A sharp writer, who has never stepped foot in a kitchen, wrote a cooking column for a women's magazine. She posed as a happy homemaker, complete with husband, babe and country estate, to trick her publisher who believes in authenticity. Her goose is cooked when the publisher arranged for her to host a sailor over the Christmas holidays. The journalist has to marry her boyfriend, find a home and prepare a spectacular meal for a huge magazine spread. Things grow even more complicated when she starts to fall for the chivalrous seadog.