Text 1: Fourteen for dinner and one oven, by Nadia Opie

An original contemporary blog.

This year, for the first time, Christmas dinner was at ours. Fourteen people, including my mother-in-law, two vegetarians and a nephew who only eats things that are beige.

Planning started in November. I ordered a 7 kilo turkey from the butcher on the high street, made a spreadsheet of cooking times and stuck it to the fridge, and froze two batches of stuffing. On Christmas Eve I peeled four kilos of potatoes while watching a film, and my nephew, bribed with chocolate, did the sprouts.

The alarm went at six on the day. The turkey went in at half past seven, and that was when I discovered that a turkey, a tray of roast potatoes and a nut roast will not all fit in one oven at once. Our neighbour Bill, who was spending Christmas at his daughter’s, had left me his key, so the potatoes went next door and I ran between the two kitchens in my slippers every twenty minutes.

We sat down at ten past two, only forty minutes behind the spreadsheet. The gravy was lumpy and nobody minded. The washing up took three people two hours, and I fell asleep on the sofa before the Christmas film had even started.

Text 2: A letter at Christmas, by Margaret Aldred

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Text 2 is a letter written in the 1870s by a woman living in a country house to her sister in London.

My dear Kitty,

You asked how we manage our Christmas dinner in the country, and I will tell you, though it is a business of many weeks. The pudding was made upon the Sunday before Advent, as my mother always made hers. Cook stoned the raisins and chopped the suet the night before, and after church every person in the house, down to the boy who cleans the knives, took the spoon and stirred and made a wish. It was then boiled for eight hours in the copper and hung in the larder to ripen.

The goose has been fattened in the orchard since Michaelmas, and poor Ellen, our kitchen maid, plucked it on Christmas Eve in the scullery, so that she was white with down from head to foot. Cook was up at four upon the day itself to light the range, and the goose turned upon the spit before the fire for the whole of the morning, the children taking turns to baste it.

At last the pudding was carried in alight with brandy, and the children cheered as if it had been a ship come home.

Your affectionate sister,

Margaret

Using information from both texts, explain briefly what preparing the Christmas meal involved.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.