Ideas for Christmas Eve

[MrsBartlettforthewin]

This year we have 14 coming for Christmas Eve including a vegetarian and several fussy children. What easy but good for entertaining dishes would people do? Needs to work eating off laps for adults as we don't have enough room to have everyone sat down at the table. Only the kids will be sat.

Lasagne - ratatouille makes a good alternative filling for vegetarians
Curry or chilli are easy to adapt for vegetarians

We often have hot pork sandwiches with stuffing & apple sauce on Christmas Eve, google for hot vegetarian sandwich fillings. You could serve with mugs of veg soup.

Curry is good lap good, as it can be eaten without just a fork. I'd do a few different curries, rice, nahn bread, yoghurt and chutney. Mild coconut chicken curry and a spicier veg curry.

what about making a vegetable stew.either with tomato based sauce or white based sauce. then you can split off and add meat or just cook some chicken thighs,chops,beef on the side for the meat eaters.both can have dumplings or a pie crust.
one tip for easy pie crust is to cut out cookie cutter sized shapes of pastry.we did xmas trees and stars last year and bake them on their own.then do stew on the hob.then serve them together so you've got a deconstructed pie almost.it was quite cool.
what about a roasted veggies packed pasta bake.
macaroni cheese served with salmon.
do they both do fish.then a fish pie
a curry.you can start with the same base then split off?
take away of course.
pizzas.
savoury crumble
another thing you could do is serve the meal in bowls.sooo much easier and less messy

This all sound delicious. Liking the idea of chilli or curry. Has the added bonus could make before hand.