Opinions on my Christmas menu!

[HerbivorousRex]

I know it’s early but this is our first year hosting Christmas and I’m very excited (I love Christmas!)
Please could you look through my menu/plan for the day and let me know what you think!
I love baking and often cook for large numbers of people but I’ve never done Christmas before (I’m also veggie so I don’t want to miss anything that the meat eaters might want!)

We have 12 adults and 2 children coming for the day and we’ll eat lunch at 2pm.

Breakfast (9am after stockings):
Smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels
Bacon sandwiches
Cranberry and orange mimosas
Tea/coffee/juice

Everyone staying with us goes for a long walk in the morning. Everyone else will arrive between 1-2pm. Pre-dinner drinks and nibbles.

• Spiced orange martini
• Cranberry gin fizz
• Nuts, crisps and dips
• Mince pies and gingerbread biscuits

Lunch (2.30pm)
Starter (plus pulling crackers and opening table presents):
Pate on sourdough toast with cornichons.

Main:
Goose or Turkey.
Beef.
Chestnut, mushroom and Stilton nut roast.
Pork, hazelnut and spiced apple stuffing
Pigs in blankets (veggie sausage for me).
Cauliflower and leek cheese with whole grain mustard.
Sprouts with roasted chestnuts and pancetta.
Spiced red cabbage.
Honey/spice glazed, roasted carrots and parsnips.
Mashed swede with loads of butter and black pepper.
Yorkshire puddings.
Roast potatoes.
Gravy.
Wine, water and sparkling apple juice.

Pudding:
Christmas pudding.
Christmas wreath pavlova (with berries).
Spiced chocolate orange tart.
Cream/custard/ice-cream/brandy butter.
Tea/coffee

Open presents round the tree. Play games. Christmas treasure hunt. Gingerbread house decorating competition.

Evening food (7pm):
Cheese/charcuterie board (with figs, apples/pears, salad, pickles, chutneys, olives etc).
Nice bread and crackers
Christmas cake, mince pies and gingerbread house.
Mulled wine, hot chocolate, expresso martinis.

Watch Christmas films (argue about whether ‘Die Hard’ counts as a Christmas film).

Is there anything I’ve missed or that you think I should add/cut?

It sounds fabulous Op. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas (and ignore the miseries on this thread).

That all sounds wonderful OP! Although I’d probably explode lol.

I shall be pinching some of your menu ideas. I always over cater on Christmas Day, but it means I have plenty of leftovers to make the next few days a piece of cake*. And plenty to send home with my adult kids & partners so they don’t go home empty handed!

*I freeze a lot of leftovers that won’t be used for 48-72 hours, my family think I’m barking but I’ve accumulated 2 large fridges & 3 freezers, but it means I can keep Uncle Tom Cobley & all catered for & spread the love!

Ah, I'm one of the "way too much" people but I hate leftovers, nothing worse than being offered them on Boxing Day, definitely back to normal food for us.

Leftovers are a fundamental part of the between Christmas and new year period for us.

On the veg front, I did panto with Howard Lew Lewis (Elmo from Brushstrokes) many years ago. His fabulous wife Anna would always cook 15 types of veg to go with their Christmas dinner! I can’t remember them all, but it included roast and mashed potatoes, red cabbage, carrots, peas, sprouts, parsnips, I think cauliflower cheese… I forget the rest!

I'm thinking about the Boxing Day Buffet so i'd go turkey AND beef, it'll last a few days, and bake a ham a day or so in advance, vital for the BDB.
Get some pickled veg going too.

Ah no, we cook to minimise leftovers and any we do have are either given to guests to take home, made into stock or frozen till at least the end of Jan.

Yeeikes. Way too much food. I love planning loads of food at Christmas but experience teaches you that you don’t need half of it.

It sounds a lovely menu, but I think you are going to have a lot of left over food to try to pack into your fridge!I also think that unless you are getting everything out of packets or have a sous chef elf in your kitchen you will be a frazzled irritable mess by the end and won’t have had a minute to sit down and enjoy the company of your guests.

I would

Cut back on the pre dinner drinks menu, just offer a few nuts/crisps

Serve the pate on crackers not sour dough toast

Lose one of the vegetables and make the others simpler

Lose two of the desserts.

Offer something simpler in the evening, eg cold meat sandwiches, ham or turkey, or cheese and crackers .Make to order rather than put out a buffet because a lot of people will be stuffed and not ready to eat again,Have Christmas cake looking pretty on the side, with mince pies. But most people will not be interested. If there are a lot of children I might offer them ice cream.I would also lose the faffy evening cocktails, have wine or spirits for the drinkers. Do the cocktails before Boxing Day lunch.

By popular demand the Yorkshire puddings have been re-added!

Thank goodness 🙏

Oh god I’ll be 25 weeks pregnant at Christmas and we’re hosting at ours for the first time. They’ll be 8 adults & 5 kids. Your menu is making mine look very inferior! 😂 just the thought of it is tiring me out very jealous of your energy!

Sounds amazing, though there would be a riot in our house if we took off Yorkshire puddings and cauli cheese. Those are my favourites too

I'm shocked that so many people have said this is too much food standard in our house to have lots, leftovers are one of the best bits of Christmas!
Sounds perfect to me, wish I was eating all of that for Christmas

I know you're excited, and I don't want to pull you down, but there isn't any time on there to just BE and relax. And with a large group of people like that, don't under estimate how long it takes to organise anything, with people chatting, going to the loo, kids disappearing to play, etc..
Have you got three ovens to cook all that food? And are you proposing to cook it all in the morning? Are starters really necessary?

I didn’t twig you were pregnant, OP.

As someone who has hosted Christmas Day for a crowd quite a few times, it is hard work. Even with all the prep you do on Christmas Eve.

There’s just something about it - it’s somehow different from other entertaining.

I think you gave an amazing menu planned - but to achieve what you have in mind means you will spend the entire day in the kitchen.

Which isn’t a disaster if you enjoy entertaining.

But - it’s your Christmas Day, too. You will be exhausted at the end of it - I remember my first, and I wasn’t even pregnant. You’re on your feet for the entire day, and there’s something about all the mental organising, planning and executing to bring it all together, which is also really tiring.

This is just a heads up, because you think you know if you’ve hosted a crowd before.

Good luck - I am certain you will have a lovely day, no matter what! 🎄

Sounds amazing but I’d make sure you have a scoop of ice cream in the freezer for the children as the desserts aren’t really child friendly. (Obvs depends on ages of the children invited) and Coca Cola for the non drinkers, orange juice is too rich with all that food, maybe a carton or two of Percy pig juice from M&S for the childrenit’s a really treat for my kids to have these.

Again - how is pavlova not child friendly?

I want to come 😂 christmas at your house sounds like a dream!!

Menu- sounds lovely, obviously.
Doing it all- waaaaay too much. Hosting can be fun but that’s a lot of work.

It sounds fabulous.

My only concern would be the amount of postprandial activity. We open our gifts before dinner, and the dc are excused as soon as they’ve eaten to go play with the new toys (by lunch time the Santa gifts are old news). And the adults spend, easily another hour at the table just chatting. It does take a bit of kitchen confidence to pull off the timing. The first year I hosted I deliberately chose to do gifts after dinner thinking that would be easier for me but nobody really enjoyed that because they were only in the mood to drape themselves on furniture and snooze! And the dc needed a lot of attention during dinner and kept mithering us to hurry up to open the gifts.

In my house games, treasure hunts and competitions would be out of the question at this stage, although a nice festive film for the dc would be ideal. It takes us about an hour and a half for people to emerge from the gluttony coma and in the evening we all play cards.

If you are doing gingerbread houses it might be an idea to get the pre built ones rather than the kind where you stick the walls together and cry when it collapses!

Be sure and work out the logistics of what’s in the oven/when and what cooking tray and serving dish you plan to use for each. My first Christmas was planned around magic dishes cooking different contents at the same time and a single jug to serve custard, cream, milk and the bread sauce.

If you have a think about the ‘gluttony coma’ - and it’s ability to completely wipe out people who’ve done nothing but big, fat sit there all day, doing nothing and then over-eating….

… I think this also sheds some light on how much more wiped out the person is, who’s been on the feet all day organising, preparing and cooking!

Rather than ordinary mashed Swede add about a tablespoon of thick cream/ fromage frais and some allspice (mine) or nutmeg( my late mum's) your be surprised how much nicer it is.

@Squirrelblanket

Yorkshire pudding is amazing but doesn't belong on Christmas dinner..🤷🏻‍♀️

Heresy 😱

@Howareyouflower

I know you're excited, and I don't want to pull you down, but there isn't any time on there to just BE and relax. And with a large group of people like that, don't under estimate how long it takes to organise anything, with people chatting, going to the loo, kids disappearing to play, etc.. Have you got three ovens to cook all that food? And are you proposing to cook it all in the morning? Are starters really necessary?

I posted earlier but agree with this

The1st year we hosted I had schedule-no-one stuck to it including the children who for years had been up before 7 but slept until 10

It sounds lovely, but I would agree with many of the other posters re starter, mince pies, beef etc.

To add our experience, we moved to present opening after dinner a few years ago and it has worked really well. It used to upset me that I would miss it all because I was in the kitchen all morning. Kids still open stockings etc in the morning though.

The other thing we do is that we wait until about 6pm before having pudding. It really breaks up the eating.

Friends introduced us to the joy of Christmas cake with cheese a few years ago, and it is fantastic! I would add that to a cheeseboard at about 9pm.

Your day sounds amazing, but do be prepared to scale it back if it is too much for you. I invested in some massive 5l Pyrex rectangular dishes with lids (£5 at Asda) and they play a key role in catering for large numbers. It means you can cook things the day before, store in the fridge and reheat in the oven still in the same dish.