Holiday Menu 2012

[ladyknight1]

What are your traditional holiday menu items? Are you trying anything new this year?

[Kaypeep]

An entire tin of Peppermint Bark.

This year, I'm trying NOT to eat the whole thing again.

[GratefulMaria]

My sons are at school too far away to come home for Thanksgiving, so they tend to want turkey for Christmas.  My mother likes something different, though; I think we'll have a not-enormous turkey plus a small tenderloin roast.

Traditional sides:  couple-three vegetable options, cranberry sauce, the Starch Trinity (rice, potatoes, rolls).  My mother's wonderful apple cake for dessert, maybe with melted cheese . . .  Oh, my, I need to get to work.

[Hmmmmm]

While Thanksgiving is always traditional, Christmas is always something different, though oysters are involved in some aspect.  This year is beef Wellington with peppercorn sauce, fried oysters, cranberry blue cheese salad, and pommes Anna.  Sticky toffee pudding is becoming a traditional dessert but we'll have others too.

Our big tradition is tamales for Christmas morning breakfast. 14 people coming over this Saturday for our annual tamale making party.

[Outdoor Girl]

Christmas dinner is very similar to Thanksgiving dinner for my family.  With Thanksgiving back in October for us Canadians, it is over two months since we had turkey so it isn't so bad to do it again.   

The biggest difference is the dessert.  Instead of pumpkin pie, we always had a Christmas pudding.  After my Mom died, I found out no one but me liked it so I started making raspberry pie, instead, and also serve an assortment of Christmas cookies.

Christmas breakfast is homemade chelsea buns.  You prep the pans with butter, brown sugar, pecans and glazed cherries.  Then you make bread dough, roll it out after the first rise and butter it, add brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins then roll it up and cut it into about 1" pieces, which are then placed in the pan cut side up and down.  Let them rise a bit then bake them.  Flip them out of the pan and they are all glisteny and golden brown.  And if you are lucky, you had enough butter and brown sugar that some of it runs off into a little puddle of sticky toffee under the cooling rack that the baker gets to eat with a spoon.     I make these ahead and freeze them.

[Shalamar]

I have a daughter who's a vegan and another who's a vegetarian, and my husband and I are omnivores, so Christmas is always a bit of a challenge.    I think we're going to do what we usually do:

- Turkey and stuffing for my husband and me (I could make vegetarian stuffing, but my kids don't like stuffing at all, so I won't worry about it)
- Vegan gravy (which is darned tasty)
- Tofurky roast for the girls
- Mashed spuds
- Cornbread pudding (I've never made this, so it should be interesting!)
- Brussels sprouts
- Cranberry sauce
- Rolls and butter or Earth Balance margarine
- Lots of wine
- and, for dessert, I'm going to try something new - either vegan Buche de Noel or vegan Sticky Toffee Pudding (the post above that mentioned Sticky Toffee Pudding got me drooling)

[baritone108]

We usually have prime rib for Christmas Eve and lasagna for Christmas Day.  This year DH and I will be alone for Christmas eve so we're going to split a prime rib steak and have salmon, also.  We'll have a tossed salad, spaetzle with gravy, corn and asparagus.

For Christmas breakfast we usually have a variation of Hanky Pankys, made with swiss & mozzarela cheese, black olives, bacon & mayo.  We typically put it on party rye but this year I'm going to try spreading it on crescent rolls before rolling & baking them.  Going to try it with the traditional hanky panky mix, too.

My other holiday season favorite is a large cup of coffee with Bailey's Irish Cream in it.  I have a cup most evenings for about 10 days or so.

[siamesecat2965]

It's just my mom and I now, and we are very non-traditional!  she also usually leaves the cooking to me as she doesn't like to!  We did have pork roast for a couple of years on Christmas, but i'm not really a fan of it, so last yearI made beef rouladen, spatzle and gravy, and some red cabbage.

This year mom has it in her head she wants a beef tenderloin with merlot and shallot reduction. I've nver made it, so it will be interesting to see how it comes out.  Not sure what we'll have with it, but i think some sort of potato and some veggies.

[readingchick]

It's pretty much the same as Thanksgiving in the readingchick family....turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, noodles, dressing, gravy, the infamous green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and whatever else strikes people's fancy. The only difference is there's a wide variety of premeal munchies (cheeseball with crackers, marzipan, peanut butter fudge, soda cracker fudge, and other things) at Christmas while for Thanksgiving the only premeal munchies are cheeseball and crackers.

[ladyknight1]

We traditionally do appetizers for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve (just the three of us and a friend or two) so:
Baked Brie en croute
Fruit, cheese, crackers
Skewers: grape tomatoes, pearl mozzarella, basil; chicken with vegetables; steak and mushroom; shrimp
Shrimp cocktail
Mini hot dogs in pastry
Mini hot dogs in homemade barbecue sauce
A fun dessert
Sparkling wine and fruit juice for DS

For Christmas day, I usually make a breakfast casserole the night before that can just be heated while we open presents together and play with our toys. 

Christmas dinner always includes a spiral ham with a homemade glaze, but this year we are also doing a fried turkey. Some sort of potatoes, corn souffle, green beans with mushroom sauce topped with crispy onions, sweet potato souffle with streusel topping. We did two Bundt cakes last year, Apple Cider (right) and German Chocolate.

[sevenday]

There are two traditional Christmas staples: iced sugar cookies (cutouts), and candy cane cookies.  It's a little bit of a tradition for Mom and I to get together and make a batch of each, and lay them out for Christmas Eve/Day for the family to nibble on. And then, of course, we split the leftovers between us and nibble through New Year's, because we are cookie fiends.    It's fun just to plan what we're going to make - X number of snowmen, Y number of stockings, etc, and then 'compete' with each other as we decorate to make the wildest combinations (she won last year with a neon-green-and-yellow tie-dye stocking) or whatever.  My sister used to participate, but stopped after she had her two sons.  She has not bothered to try to start that tradition with them either, even though the couple years where the boys were at my mother's house on cookie day, they were happy to help us. 

[Mikayla]

We always go the "anything but turkey" route for Christmas.  One year my BIL made an amazing English feast, with the beef, yorkshire pudding, brussels sprouts, etc. 

We're doing a repeat of an ethnic Christmas this year, because we're all pretty adventurous diners.  BIL is making the entree, which I think is going to be some kind of fish cooked Greek style.  The rest of us can bring whatever we want to go with it, even if it doesn't go with it. 

I'm trying to find a good recipe for Butter Chicken (Indian) and probably some apps.

[jmarvellous]

Taco feast. For us, that means:
 Lots of warm tortillas
Beans: refried and black
Meat: seasoned ground turkey or beef, chicken
Meat alternative: usually fake beef crumbles or Soyrizo, but i might do eggplant with chorizo seasoning this year
Vegetables: tomatoes, lettuce, onion, avocado
Other toppings: shredded cheese, sour cream, black bean and corn salsa, pico, red salsa and guacamole
Chips to pick up leftovers

Plus Christmas cookies galore, and usually coffee cake or Monkey bread for breakfast.

[violinp]

On Christmas Eve, we have an early dinner before church - cheese vegetable chowder and French bread. After church, we have a buffet - style meal that includes: shrimp; scotcheroos; fudge; peanut butter blossoms; crackers with cheese and summer sausage; cashews; chips and dip; and vegetables and dip (and that's merely the normal stuff every year - we have a different something each year to jazz it up).

For Christmas Day we have two big meals: breakfast and dinner. At breakfast, we have: eggs Benedict; canteloupe; honeydew; grapes; and an assortment of sweets from the other night. At dinner, we have: some form of pork or beef; mashed potatoes; at least two kinds of vegetables; a salad; rolls and butter; and some kind of dessert.

...Aaand now I'm hungry. Drat. 

[doodlemor]

In the last few years I've gotten interested in my heritage, and have done Swedish cooking for Christmas.  I make Swedish meatballs, ham, potatoes au Gratin, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, salad, rolls, pickled cucumbers and some other side dishes. 

I will probably make several kinds of soup, and  some hearty appetizers like vasterbotten pie [only I'll use a sharp cheddar], shrimp, and egg salad with apple bits on little pieces of toasted rye.

For dessert I usually make a dromtarta, Swedish apple or rhubarb pie,  ginger cookies, chocolate balls, and a soft ginger cake with cardamom.  This year I'm planning to also do a punsch cake with lingonberry preserves, or else a lingonberry spice roll cake.