20 east

Don’t know about you guys, but we sit here with everything done and ready for our guests wondering if our Turkey dinner from the Intercontinental will turn up on time and, more importantly, if it will be hot and tasty.

We tried this for the first time last year from the Marriott and it went down well, so this is our second attempt at the ultimate in lazy catering. Frankly, one wonders why anyone with 295 PLN to spare would do anything else? The package includes a 5kg roast turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, honey glazed pumpkin, broccoli & carrot, potato-celeriac puree and sweet potatoes. Also included are two bottles of good Chilean wine. Delivered freshly cooked and hot to our door for free (within 8km). Total cost of 60 squids, 10 squid per head (less if you include the kids)!

We added a couple of cakes, piernik & apple pie, which judging by the price are either going to be very nice, or gigantic. Not long to wait now.

Must dash – guests arrived.

So, an update. The dinner arrived about 15 minutes late, not the end of the world. Here it is in the box:

Inside was this thing and a whole lot of vegetables:

The food was well cooked and very tasty but if we do this next year we’ll reheat slightly as what heat it had didn’t quite last long enough. The turkey was fine but the veg got cold. Not that it stopped everyone tucking in!

For desert we had these:

..and then the tired kids watched a film:

Overall, a success!

The carrion crows picked our kitchen clean of leftovers, of which there were many, so not only did we have Christmas dinner but we fed the outlaws until the new year. Lost a lot of Tupperware as well!

Let me say BOOOOO! to hamleys.com who made a complete pig’s ear of delivering presents to my parents for Zosia.

I was looking for Pixel Chicks. Amazon did not have them, but Hamleys online store showed them as being available, in stock. I placed the full order with Hamleys for delivery to my parents. Hamleys first wrote saying the “20Q” gadget was not coming because of a bad batch from their supplier and gave me a 25% discount off next purchase instead. Then they confirmed everything was being shipped, including the 20Q. Later, (after four things had arrived with my parents) they revised this to say that only four of the six things were shipped but the other two were “sent to dispatch”. When I asked via email whether the 20Q was coming or not they told me the 20Q was not coming and neither was the Pixel Chicks, another bad batch, surprise, surprise!

“Sent to dispatch” was then changed to “Cancelled”. So, now we have four of six toys and the two that are missing are the main ones we wanted and the reason we used Hamleys in the first place.

Complete and utter crap service, Hamleys, and if you think I’m ordering anything else from you, you can think again. Oh! And you can stick your 25% where the sun don’t shine.

One instance where the online version gives the real thing a bad name, in our experience at any rate.

Glad you allowed me to get that off my chest this festive morn!