Christmas Eve Meal

[LetsHaveAnotherGo]

What do you all have to eat on Christmas Eve? Don't think I want to do a big meal to keep us all looking forward to Christmas dinner.
I'm thinking maybe a little buffet but would like some extra special things 🙂 will be me, DH, DSD6 and DD8months.

I love having a lighter meal on Christmas Eve. We have home made celeriac, thyme & pancetta soup with sourdough that tastes SO Christmassy. Then a dessert. We never make it to dessert on Christmas Day so this suits us really well. I make the soup ahead and freeze..

We always have Chinese takeaway straight after christingle. Too much cooking on Christmas Day to be cooking on Christmas Eve too.

Christmas Eve at ours means feeding 17 people. We make two types of pie: chicken and leek or steak in ale served with winter veg and potatoes dauphinois. We have two birthdays as well so dessert is homemade birthday cake.

Christmas Day is more low key for just the three of us.

We order in Chinese on Xmas eve. Far too busy prepping for Xmas day to cook on Xmas eve as well

Crackers and nice cheese and some ham primula for the dog 😁

My family have always had a Swiss cheese fondue on Christmas Eve. I spent a few years living in Switzerland as a child and it has been a family tradition ever since. I love it even more than I love Christmas dinner and it’s one tradition I really want to carry on every year with my family...but we often go to the in-laws for Christmas Eve and they tend to have a Chinese takeaway. It never feels quite as cosy and festive. Christmas at our house this year though so the fondue set is definitely coming out!

Our family are a blend of Italian and English so we try and do a bit of everything over Christmas.
We have a mixture of antipasti, salamis and cold meats, cheese, peppers, nice bread, olives and salad.
When by gran was alive we always had baccala(sp?) which is salted cod and very traditional,me and my mum used to force it down because my gran loved it.
After this we go to mass.
Christmas Day is traditional English but we go out, started a few years ago as we do Xmas every year and I'd had enough of not seeing the kids and being a waitress and chef for the day.
Boxing Day is whatever is in the fridge or sometimes a homemade soup like pea and ham
Day after Boxing Day we go to my mums for a full Italian Xmas day dinner it by far my favourite as that was always what I ate at Xmas as a child.

@holycityzoo - I'm curious after your post - what is a traditional Italian Christmas meal? I have no idea... I'm guessing that there's a pannetone involved somewhere along the line as I'm hoping that's a tradition that has travelled rather than the UK being seen as a place to dump a load of unsold pannetone left over from Italian autumnal celebrations but other than that... I would love to find out!

Hoping I might find some new inspiration for my christmas lunch as I loathe turkey but don't have an argument to introduce anything else as everybody else likes it.

Chinese and always the same thing - chicken curry with half rice and half chips, two spring rolls and prawn crackers.

Fish pie. White, smoked and prawns, in a white sauce with a little cheese and a dash of white wine, plenty of mash and loads of cheese on top.

Though have also been known to have some of the big gammon cooked earlier, with a spicy orange and mustard glaze..

Crackers, meats, and cheeses. It’s usually just DH, DS2, and me. Sometimes my brother will come by for a bit. DS1 and DiL spend Xmas Eve with her folks.

@rosablue it will vary massively between region to region and even from family to family. We do have panatone but it's for breakfast on christamas day. It's big meal with small portions with we spend a good few hours eating!!
This is what we have-
Some sort of fish usually big prawns in garlic and wine or brandy
Lasagne. This nothing like lasagne most people will have tried. It takes around a day to make it has pork veal and beef in it and lots of other ingredients such as salami, mortadella, small meat balls, chopped egg, cheese and no bechamel and the pasta Is homemade
Some form of meat , usually veal with salad and bread
There are usually a couple of deserts maybe a homemade tiramisu or zuchotto(sp?)
Then cheese
Then coffee and digestivi usually with some kind of home made chocolates.

We used to this on Boxing Day but felt we couldn't do it justice as we were all too full or feeling a little delicate after Xmas day!
The 28th works much better

Last year we got a beef pie from marks and Spencer’s with the bone in. It was bleeding fabulous. So we shall order that this year again but I’m taken with the buffet idea also so perhaps we shall have pie on Boxing Day or just another pre Christmas Day and a buffet on the Eve. I love the idea of not cooking anything the day before and having time to go to the children’s service with my little boy who will be old enough this year.

We usually have either a stew if dh is working or an indoor picnic. We have 2dc this year so I think it'll be an indoor picnic watching Muppets Christmas Carol followed by hot chocolate.

We are having our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve this year and then having party food on the day itself. Looking forward to it

Pizza, crisps, popcorn, chocolates, sweets. All eaten while watching Xmas movies with our hot chocolates under blankets on the sofas

When the kids were smaller we always had fish pie, posh with prawns as well as fish, white, smoked and salmon. Then when they hit their teens we made a meatball lasagne, gorgeous but fiddly. It kept the kids busy making hazelnut sized meatballs 😂

This year I've had a request for fish pie again

KFC after the cinema. We've done it for years and even though the DC are older they still want to do it.

Always do a festive glazed gammon (nigella) which we have warm with crusty bread and a baked Camembert

Baileys coffee for supper

Then the rest of the gammon is for sandwiches over the next few days

My husband cooks and always makes what we call his German Christmas market meal. Which is as it sounds, food that we like from the German Christmas markets. So usually bratwurst sausages and Bratkartoffeln (potatoes fried with bacon). Then we watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I love Christmas Eve!

The last few years we have had a fry up at my parents. We go to the butchers earlier on in the day to get all the bits for it.

We normally have steak and chips. Quick, easy and a treat.

It varies year to year. Usually something like ham in the slow cooker (coke, peppercorns, onion and bay leaves) it’s gorgeous. We put it on buttered barms with apple sauce. I also make a homemade sausagemeat and chestnut stuffing, so cook a small chicken too and again make up some buttered barms with mayonnaise and cranberry sauce. We also have M&S party food, baked camembert with red onion chutney, crisps/dips, chocolate yule log and cream and copious amounts of bucks fizz.

We go to my parents and my dad makes up pork apple and stuffing sandwiches. We usually have a small platter of "sides"- crisps, wedges, cheese and crackers etc

We always go out for an early dinner!
No way would I cook on Christmas Eve, I like to keep the house clean before the Christmas Day celebrations start!