What foods and drinks make your Christmas?

[FlatteredFool]

For me it's Quality Street (even though they taste rubbish compared to when I was little) and fried potato sandwiches for breakfast. The smell of the quality street tin or tub is one of my favourite smells and they smell the same even if they don't taste the same. There's other things too but those two are the main ones for me.

Minced pies
Christmas cake
Wine
Snowmen cookies
Gingerbread biscuits
Cheese platter
Sausage rolls
Ham sandwiches
Salad
Jam tarts
Bread rolls
Eggnog
Baked apples and chicken
Box of shop chocolates
Plum pudding

Proper Snowballs are a measure of advocaat, a dash of lime cordial and carefully top up with lemonade. My kids have been having this since they were in double figures and is Christmas to them. The bottles of premade are ok, but freshly made is so much better.

I've been looking up recipes for Eggnog, I've never made it before (or even tasted it) but I fancy trying it. If anyone has a recipe that works please share it.

My uncle's homemade sausage meat stuffing! I've tried to recreate it many times but it's never as good as his!
Buck's Fizz and croissants for breakfast - a tradition my DM started in our house and one I'm making sure I carry on!
A roast gammon joint for tea on Christmas Eve and then leftovers with 2nd Christmas lunch on Boxing Day!
Soup - either homemade veg or celeriac and apple. I make a massive pot and freeze it in portions so it's an easy lunch for anyone
York fruits - my nana always got a box or 2 every year and I'd steal all the good ones

Baileys

I do love homemade mince pies (not a fan of shop ones)

BUT the thing for me is...

my mams stuffing the best stuffing ever. Cooked Christmas eve, sampled Christmas eve and warmed through Christmas Day.

@MissyB1

I've been looking up recipes for Eggnog, I've never made it before (or even tasted it) but I fancy trying it. If anyone has a recipe that works please share it.

This is the one I've used. God it's delicious.

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/egg_nog_64580

Baileys.

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee thanks that looks simple enough I will give it a go!

Mince pies
Pigs in blankets
A box of Quality Streets
After Eights
Twiglets
Satsumas
Roast dinner
Baked Alaska

I drink alcohol very rarely, a few times a year and Christmas is one of them...these are my Christmas drinks
Mojito
Snowball
Pink Prosecco
Guinness and black

Proper mulled wine on Christmas Eve, to go with Carols from King’s.

Loads of Buck’s Fizz on the day (and Boxing Day) - made with fresh orange juice.

Trad turkey dinner with pigs in blankets and home made Christmas pud, with a bit of holly stuck in the top and brought to the table in all its flaming glory. 🎄

Usually C Day breakfast of bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese, nice and easy.

Plu a nice big piece of gammon with a spicy orange glaze - I usually cook it on Chr. Eve even if we don’t eat it until later - the smell while it’s cooking once the glaze is on, is divinely Christmassy.

I've made a list of all the food you've a mentioned and added it into my Christmas Planner

And the alcohol too obviously. Wouldn't be Christmas without Advocaat.

I'm currently eating a fried potato buttie and it's amazing. I'm not sure how they became a thing but I'm glad they did.

Vanilla Turkish delight is not a Christmas thing as such but I'll be ordering some this year.

Orange matchmakers are essential.

After 8 mints too but they aren't as good as they used to be.

Jelly tots and smarties in tubes. Fruit pastilles are now vegan and will be in stockings this year.

Tia Maria for my mum.

I'm debating a new Christmas eve tradition with food but I have to share dc so I'm not sure how we will do things.

Bread sauce
Mushy peas (just to counter some of the more sophisticated offerings on the thread)
My mum's cheesecake made with Philadelphia and hazelnut yoghurt and dairy milk shaved over the top
Celery sticks with primula cheese and shrimp
Strawberry creams in the roses tin
Sherry trifle
Phileas fogg tortilla chips and those dips that come in a four pack

When I was a young twenty something, I cooked turkey mince for the first time, and exclaimed to my then bf that it smells like Christmas. I was amazed.

@BIoodyStupidJohnson

Every year I make a stollen stuffed with more marzipan than is advised or sensible. Not for everyone but even the scent of it is pure Christmas for me.

Recipe please!!

Roasted duck or goose, braised red cabbage and potato dumplings, lebkuchen, limoncello, champagne.

@PaperDolphin It's an old recipe passed on verbally from a friend's grandmother but this one is pretty close to what I do. I use about double the amount of marzipan mentioned here though, if not triple. Usually make two 'logs' of marzipan instead of one.

Omg I love this thread, can't wait to read all the replies

For me, Boots/M & S Christmas meal deals are so so Christmassy, I wait all year to get the first one! Always get the brie sandwich, festive sweet treat and vanilla coke which is reserved for Xmas too.

Toffee nut lattes when Christmas shopping

Costa used to do the squidgiest, lovliest little stollen bites.

Apart from the Christmas day roast, these are the only things I couldn't do without.

Smoked salmon
The boxing day spread: cold ham, Turkey, anti-pasti, pork pie, salads, Herbed roasties.
27th ham and Turkey pie (which of course requires a baked ham and a turkey).
Bread sauce - unctious and clovey.
Stollen
Delia's classic trifle

Christmas chutney from a stall that's always in the same spot on the Christmas markets in Manchester. Think they are based in the lakes but that and the Christmas jam make my Xmas.

Gingerbread stuffing. It's a nigella recipe that DH had a stab at about 6/7 years ago but it is DEVINE. It's not Xmas without it. It's amazing on leftover butties too.

I forgot about drinks.

But hot fresh orange (no pulp) with a shot of amaretto. Christmas in a mug

Anything somebody else has made

Ooh this is making me think about getting started on my shopping for the non-perishable stuff 😋

York fruits
Lebkuchen
Strawberry creams
Christmas pudding and brandy butter
Bubble and squeak with surprise bit of pigs in blankets and chestnuts in 😍
All the cheeses, especially a baked camembert with lovely bread to dip in
Chutneys and pickles
A Bailey's every night
Christmas meal deal sandwiches
Champagne
Bagels for breakfast on Christmas morning

We're staying at home for the first time this year so I'm looking forward to planning a nice but low key Christmas menu for us that DD (almost 2) might deign to try some of!

@TheFairPrincess

Omg I love this thread, can't wait to read all the replies

For me, Boots/M & S Christmas meal deals are so so Christmassy, I wait all year to get the first one! Always get the brie sandwich, festive sweet treat and vanilla coke which is reserved for Xmas too.

Toffee nut lattes when Christmas shopping

Costa used to do the squidgiest, lovliest little stollen bites.

Apart from the Christmas day roast, these are the only things I couldn't do without.

Gingerbread lattes for me!

A large juicy gammon cooked in coke!