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We'll be celebrating Christmas with Chris & his family next Wednesday. My brain is fried...I have no idea what to plan to serve for our holiday meals.
Do you all have a traditional menu?

We will be having lamb and yorkshire pudding on our Winter Solstice celebration this year. I make several different kinds of cookies every year so dessert will be covered for several days.

We will be at my sons for Christmas. What ever we have will have to be made
the day before or I'll have to cook it. Son and DIL will not cook on Christmas this year.
So it's up in the air

Traditional dinner. Turkey, sweets, salad, taters, etc. boring, I know. But tasty---YES!! And there will be leftovers, since we didn't have any on turkey day.

Well, we decided a few years ago that Rob's mom would get us for Thanksgiving, and my mom would get us for Christmas. So we'll be going to my mom's house on Christmas Day. Our main family meal is actually breakfast - greasy spoon style. So we literally pass around a platter of fried eggs - over medium or so, along with about 4 kinds of breakfast meat, and then follow up with buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy.

It's amazing that anyone else will want to eat anything for the next few days that follow, but by about 2 or so, someone will start to work up a scaled down version of Thanksgiving, and we'll re-set the table for turkey sandwiches and a few of the most popular sides. Basically it will be things that have already been made, or that only require 10 minutes or less to make, and we'll be sitting down again around 4 or 5.. And no one will eat that much, because someone will bring a veggie tray, and someone will bring a loaf of rye bread with dill dip, and someone will bring crackers and cheese, and we'll all have been snacking on that stuff since an hour after breakfast ended.

Honey ham from the Honey Ham store, mashed potatoes (hubby), green beans, butter beans (son), deviled eggs ( SIL), sweet potatoes ( family recipe - the girls always fight over these), and NY cheesecake for dessert ( that one is a family favorite and everyone fights over it- homemade). DD & DIL will probably bring some other desserts too. We also have sausage balls, peanut butter balls, and sausage dip for snacking during the day. We try to fix favorites of everyone.

You wouldn't believe how much this is helping!

Julie - your Christmas breakfast reminds me of breakfast at my grandma's house! Oh how I miss those days...

Pam, once we started getting the ham from the HH Store, it really took off a lot of the work for the big meal. They all look forward to the ham each year and don't even miss the turkey or other meat.

we did the ham at my sisters last weekend and it is vey good
Maybe we'll get that for Christmas day, make scalloped potatoes, a veggie
salad,and some dessert. All make day before.
Then no one has to cook!

I think we are going to do a prime rib roast this year - we will have 10 people this year. We are tired of turkey So in addition to that we will have mashed potatoes and gravy (DD's favorite food practically), green beans,some other veggie, some sort of salad, rolls and then no doubt an assortment of desserts.

Breakfast will be scrambled eggs, bacon and our "filojes" - Portuguese sweet bread donuts. (assuming our bread making goes well the day before!)

We always have apple fritters for breakfast on holidays. Ray makes his Mother's recipe, see his blog on Thanksgiving.
We sometimes have crab cakes or other seafood on Christmas or we do the ham, yams, cole slaw traditional dinner. The first consideration is that the food has to go with French champagne. I'm going to make a mincemeat pie for dessert. We never have turkey on Christmas, it's too much trouble since I don't want to be cooking.
On the 27th when the company and DD get here, we are having a roast pork, the traditional sides, and Ray's Christmas pudding for dessert.
But it's all open to change. We are very flexible.

French champagne - check
Ray's Christmas pudding - check (Hey! I need that recipe!)

How long will your daughter be in the US?

Ham, turkey breast, gravy, cornbread dressing, rice, sweet potato souffle, collards, asparagus and green peas casserole, potato salad, pecan pies, pumpkin pies, and a cheesecake of some description not determined yet. We don't do traditional Thanksgiving so it's all out at Christmas.

I'll be eating leftovers until New Years.

I will make homemade Mac and cheese and a Johnny Appleseed cake.

My MIL (Laurie) will do a ham,mashed potatoes, veggies.

pamcook wrote:French champagne - check
Ray's Christmas pudding - check (Hey! I need that recipe!)

How long will your daughter be in the US?

She will be home until the 12th of Jan. Her birthday is the 5th so she will be home for that and for a trip to Pittsburgh to visit very close friends.

You have to make the Christmas pudding in about October, Pam. Even longer ahead would be good. One year we didn't have it at Christmas because the rellies were stranded in snow in Colorado and never got to our place. We didn't see them until February so the pudding had a few more months to age and it was really good. But he will be happy to share the recipe.