“My Christmas nightmare? Cooking in someone else’s kitchen”

Peace and goodwill to everyone travelling home over Christmas and cooking in their parents’ kitchen. And good luck, too. You’ll need it – unless you’ve been excused from mucking in on the cooking front.

Because, whether you’re making the whole Christmas lunch or just preparing the pigs in blankets, cooking in anyone else’s kitchen is a nightmare. It’s like being thrown into the MasterChef final – if the MasterChef kitchen had no sensible equipment and Gregg Wallace, dressed as your mum, kept asking, “Are you sure the turkey doesn’t need an extra four hours?”

If you’re one of those other-worldly creatures who can rustle up dinner for eight in any kitchen, with any old equipment, without breaking a sweat, I’m in awe. Please tell us your secret. Is it covert drinking? It’s covert drinking, isn’t it? When it comes to the rest of us, I reckon that reasonably proficient workmen are fully justified in blaming other people’s tools.

I’m an okay cook. But transport me to someone else’s kitchen and I’m a bungling mess. It takes forever to find anything. I can’t function without my blender. And how am I supposed to cut anything with those knives? It’s got so bad I have my own knife and chopping board at my parents’ house.

It’s not just cooking. And it’s not just parents’ houses. Staying at a friend’s place one Betwixtmas, it was even a painful process trying to make a cup of tea before anyone else was up. After fruitlessly hunting for the kettle, I had to figure out how to turn on the fancy boiling-water tap. Then came the tea hunt. And the mug hunt. On it went until every hint of early morning enthusiasm had disappeared down the waste disposal unit.

Add the pressure of Christmas Day into the mix and you have the makings of a meltdown. Of course, you could do what I did and run away to Bulgaria, adopt seven cats and vow never to travel home for Christmas again. But if that’s too extreme – I can see how it might be considered extreme – keep your dinner plans simple. Prep what you can in advance (in your own kitchen if possible). And don’t feel weird about bringing your own equipment. Never feel weird about that.

Travelling home for Christmas is one thing, but let’s spare a thought for the real masochists. The ones renting a cottage for New Year’s Eve with 10 of their best friends, who end up having to improvise a celebratory meal with nothing but a potato masher and clumpy salt. To those people I say, paraphrasing Tiny Tim, “God bless you, every one. And pack your good knife.”

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