I thought it would be fun to tell everyone our xmas day menu because after a conversation with someone today I realised that more and more people are pulling away from tradition!

So what's your menu?!

As soon as I find out mine - I'l post

Shannon xxx

I never had starters as a kid at Christmas, but I am fully on board with them now. Tim's mom does "starters from around the world" - so you can pick a samosa, a duck spring roll, a battered prawn, a potato skin, a cheesy jalapeno...basically just a buffet in the middle of the table. Nom.

The main event is the usual - turkey, pigs in blankets, stuffing, mash, roasters, roasted carrots and parsnips and sprouts (which I don't have). Tim's dad and sister don't like peas so we don't have them and this is my main bugbear - you have GOT to have peas! Cranberry and apple sauces are a MUST.

Pudding is Christmas pudding or mince pies with custard, plus a trifle for those so inclined.

Back in the day my mom would usually do both pork and turkey which was nice and I would LOVE to try goose instead.

I am at the office, and the menu is in my kitchen at home, but here's what I can remember of what we will have on Christmas:
Assorted dips with fresh vegetables as well as chips (crisps)
Mexican 7-layer dip
Cranberry-Feta Pinwheels
Shrimp with cocktail sauce

Honey-baked spiral-cut ham
Carrots with fresh cranberries
Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with parmesan
Carmelized pearl onions
Delmonico potatoes

Apple pie
Pumpkin pie
Checkerboard mousse cake
ice cream

I have a massive extended family, so when we get together for Christmas, there's a ton of food.

Starters:
Spinach dip and chips
Fruit and dip
Veggies and Dip
Assorted breads
Assorted cheese

The meal:

Turkey (and cranberry sauce!)
Ham
Scalloped potatoes
Mashed potatoes
Baked potatoes (we're a meat and potatoes kind of family)
Broccoli
Carrots
Roasted brussel sprouts
Broccoli and cheese rice
Mashed carrots and rutabaga
Lemon garlic green beans
I think there's more, but those are the standard dishes

Dessert:
Usually, we have two cakes and four or five different pies, plus parfait and some cookies and squares and things.

There's usually between 25-30 of us, so we eat a lot of food.

So my family is kind of weird... We always have Virginia ham and homemade biscuits for breakfast and we used to have a big dinner but 10 or so years ago on Christmas, my mom kind of looked up and said, "I kind of want to relax now instead of worrying about dinner, so why don't we just have more ham biscuits?"

So now we just make more biscuits through the day and then have eggnog milkshakes at night, and it's turned into a tradition. I love it

At the big dinner:

We do starters, too!

Buffalo wings
Cheese & sausage dip
7 layer dip
Tortilla chips
Shrimp ring
And usually one or two odds things


The big dinner:

Turkey
Ham
Dressing
Mashed potos
Giblet gravy
Sweet potatoes
Grenn bean casserole (so tired of this)
Broccoli rice casserole ( getting tired of this, too)
Various salads - garden, spinach & strawberry,
Rising rolls

Pumpkin, buttermilk and black forest pies, pinapple upside down and crumb cakes and I HOPE my mom is making her banna pudding, it's my fav.

For my brunch:

Spinach & bacon quiche
Sausage quiche
Southern sausage gravy & biscuits
Pumpkin bread
French toast casserole or maybe blueberry pancakes
And I feel like I need something else.

kk~

I have no idea what I'm having this year I'm off to Dave's nan's and she's polish so she does a polish dinner. Dave has told me there will be Turkey and hats about it. I'm guessing there will be some form of cabbage (which I hate!)


Our 'normal' menu is roughly as follows

starters - prawn cocktail (my mom loves them so we have them every year and I get a little bored of them)

Main - no turkey as my mom doesn't like it

Pork (cooked Christmas Eve)
Chicken
Roast potatoes
boiled potatoes
mashed potatoes or mashed carrot and swede
carrots (boiled and roasted)
broccoli
cauliflower
Sprouts
peas
red cabbage in red wine with apple (the only cabbage I like)
bread sauce
apple sauce
gravy
stuffing (usually two different kinds)

dessert - a good couple of hours after dinner!

Always Christmas Pudding with various creams (plain, brandy, etc) and brandy butter

then we will usually have some other dessert - maybe pavlova or cheesecake

then we will finish up with coffee, baileys and chocolate.

I'm going to miss my Christmas lunch this year

MOOM

Christmas Eve will be pretty low-key this year; we'll have whatever my mom makes for dinner with my grandparents. On Christmas morning, we'll have brunch at my maternal grandma's house, which means mimosas, bacon & sausage, quiche, french toast, things like that. My Christmas dinner will probably be airplane food on the way to Italy, haha.

Well, my family doesn't really have a traditional Christmas meal. I think we are having tacos on Christmas

I'm not sure what the appetizers are--probably cheese & crackers, veg & dip, that sort of thing. Our starter course is always pear salad, which is a lettuce leaf topped with half a tinned pear and a dollop of sweetened cream cheese.

Mains:
Turkey
Crabcakes (our area is known for its crab, especially in crabcakes!)

Sides:
Green beans, southern-style
cornbread dressing
bread stuffing
fresh cranberry sauce
tinned cranberry sauce
mashed potatoes
sweet potato casserole
cole slaw
homemade gravy

Dessert:
pecan crescent cookies
soft lemon cookies
iced sugar cookies
chocolate and Bailey's cookies
molasses cookies
caramel brownie bites
fudge

I've also made 'puppy chow' (chocolate peanut butter snack mix) and cinnamon sugar pecans, but I'm not sure what category they belong to!

SO MUCH FOOD, I know... part of the reason is that one of my parents was raised in the Deep South, and the other in North, and neither of them wanted to give up their favorite dishes, so we get two of some things (e.g. the cranberry sauce and stuffing/dressing). Nice deal for me!

This is the first Christmas in my adult life where I know ahead of time that we'll all be home.

Most years we do breakfast here, then rush to eat something so we don't faint before we get to my parent's house 130 miles away. A few years we've had blizzards and couldn't travel so we ate here but this is the first with a real plan.

I ordered a huge prime rib roast from Omaha...hugely expensive and the size of a small human infant...and I plan to make it with fresh sliced carrots, mashed golden potatoes, romaine salad with sugared pecans and dried cranberries, homemade crescent rolls and assorted nut breads, and baked sliced apples. Simple and not too much work. It's tempting to add more to the menu, but I need to save room for dessert...

Chocolate cupcakes with white buttercream icing,
] with little Christmas trees on top, a big platter of Christmas cookies (see DDN cookie swap...I'm doing a ton of them....)www.dance.net . . . bread pudding with or without hard sauce (traditional in my family)and ice wine (my favorite Christmas indulgence)and egg nog.

It doesn't sound very extravagant but I think it will be just right. We do a big Christmas breakfast and it takes half the day to open presents, so....Merry Christmas to us!

Keep On Dancing*

So here's mine

Xmas eve: I'm going out with a group of friends so were having chinese before hand!

I'm going to my friends for xmas dinner so I believe it will be:
Xmas morning breakfast:
Chocolate (all the little kids apparently think this is tradition haha! And plenty coffee for the hangover! For the adults obviously!

Lunch is

Starter: Homeade soup and a roll
: Prawn and Melon cocktail

Then do a cocktail making kind of thing for the adults

Main : Turkey/Beef/Chicken with stuffing, carrots, parsnips, pigs n blankets, roast tatties, mash tatties

Pudding : Xmas cake, sticky toffee pudding, christmas pudding, ice cream

Dessert is coffee, baileys and more chocolate!

I'm having boxing day with my family and I'm cooking so my menu is!
: Sirloin roast beef
: Roast tatties
: Sweet potatoe mash
: carrots
: peas
: gravy
: garlic YUM!


And bannoffee cheesecake for pudding plus more baileys!

Enjoy your xmas everyone! xxx

I love reading about everyone's different meals.

Christmas Eve we do our Polish dinner since my dad is Polish. So my mom and I make cabbage rolls, pierogies, and meat on a stick (bascially breaded pork shoved on a stick that is fried then baked then fried again). Mmmmm, it's so good!

A typical Christmas dinner is turkey, cranberry sauce, rolls, egg bread, a vegetable dish or two, mashed potatoes, gravy and jello with canned fruit, and cranberry gingerale, tons of dessert! We like to bake so there's always tons of sugar. I think we're making a cheese cake, a trifle, we've made a ridiculous amout of cookies and squares, and a few pies as well.

Story behind the fruit jello - When my brother and I were little we didn't like cranberry sauce and my mother thought it proper that we had something that jiggled on our plate so she made jello fruit salad. Now it's tradition, one year she didn't make it and my brother and I were so upset, it just didn't feel right.

Shhaan_D wrote:

Main : Turkey/Beef/Chicken with stuffing, carrots, parsnips, pigs n blankets, roast tatties, mash tatties

I should probably mention that tatties are potatos!! haha

Very scottish!

Well I think I have my "menu" planned out for my Christmas dinner for one, yeah just me! I am going to make one of those turkey breast steaks? I guess that is what you call it, looks like a chicken breast but it is turkey. Mashed potatoes, stuffing and another vegetable (probably carrots). For dessert Chocolate chip cheesecake dip www.stumbleupon.com . . . with teddy grahams, because it keeps well. I should have just enough left over for a nice lunch the next day.

I would love to do a traditional Italian Seven Seas Christmas dinner, which has seven different kinds of seafood in it, but that's too much food. But I'll be able to incorporate four seafood items in.

Pics randomly grabbed from the web:

1) Antipasto platter with anchovies added for seafood #1.
2) Stuffed mushrooms because they are tradition at our house.
3) Romaine salad with shrimp, seafood #2
4) Linguine with clam sauce, that's seafood #3.
5) Some kind of baked white fish like cod, maybe with a macadamia nut crust, and there you have seafood #4.
6) Garlic bread.
7) Dessert will be hot fudge sundaes and I'll crush some candy canes on top.

LOL Chinese buffet. We go every year, it's the only place open and it's become a tradition. Christmas day movie and Chinese buffet

And Shannon, I wish I had some roasted Ayrshire tatties. I miss them! And Yorkshire pudding. And sticky toffee pudding....

We don't have a three course meal here because it's too heavy for this hot time of year. We're hosting an orphan's Christmas at our house, so I'm not sure exactly what the orphans are bringing.

I'll put out some carrot, celery, water crackers and a few dips for munchies over the morning.

At lunch, we will have:

Cold cuts (ham, smoked lamb, roast beef, turkey & salami)
Caesar salad
Mustard potato bake (the only hot dish of the day and it's a tradition on my husband's side of the family)
Some random salad from a Christmas orphan

Another Christmas orphan is going to bring sweet treats, but she's not sure what yet.

We'll also have:

Fruit in a fruit bowl
Fruit mince pies
Chocolate Truffles, White Christmas & Apricot Balls that Elijah and I made over the last few days
Jaffas and Mint leaf lollies (because they are red and green!)
Christmas cake

There is going to be plenty of wine, champagne, beer, spirits, softdrink and juice to drink.

We generally don't eat dinner on Christmas day because we're too full from lunch or if we're hungry, we just have leftovers.

Helen

Man this thread is so interesting. I never thought about what people from other European countries ate for Christmas dinner - seafood seems a bit bizarre but very cool! With my mom living in New Zealand I knew that a lot of Southern Hemisphere folk don't bother with the full works but I just assumed that Americans and Canadians would do a traditional British roast - but you all have different (and sometimes slightly weird!) things on your plate! How fun! I would LOVE to have Christmas somewhere else in the world (my mom's boyfriend once had swordfish on a beach in the Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire?) for his Christmas dinner) but I don't think his family would allow it

Christmas Eve;

Roast Chicken
Potato
Kumara (Or sweet potato... I think that is what it is called elsewhere?)
Pumpkin
Carrots
(All of the above roasted)
Steamed baby peas

And for dessert it will probably be a pavlova! Nom


On Christmas, we will go to a restaurant... probably one with a buffet. There will be lots of nice seafood and salads and cold stuff (hopefully! It is supposed to be a lovely hot sunny day on sunday!!).

SO excited!

Starters:
3 bean salad
Antipasto
Crab dip
Assorted olives and pickles

Main course:
Turkey and gravy
Spiral ham
Smashed potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Green bean casserole
Cranberry relish
Cornbread apple bacon stuffing/dressing
Carrots and broccoli
Pistachio salad
Mixed greens salad with dried cranberries and vinegrette

Dessert:
Gingersnap pumpkin pie
German chocolate pecan bars
Lemon bars
Rocky road bars
Peanut butter cookies
Lemon zest sugar cookies
Snickerdoodles
Egg nog

Everything I've made/ am making is gluten and dairy free. I never thought it would be possible

If anyone needs gluten free, dairy free recipes PM me.

It's my first Christmas on my own with my husband and a friend. We're having:

Main:
Turkey
Stuffing (although still deciding over some sort of meat stuffing or something from a box)
Green bean casserole
Little peas
Rolls

Dessert:
Cheesecake
Gobs (chocolate cake sandwiches with icing)
Christmas pudding (something similar to fruitcake soaked in brandy then set on fire)

IrishLizzy wrote:

I love reading about everyone's different meals.

Christmas Eve we do our Polish dinner since my dad is Polish. So my mom and I make cabbage rolls, pierogies, and meat on a stick (bascially breaded pork shoved on a stick that is fried then baked then fried again). Mmmmm, it's so good!

You seriously need to tell me what goes into a polish Christmas dinner? I don't think she does a Christmas eve one any more. are they very different?

MOOM

moomintrude wrote:

IrishLizzy wrote:

I love reading about everyone's different meals.

Christmas Eve we do our Polish dinner since my dad is Polish. So my mom and I make cabbage rolls, pierogies, and meat on a stick (bascially breaded pork shoved on a stick that is fried then baked then fried again). Mmmmm, it's so good!

You seriously need to tell me what goes into a polish Christmas dinner? I don't think she does a Christmas eve one any more. are they very different?

MOOM

You'll probably see cabbage rolls (golabki) which are leaves of cabbage stuffed with rice and pork/veal/beef and then cooked in tomato sauce and they might be fried. They might have pierogies, dough filled with potato and cheese or bacon, boiled and then probably fried. Mizeria, cucumbers mixed with dill and sour cream. There will probably be fish, maybe carp? There's always a ton of potatoes. The way we have them is mashed with sauted onions and sometimes cottage cheese. The meat on a stick is pretty popular. My dad's mom always made mushroom gravy, cauliflower and carrots, too. You might see borscht too, a beat soup.
Polish people aren't exactly known for their desserts, so there usually isn't a ton, but makowiec, a poppy seed cake, tends to be pretty popular at Christmas. It's really dry, but it's not too bad.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what might be there.

EDIT: VODKA! Expect booze.

One of my roomies and I are staying at our place for Christmas, no family or anything this year, so she and her boyfriend and one of our family-less friends and I are having Christmas dinner together. I think we're just going to grill some steak and make potato skins and caesar salad. Mostly we just want to get drunk in front of our fireplace, I think.