a great way to buy wine as you are guaranteed to have something for everyone and it takes the stress out of spending time looking for a range of individual bottles.  Waitrose Cellar have a huge range of pre-mixed cases of wine and some even include spirits too so that you really have got Christmas covered and buying these cases means that you are spending less than if you bought the wines individually.

I have been really impressed with the Waitrose Christmas experience.  From the Christmas calculator through to the choice of wine, they have everything covered for Christmas along with some delightful decorations and gifts.  Their Create your own Hamper is also worth a mentions as you can buy this gorgeous crate for £4.99 and then fill it with your choice of food and gifts at an additional cost.  This would make a brilliant gift idea.

We were sent a voucher to cover the cost of ordering the food for the meal and the selection of wines for the purpose of writing this post.  All opinions and images are my own.