Christmas Menus

spendingmad

Hi All, My menu for christmas is as follows

Chrsitmas Eve Me, OH, DS(5) DD(18month) my Mum and Step Dad

Breakfast - Cereal and toast nothing special
Lunch - Open sandwiches prawn/ham
Dinner - Call at a local takeaway on way home from church (indian/chippy)

Christmas Day

Breakfast - Croissants, Bucksfizz and Chocolates!!!!

Dinner - Are you ready for this! (catering for 16!!:eek: )
starter - HM Salmon and Prawn Mousse or Cranberry marinated chicken skewers on a bed of salad leaves
soup - HM Winter vegetable
Main - Turkey, Ham, Pigs in Blankets, Roasties, Mash, Sprouts with pancetta and chestnut, califlower cheese, Carrots, Yorkshire pudds, 2 stuffings,
Dessert - HM Xmas pud, Profiteroles or Strawberry mousse M&S thingy (Dad buying desserts so I will send him to the posh places!!)

Tea - Leftover sandwiches, Sausage Rolls, Cheese and crackers

Boxing Day

Breakfast - Sausage or Bacon Butties

Leftovers for the rest of the week!!!!

All I need to do now is work out how 16 people (14 adults 2 kids) are going to eat and sleep:eek: in our house!!!!! Can people sleep in cars in December ?:o

do you think I will survive my first christmas at home!?! I dont know weather to laugh or cry! Luckily alot of the things will be prepared on the 23rd/xmas eve so xmas day shouldnt be that bad!

Anytips for mass catering gratefully received!

MrsTinks

Danish rice pudding or Ris a la mande - this is my nans version
The charamelised potatos can be made from tinned potato's (that's what I have always done).

plumduff55

Hi, my menu for Christams day is:

Breakfast
Orange juice, then bread rolls with grilled sausages and bacon.

Late Morning
Cheese and ham croissants and christmas muffins.

4pm Dinner
Fruit Salad
or
Pate, oatcakes, salad and plum sauce

******

Roast Turkey, chipolatas & gravy
Sausagemeat & sage stuffing
Mashed carrots & swede
Brussel Sprouts
Roast potatoes
Duchesse potatoes

*****
White chocolate & cherry trifle
or
Chocolate & orange pavlova

*****

Coffee
After Eights
Scottish tablet

After that lot we will be absolutely stuffed, may pick at some choccies while watching a Christmas DVD later.

piglet6

When Mr P and I were first together (before we bought our own place), we used to do the "Christmas Day at one parents, Boxing Day at the other..." routine...

The very worst year was the first year after we got married. Mr P was determind that we would have a "proper" Christmas lunch together, but as we were still living in a rented studio apartment, we were due to go to my parents on Christmas Eve evening, to spend Christmas Day with them, before heading off to his parents for Boxing Day.

Mr P went all out and cooked a fabulous three course turkey dinner on Christmas Eve at lunchtime, so that we had our first "married" Christmas dinner. It was gorgeous!:D

Then, we went to my parents on Christmas Eve evening, and had a fabulous three course turkey dinner the next day... A bit repetitive, but still lovely...;)

On Boxing Day morning, we made the 120 mile drive to Mr P's parents to sit down to lunch with his parents and Grandma... You've guessed it - it "didn't feel the same" for them to eat turkey on Christmas Day without us, so they ate the joint of beef they had bought for Boxing Day on Christmas Day, and had saved the turkey to have with us on Boxing Day...yum, yum, a third fabulous three course turkey dinner in 3 days!!!:o

Unsurprisingly, when we bought our own place a year after we got married, we invited both sets of parents (plus elderly relative from both sides) to ours for Christmas, and have been doing so ever since - there's only so much turkey we can manage!!:rolleyes:

Anyway, we have very few changes to Christmas these days - the menu is as follows:

Christmas Eve
Tends to be what you can catch throughout the day as we all tend to be busy, and in the evening, it is usually something simple like homemade soup/bread or jacket potatoes and fillings, mainly because people are travelling and arriving at different times, so this suits everybody better than a proper sit-down meal.

Christmas Day
Breakfast - my mother always makes a sausagemeat and onion pie (known as "little pig pie")...this is something my father remembers from his childhood. Its an acquired taste at breakfast and Mr P has never really got used to it, so for those who can't manage the pie, there are croissants with butter and jam (or basically anything else that people want...we are very amenable on Christmas morning - if you want it and we have it, you can have it!).
Lunch - this tends to be a cold buffet of breads, cold meats, cheese, salads, quiche, little pig pie, etc, and this is because we always have visitors dropping in throughout Christmas Day, so we gave up trying to have a proper sit-down meal during the day. People help themselves when they are hungry and visitors can also eat as much or as little as they fancy...
Dinner - We eat a large chicken dinner (it took several years to realise that we were all eating turkey because we thought everybody else liked it...as it turned out, none of us really like turkey and we all prefer chicken!). The starter changes every year, but the chicken + a million veg stays the same and we always have homemade Christmas pudding for dessert. We also always have a cheeseboard which nobody can manage to eat - its traditional!:rotfl:

Boxing Day
Breakfast - like Christmas Day, this tends to be whatever you fancy!
Lunch - Like Christmas Day, another buffet (although today, it tends to be picking from the fridge, rather than all set out on the table...mostly, people aren't even hungry!)
Dinner - This is a large sit-down meal again. The starter varies, but the main course is always Beef Wellington + veggies, and for dessert, we always eat Panettone with a brandy/marmalade cream. Once more, the cheeseboard is lucky if it gets a look in!:rolleyes:

The next few days are spent eating through leftovers. Although nobody really minds if there is no chicken left over for sandwiches, there are always complaints if there is no Beef Wellington left over for sandwiches, so now we always cook a much larger piece of beef than we know we will need for the initial meal...:p

Piglet

MERFE

Well I've managed so far to get away without ever doing Christmas dinner, I resigned to doing Boxing Day last year but might have to do it next year.

We always go to my mums where the menu is:
Breakfast whatever just have the norm
Dinner around 2pm
Roast Duck (except the year we had goose but back to duck as its nicer IMO)
Roast potatoes
New potatoes
Roasted Veg
Steamed Veg
Stuffings etc
Desert is anything you like always a choice of christmas log, christmas cake, pudding, mincepie, ice cream etc
Then in the evening a supper of sandwiches and snack foods as much as you like, and more mince pies.

My mum always goes ott at christmas but its the way i like it, this year we are going to MIL, 200 miles away for a week, no where for us to sleep (that all 4 of us) and the last time i went to theirs for christmas you had to all sit round and open your present one at a time and comment on how lovely it is (much prefer the mad rush of excitment at my mums to open them asap) then for dinner we had to eat a pink turkey because they forgot to put it on or had the oven too low or something, its probably gonna be turkey again which i just really don't like so I'm not getting my hopes up then I might be pleasantly supprised.

Amanda65

spendingmad wrote: »

Anytips for mass catering gratefully received!

Hit the champagne early in the morning and you'll find the day goes by swimmingly :rotfl:

kal25

Lillibet wrote: »

Xmas day
Lunch
No starter as it fills us up too much!
3 bird roast, hoping for duck, chicken & pheasent with cranberry stuffing but depends on the butchers mood!
Roasted veggies
Roasted Spuds
Yorkshires
Pumpkin pie (another no-pudding family)

My god where do you put it all we have enough with just turkey:rotfl: :rotfl:

I'm afraid my menu is pretty bland too.
Xmas eve
just a normal day so tea is whatever I fancy doing or takeaway as viasiting relatives and still normally have loads to do. Will probably be xtra busy as niece's bday too.

Xmas day
breakfast is normal so toast or cereal tea/ coffee

Lunch
No starter
Turkey with cranberry sauce
stuffing
sprouts (for those that eat them)
carrotts
cabbage
peas
roasties
yorkies
Pudding last year was a hm chocolate cake with custard (no xmas pud here)

Tea
Normally spent with FIL and SMIL so normally a buffet.

Boxing day last year was spent at MIL.

This year will probably be about the same although I will keep a look out on this thread as I am always looking for something different.

Angua2

Hiyas! Just a note about special tipples for the holidays (2006 prices, btw):

Lindauer Special Reserve Brut ("New Zealand's best value fizz") - very good, despite (?!) being pink

Really delicious cava and incredibly cheap (£3.99 at the Co-op): 2001 Marques de Monistrol Vintage Cava

Reds


Anakena, Ona, Syrah, Cachapoal and Leyda 2004

Substantial nose with some savoury, gamey Syrah notes alongside the fresh, sweet raspberry fruit. Full bodied.
£9.09 Oddbins


Primitivo-Merlot, Da Luca 2004

Sweet, gamey nose with spicy fruit. Full and chunky in the mouth with vanilla-oak, gentle, grainy tannins and a dry finish.
£4.99 Sainsbury’s supermarkets (020 7695 6000), Waitrose supermarkets (0800 188 884)


Whites


Pouilly-Fuisse, Louis Jadot (2002)


Very expressive bouquet, white flowers and honey. Fine, elegant flavour, quite rich in fruit but all in balance thanks to minerally acidity.

7th Continent, Chardonnay-Pinot Grigio, Adelaide Hills (2005)

Ripe, rich aromas of orange peel and spice. Not a fresh, racy wine but fuller and creamy textured with a touch of residual sweetness on the mineral finish.

Angua2

Just a thought, but we "track" Santa online on Xmas Eve...

URL: http://www.noradsanta.org/en/tracking.php

lolarentt

Reading these threads reminds me of one of the comparatively few things I still really miss since giving up meat some 20 years ago.

Boxing morning breakfast: Cold ham sliced off the gammon joint, topped with 2 soft boiled and shelled eggs (boiled eggs work much better than poached, too wet, or fried).