How to stop over-catering at Christmas

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I know this should be a simple "buy less" and I am generally a frugal-minded, concious shopper. I hate food waste and try my best to avoid it. All our left-overs will get eaten and we will graze through all the goodies but the management of this stresses me out. Every year I say I will try and manage the quantities better and every year I fail! So looking for tips from those of you who manage it. I cooked for 7 and did 5 small roasts each, still loads left! A carrot each, still loads left, 2 turkey joints (to serve 4 each) definitely more than one portion left.

So those of you who are experts at hosting and with minimal left at the end of your festive time, please post your quantity/general tips here.

Your name is better than mine.

Soft cheese, fair enough. I don’t know how you would store this but blue stilton should be freezable. It’s surely worth investigating if you can freeze other blue cheeses.

My mum grew up in poverty and my other grandparents where of the war mindset.

I think you need to plan for leftovers and see it as frugal planning. You can implement the same plan every year. You have a mindset of seeing it as wasteful abundance but this is literally how a lot of poor people plan.

So your left over meat isnt a waste. You planned it to only use the oven once instead of twice and this is now sandwiches, or a quick pasta or a pie filling

It was always your intention to have bubble and squeak with an egg on day 3 etc.

My nan could only afford meat, lots of fuel and cooking time on a sunday and few days meals were planned around the leftovers basically. My mum recalls a sort of bone broth with greens for dinner by Wednesday.

My dogs enjoy a small plate of roast dinner for a few days afterwards, which takes care of most of the leftovers. I saved them some of the turkey and used the rest to make a few portions of biriyani, so that's dinner sorted for the next few nights. My Mum always cooks a bit more than is needed because she likes to feed the birds the leftover veg and yorkshires.

I don't do too many different veg and sides and to be honest a lot of frozen versions taste pretty decent. I don't think I'll bother buying fresh sprouts next year as we normally use frozen throughout the year and I didn't think the fresh ones were that much better. Carrots and potatoes are the only veg I would bother to buy fresh if I was cooking for lots of people.

I tend to avoid buying too much in the way of fresh puddings. This year I stocked up on ice cream and a vienetta which are still untouched in the freezer, as we've had enough sugar from eating chocolates and biscuits.

I am making the comparison because they're potatoes?

Let's try to make that simpler for you. When you eat a jacket potato, you eat half a potato for an ENTIRE meal.

When you have a plate full of food, 5 roasties is A LOT. If it was just the roasties, it might not be that much, but IN ADDITION with the rest of the food, it's a lot.

Is it easier for you now?

My post didnt' come out of nowhere, it was in reply to someone saying I never heard of such a thing. Either you have a family of sparrows or the roast potatoes weren’t very nice. It's pretty normal that it's a big portion already, that's all