What are your must have Christmas food snacks/treats? Which ones are just not your thing?

[pinkksugarmouse]

Just nosey. Lol

It's just me and DH mostly. DD (nearly 18) spends Christmas Day/Boxing day with her Dad because that's the home she spends the most time at & her Dad doesn't get a lot of time off over Christmas but when she is here she can eat us out of house and home. She can clear a loaf of bread in three days alone.

DD and I are Vegan. DH isn't. He likes to have a Thornton's chocolate box and their range is much better for Vegans so I will have a small box this year. He gets some cheese and I get some specialist seasonal vegan ones. We don't do mince pies, Christmas Cake, Yule Log, Pringles, Selection boxes (but I will get a selection of sweets for DD). I also get a monthly vegankind subscription box and the snacks in there last me over a month. None of us drink but I like a posh cola occasionally, wouldn't bother with coca cola.

What are your must haves? What do you avoid. Do you do any of the traditional snacks? How many of you are there? Is anyone vegan/have allergies? Again I am just plain nosey.

Essentials:
Cheese, crackers, nuts, port, red wine, cranberry gin fizz, chocolate cashews, mince pies, a ham joint for grazing, homemade boozy fruitcake.

No place under our roof:
Marzipan!

Must haves:

Selection of nice cheeses, chutneys and crackers.
Smoked salmon
M&S Swiss chocolate balls, much prefer them over the Lindt ones.
Also Marks cocoa dusted Belgian truffles having discovered them last year.
Christmas pudding
Mince pies
Stollen.
Cava (I prefer it to champagne)
Wine
Sprouts.
A selection of party food for easy freezer-to-oven snacking.
A box of tayto crisps Its not as though we can’t have them any day of the year but for some reason at Xmas I must have a box of them in! I cba with “posh” crisps, they’re always a disappointment.

We don’t eat meat so turkey, goose, pigs in blankets etc are obviously not going on our list.

Not my thing:

Bread sauce.
Parsnips
Those tins of dates and figs that were popular a hundred years ago, likewise nuts that require a nutcracker.
Sherry trifle
Baileys
Pringles.

Must have pate, croissants, chocolate and jalapeño poppers

Not bothered about Christmas cake, stollen, ham or pickled onions.

Must have:
Chriatmas dinner with all the trimmings
Cheese biscuits and Pickle/apples
Posh crisps and dips
Pickled onions
Cadburys fingers for dc
After eights
Squirty cream, pouring cream and icecream (always get all 3)
Hot chocolate
Marshmallows
Cookies (homemade)
Chocolate pudding (homemade)
Sausage rolls with various additions (homemade)
Croissants
Fresh juice
Alcohol bucks fizz/wine

Sometimes quite like:
Brandy snaps
A nice fruit & nut selection
A yule log

Not bothered on:
Mince pies
Christmas cake/pudding
Liquors
Pate
Prawn rings
Mulled wine and anything along those lines.

Must have:

• turkey and all the trimmings
• mince pies
• mulled wine
• baileys
• prosecco
• yule log (I make one every Christmas eve)
• Terry's chocolate orange
• cheese and crackers with nice chutney (hard cheese only!)

Not fussed

• christmas cake
• trifle
• stollen
• stilton or brie

We get gifted alot of chocolate so dont tend to buy much unless specific things me or dh want like a toblerone or terrys orange selection.

Must

Baked camembert
Bread sauce
Pigs in blankets
Ferrero rocher
Quality street
Bucks Fizz
Christmas Pudding

Can do without

Mince pies
Panettone
Twiglits
Baklava
Stollen
Christmas cake

Must have:
Walnut Whips
Chocolate Brazil Nuts (getting harder to source, but already got this years supply from M&S)
Snowballs (the drink, not the weather)
Maraschino Cherries (for the Snowballs)
Trifle
Prawn Cocktail
Christmas Crackers

Never have:
Christmas Cake
Christmas Pudding
Twiglets
Sherry in the trifle

We like good chocolate too for special occasions - so I buy a large bag (about €10 worth - a decently large fistful) of Leonidas orangettes. (DD sometimes also gets Hotel Chocolat but that's much harder to get locally).

I like a handful of Amaretto biscuits (and Amaretti to drink alongside) - which are a Christmas treat for me.

Not being a vegan house, we do enjoy a nice spread of cured meats and cooked fish as part of our Christmas (we open them on Christmas Eve as part of our "platter" dinner that night and finish over the next few days). Things like parma or similar cured ham, braseola, salamis. Smoked salmon, nice prawns, squid rings, and the likes.

And a nice cheese board and good sourdough crackers.

I also like a good big pot of hummus (whether I make that myself or buy it) and tapenade, and lots of olives, sun dried tomatoes etc, to be able to pick at. And good crunchy fresh carrots and peppers to make sticks for dipping into hummus.

For us, it is more about savoury rather than sweet.

And some alcohol, but not loads.

Assuming it'll be rule of six minimum at Christmas so just 5 of us so no turkey this year! Have ordered an executive chicken instead.

Have to have:
Tin of chocolates - varies year by year, usually QS
Nuts in their shells
Salted nuts
Christmas cake
Massive joint of gammon
Homemade mince pies
Homemade sausage rolls
Industrial quantities of pigs in blankets
Very good red wine
Champagne
Seafood
Stilton & Montagnolo Affine

No thanks to:
Trifle
Christmas pudding
Chocolates with any alcohol in
Cheese with any fruit in

Cashew nuts.

I only eat them at Christmas as I can easily eat a whole packet in a day.

We're not vegetarian or vegan and no allergies in our house either, but I don't eat pork.

Must haves - excluding the main dinner:
Seafood platter (smoked salmon, fishballs, dressed lobster, prawns, smoked mackerel etc)
Antipasti, definitely grilled artichoke and peppers
Baked cheesecake
Chinese snacks and spring rolls (I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas and we used to go for a Chinese on the day)
Baileys
Spiced Rum
Hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows
Iced mince pies
Black Forest Yule Log
Leftover turkey pie

DH's job each year is to get a trolley full of crisps, crackers, flavoured nuts and chocolates. Especially Monster Munch and Kinder buenos. To our family Christmas is a 2 week long feast. Ideally I get to spend days with a book or watching films alternating between hot chocolate and champagne while grazing over an antipasti platter, hot buttered olive bread and a box of celebrations. I cannot wait!

Mustn't haves:
Cheeses
Dates
Christmas Cake
Red Cabbage
Ham
Brandy butter
Panettone
Pickles
Twiglets

Must have:

Some cheese
A freezer full of sourdough and half baked cheap white rolls
Chocolate - very dark for me from Choccoco, cheap stuff like Quality St for DH and DC
Marks and Spencer party food for Xmas eve supper with a movie
Ham for DH and my parents
Champagne
Red wine
Schloer for the children's 'champagne'
Smoked salmon
Trifle - DDad
Gingernut pudding
Nuts and plain crisps

Don't mind missing:
Mince pies
Christmas cake (nice but too many wasted calories I'd rather eat chocolate)
Turkey - I've cooked 12 in a row, this Yr it's fillet of beef and chips instead
Potatoes (the family love them but me and DS not keen at all)
Never buy ice cream. No one likes it