To think serving a starter with Christmas dinner is unnecessary. And weird.

[Kavalier]

Am hosting DH's family for Xmas dinner for the first time this year. MIL always does a prawn cocktail starter and they will miss a starter if I don't serve one, so I will. I think it's very odd though. AIBU?

It claimed that it was acceptabe not to serve a starter on Christmas day. That's the kind of provocative shit it came out with squoosh. Bastard menu!

We don't have starters, we have snacks littered throughout the house before dinner that you can eat at your leisure. Like cracker plates, veggies trays, fruit bowls, chocolates.

But I hear it's an American thing to put tons of food on all the tables and counters for people to graze on.

It keeps you from getting too hungry before Christmas dinner though.

That is a provocative menu, indeed.

At least it provided an ethereal and an opera. What else was on there? A polemic of cured meats? A rumination of aubergine?

The was a Degustation of Salzones

and

Fish According to the Market

It was quite a menu!

This thread has a vulgar undercurrent of stealth 'I've got considerably more ovens than you' boasting.
Someone somewhere is beside themselves that no one has asked them how they cook all that food so they can answer "four oven aga". I can feel it in my waters.

Slubber Are you serious?! I ensure shitloads of food on Xmas day with a very average sized, basic oven. It's all in the planning and preparation.

And a prawn cocktail doesn't need oven space anyway

We don't have a starter for xmas dinner, but we ALWAYS have a prawn cocktail as a starter for our xmas day evening buffet. Also if we don't have a Iceland prawn ring everyone would be rioting! (we have a classy xmas!)

Well I have a starter, it's called half a bottle of whisky whilst cooking the fucking lunch. starter for ds and Dh is first plate of Christmas dinner.

I've got an oven set aside especially for melon and parma ham starters. May not have melon, but the melon oven's there on standby just in case.......

I am feeling alot of mumsnet love for a festive prawn in some guise or other.

We have gravadlax but its sort of passed around with cocktail sausages, lots of posh crisps and nibbles and drinks- so kind of a canape starter.

And a massive cheese selection at the end, after the pud. But not foamy cheese.

WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeGoes Sun 23-Nov-14 22:55:05
That was me, we always had our Yorkshires and gravy as a starter growing up, that's the traditional Yorkshire way, to fill you up so you don't need so much meat. It's the only starter I serve with a roast dinner, but we don't do it on Christmas Day because we don't want to be filled up before the main.

Thanks for this. My mum always used to have lentil soup before roast dinners, probably for the same reason.

YABVU

wookie a menu simply isn't provovative enough without foamy cheese

I should post the whole damn thing - there were 18 courses I think!

And squoosh I literally snorted at your melon overn

Get away crumble with your planning and preparation

Someone somewhere in this world has put their melon in the proving oven to take the chill off it before serving.

slubber - I do have two ovens now. not that unusual I'd say, give the popularity of range ovens in the past few years.

but I do Christmas dinner exactly the same as my mother did when I was growing up. she only had one oven, a standard sized gas one, and still managed to cook turkey, ham, roast potatoes, roast parsnips etc

and we always had a starter - prawn cocktail so didn't need an oven.....although must ask squoosh if her melon oven could be used to ensure the marie rose sauce is exactly the right temp......

nice to see others on this thread enjoying turkey and ham for Christmas dinner
too!

We have canapés at normal lunch time and go straight to the meat and trimmings at around 3pm.

Ham on christmas eve (to then eat cold on boxing day with piccalilli etc.
Turkey and pigs (sans blankets, I think they spoil the piggies), roast potatoes, parsnip and carrots in maple syrup, pork and chestnut stuffing, red cabbage, sprouts, gravy, bread sauce (BOAK)
Ooh. Hungry. Not a good thread to fast to
No starter as no need to prolong the feast iyswim.

Why would you need to take the chill off melon? You DON'T keep it in the fridge surely

Growing up my mum bev from abigails party used to serve half a melon with port in the 'hole' as a starter. Other starters included, pate, corn on the cob, grapefruit with a glace cherry in the middle, and of course prawn cocktail.

yep, we have a snack, prob smoked salmon, after we get back from church and before lunch- that needs prepping and will take a while

Mrs K I keep my melons in the garage. They're far too ugly and yellow and round to have displayed. Not that I eat a lot of melons mind.

a garage?! how low brow of you. i keep my melons in harvey nicks food hall. i get them to deliver slices to me as and when i require a 1970s appetiser - which is pretty darn regularly, as i am often having 'post modern ironic' dinner parties.

In fact i think this year i'm going to challenge the hegemony of a traditional christmas dinner by spinning the concepts on their heads and using whimsy to highlight the preposterousness of the rigidity which it all entails. I will start by fashioning 'chocolate coins' using blended up turkey offal and carving images of starving donkeys on them...I will measure my success by how much my children are crying.

Harvey Nicks? How 20th century! I keep mine in my integrated, temperature controlled melonerie. Plebs

Integrated melonerie, oh dear. Are you a footballer's wife?

We employ a Melongére to look after all things melon related. He has been specifically trained in the art of melon keeping at the world famous L'atelier de Cordon Bleu Melonery.