What are you serving for the holidays?

It's summer here, so cold seafood is always on the menu. My MIL is doing the seafood, so I'm not sure exactly what it will be. She usually does prawns, lobster, smoked salmon.

I will be doing a slow cooked lamb, and maybe a pork belly. And because others have insisted, a (store-bought pre-cooked) turkey breast. I bought one that is stuffed with cranberries and pistachios. We will also have cold ham, pumpkin and beetroot salad, crispy roast potatoes and pumpkin, broccolini. I haven't decided what else yet.

I want to spend Christmas in Australia! It's warm. You get to have seafood.

I was just writing out my menus and doing my grocery order. Nothing special here. I think we are going to have chicken on Christmas day - one of my easy recipes with a sauce, rice and cooked carrots. I baked for a party last week so we consumed our fun calories early this year.

We are doing Mexican. Quite some time ago, our family decided to break away from traditional and we change it up a bit from year to year. Fondue, Mexican, Italian, Asian and Steak and Seafood are in the main rotation.
Fixings for Tacos and Burritos
Tamales
Enchaladas
Spanish Rice
Green Chili
Red Chili
Guacamole with Chips
sopapilla
Various other desserts and cookies.

We've been doing a taco bar/Mexican for several years. It's easy and everyone loves it. We will have tacos, tostadas, plenty of flour tortillas, two kinds of queso and chips, a copycat Chuy's creamy jalapeno dip, pico and guacamole. And tamales.

Giordano's deep dish pizza, shipped frozen via Fed Ex from Chicago. It's been a tradition ever since we left the Midwest.

There are only 5 of us and 3 of them have dietary needs. That makes figuring out a menu difficult. I was going to do breakfast for dinner but that didn't really appeal to me. I've ordered fish (cod) and garlic shrimp from Schwans and they will be delivered on Thursday. Also serving broccoli, basmati rice, those Cheddar Bay biscuits that Red Lobster sells (found in the frozen food section at the grocery store), and macaroni and cheese.

Christmas Eve - we normally do appetizers. But, this year I bought a table top raclette grill thing, so we are making table top fajitas on the grill. Shrimp, chicken and tofu with veggies, cheese, sour cream salsa and guacamole.

Christmas Breakfast/Brunch - an egg/hash brown dish, Monkey bread and fresh fruit

Dinner - Prime rib with prime rib gravy, twice baked potatoes, roasted asparagus, arugula salad and dinner rolls. Not sure about dessert...my daughter covers that.

Already picked up the tamales from a local Mexican restaurant for Christmas Eve. We get them frozen and steam them ourselves. We will have rice and beans and all of the toppings guacamole, salsa, sour cream etc.

Christmas dinner will be prime rib with hasselback potatoes and roasted asparagus.

Those tamales sound soooo good. I love a good tamale. 

My mother in law is ordering Chinese (her Chinese restaurant is not good 🤢) for Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Day, I am making manicotti, salad, and rolls. (Im not making the rolls from scratch, but we will have rolls!). I realized after Thanksgiving that I am tired of having the same holiday meals on repeat, so I decided on manicotti for Christmas.

Oh that's too bad! I love Chinese food, but I am also verrrrrrry picky about it!

On Christmas Eve we are having our traditional 2Peas Burning Feather's Italian Beef served with sautéed peppers and onions and mozzarella cheese on rolls and twice baked potatoes with an obscene amount of cheese.

Christmas Morning will be my new sausage ball recipe that was such a hit at Thanksgiving and and a coffee cake that is an old family recipe.

Christmas day instead of our traditional grazing on leftovers we are having lasagna to remember MIL who passed in 2019.

She always came over on Christmas afternoon and brought a huge pan of lasagna that we would have on the 26th.

We want to spend as little time in the kitchen on Christmas day as possible. Growing up I saw my Mom never getting to relax and enjoy the day because she was in the kitchen fixing a huge turkey dinner with all of the sides.

I vowed I would spend my Christmas day playing with my kids and their toys, or now since they are older, playing with my own toys!

Linguine w clam sauce, stuffed shells, chicken Parmesan, salad and a Yule log, fruits and nuts for dessert. 

We are low key immediate family only holiday people. I also don’t want to spend a bunch of time cooking- I want to hang out with my family so we always do:

Christmas Eve late lunch: steaks, potatoes, corn, rolls
Then Christmas Eve dinner after our church service is appetizers

Christmas Day we have brunch with fruit, a cottage potato dish, and cinnamon rolls

Dinner is make your own pizzas.