There are many, many experts that offer to help us through Christmas, writes Lynne Mortimer.

We have cocktail suggestions one day, hangover cures the next. How to perfectly wrap a present (who cares?); laying the table best practice; how to play strip charades; how to avoid family disputes over cracker novelties. But mainly, it’s about food.

There isn’t a celebrity chef who doesn’t feel moved to share his or her foolproof method for cooking turkey with us: on its back; on it’s front; stuffed; unstuffed; stuffed both ends; bacon on; bacon off; giblets for gravy; throw out giblets; cook all night; buy a boneless breast; have beef.

The stuffing: sage and onion; parsley and thyme; parsley, thyme and lemon; cranberry, sage and onion; use shallots; chestnut, sage and onion; buy Paxo.

Pigs in blankets: yes; no.

Wine: Fizzy, moving on to white or red. My husband opens his special Christmas bottle of red at 10am and stands it by the oven to reach room temperature.

Vegetables: roast potatoes, parmentier potatoes; hasselbacks; sprouts; sprouts with chestnut; sprouts with bacon; five-minute sprouts; 10-minute sprouts; 40-minute sprouts; roast parsnips; roast parsnips with honey; parsnip purée; cauliflower; splips of minted pea purée; roast butternut squash; a smear of celeriac purée.

Leftovers: sprout curry; turkey a la pain avec du beurre; bubble and squeak with onion crisp; Christmas pudding omelette (a Fanny Craddock special)

See also: cranberry; cranberry with port; cranberry with orange, bread sauce.

Personally, I’m not sure Christmas Day is the time to experiment with new recipe ideas.

If anyone at the dinner table stabs something with their fork, holds it up and says: “What was this, again?” you’ve probably gone too far with the new-fangled cheffy stuff.

Preparing lunch for 25 people (even though you’re feeding eight) is stressful enough without giving yourself something new to try.

I know people enjoy starters, I do, but they are not strictly necessary before Christmas lunch, especially with pudding for pudding. It’s OK to go bonkers with accompaniments with the festive pud and there’s nothing wrong with Birds custard (I believe Marcus Wareing said he eats it with a Fortnum and Mason pudding) and you can buy cream infused with just about every kind of spirit – rum, brandy, cointreau, champagne, Baileys, prosecco. Bung a tub of ice cream on the table plus brandy butter and brandy sauce and, job done. Moreover, you have the makings of a five-pound weight gain.

After lunch, you offer cheese. The likelihood is that no one will accept but you can get a small cheeseboard for between £6 and £10 in most supermarkets. Serve with grapes. Then have a cup of tea or coffee with a chocolate mint.

You have to discard the plan to take a post-prandial walk on the park because it will probably be dark in 10 minutes. You have a nap instead but you can’t have more than 20 of the available number of winks because it will-soon be time for tea. For any other mammal on the planet, the quantity of food we pack away over Christmas would indicate it was about to go into hibernation for the remainder of winter. But we just keep on noshing.

Traditionally, our Christmas tea is a boiled gammon joint augmented with cold turkey eaten with buttered, white sliced bread, a little salad and my dad’s pickled onions which are usually at optimum strength by Christmas... somewhere between a three-day bad breath problem and one-day heartburn. But they’re worth it.

Later in the evening, it will be time to crack open the Twiglets and play 2p Newmarket to Mortimer standard rules. We have, in the past, had to deal firmly with people who want to play differently. We are very old school – in Scrabble we don’t allow swapping blanks for the letters they represent. We will also try out Obama Llama which is some sort of celebrity rhyming game, QED.

Along with Twiglets, we have cheesy balls, Hula Hoops and peanuts and then move on to Turkish delight, orange and lemon slices and Ferrero Rocher. My husband will fetch drinks... inevitably there will be a request for a snowball and we will surreptitiously inspect the ancient advocaat bottle to see if there’s a best-before date. By now it will be about 9pm and time to open a chocolate selection box. Happy Christmas!