Non-traditional Christmas Dinner

I am really tired or plain old roast turkey. My husbands family often makes Christmas Dinner potluck style as they are close together and I am forced to endure yet another roast turkey, potatoes, carrots, and a salad. They are painfully boring, but getting better as some of us have started to raise the bar a bit.

This year is my turn and I intend to raise the bar a little higher! I am making Turkey Wellington (yes, I watch too much food network). I am starting my trial run right now. Everything this year will be make a day in advance and just re-heated in the oven. I hate spending all day cooking while my kids are hanging off my leg wanting me to play with the new toys. This year Santa found some cool toys and I intend to spend the day playing.

What I am after now is make ahead side dishes. I want lots of variety because not everyone appreciates my non-traditional style. I will make a honey mustard marinated broccoli/cauliflower salad and I will make carrot sticks the night before for my gingered carrots. Does anyone else have any family favorites they care to share??

We do Raclette(kinda like a make-your-own-meal table top grill with melting pan below for veggies and cheese) every Christmas and New years, never had turkey for christmas(or thanksgiving), just not a traditional dish where I come from.
Our Raclette usually has Rabbit, pork, wildgame, goose, duck and sometimes a little bit of beef(depending on how much company is coming). Then a huge variety of veggies too to be cooked up to everyones liking, and of course the awesome raclette cheese.
Makes for a nice long dinner where everyone has time to sociallize while their food cooks on the raclette grill. Takes an average of 3 hrs to eat.

I find folks are actually really open to trying something different, our Neighbours who are absolutely mega traditional on their holiday meals love to come over for our christmas dinner to try all the different meats, making their own food combos etc.

Sounds wonderful! I dont have a recipe, but candied sweet potatoes are one of my favorite dishes!

Danish red cabbage is one of my faves. Can be made ahead and frozen and then just heat it up when you need it. I'd have to look up the recipe. Ours comes out a bit sweet.

lots of recipes online but I have to check our own to see if they are similar to ours.

We're doing a late brunch followed by a fondue supper. Easy peasy, make-ahead and reheat, minimal effort required on the actual day of.

authenticfarm wrote:We're doing a late brunch followed by a fondue supper. Easy peasy, make-ahead and reheat, minimal effort required on the actual day of.

Yup we do xmas fondu as well, way more fun

We do a seafood dinner here and I would guess the bacon wrapped scallops would be our side dish . We do have veggies but not anything note worthy.

I wait till new years to do a traditional thats when I invite the family over for dinner.

We are have a very non traditional
Christmas Dinner. NONE
For the first time in many years
we are going to our oldest sons
in Okotoks to have Christmas with
our first grandson.
So I am not putting up a tree,
I am not baking and I am not cooking dinner.
What a holiday for me.
Our youngest son will take care of the
farm while we are away. It will be his
first Christmas without us so all around
it will be different. He will be with his
girlfriends family.

I always do the turkey and trimmings but I also have cabbage rolls and pyrohy...hmmm yummy

Bowker Acres wrote: I will make a honey mustard marinated broccoli/cauliflower salad and I will make carrot sticks the night before for my gingered carrots. Does anyone else have any family favorites they care to share??

Ah, you gotta share those two recipes!! Just the dressing for the salad and how do you make the gingered carrots? We are having a traditional turkey at youngest Daughter's home on Christmas eve. And on Christmas day a fondue at oldest Daughter's home. The fondue will be fun, so many meat pieces to cook up, I am drooling already. Always have a nice pot of chocolate keeping warm for the kiwi, strawberries, grapes and bananas too. Some side dishes like artichoke and spinach dip, and that yummy shrimp in cream cheese layers she makes. Oh boy, got the appetite going at 7:00 AM. Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

I am not a turkey fan. TO me, leftover turkey smells like someone farted in the fridge.

I like prime rib. Hubby and Daughter whine. Aww..do we have to have prime rib? Poor babies. Yet no one has offered to take over meal prep, house cleaning, shopping, table setting, guest schmoozing and the hours and hours of clean-up. So I say, shut up and eat your prime rib!

Karona...good for you! Enjoy!

We always have traditional dinner and its my favourite meal! However, we do eat it more often than just holidays so this year I was thinking we'd do something else we don't usually make. I was thinking maybe trying homemade fish and chips or maybe we'll do fondue IDK

I did find that putting together a big dinner on a day when kids are looking for attention frustrating as I wanted to be part of the fun not in the kitchen. So we started making our big turkey dinner on Christmas eve and then on Christmas day we spent all day doing fun stuff with the kids and then just hauling out leftovers. For veggies on actual Christmas I just put out fresh veggies and a dip or 2 and we have a simple leftover dinner. We don't have family close by so its just us and simple with kids keeps the house calmer

Karona I hope you have a lovely time

We've done lamb with Yorkshire pudding before. Excellent!

CynthiaM wrote:

Bowker Acres wrote: I will make a honey mustard marinated broccoli/cauliflower salad and I will make carrot sticks the night before for my gingered carrots. Does anyone else have any family favorites they care to share??

Ah, you gotta share those two recipes!! Just the dressing for the salad and how do you make the gingered carrots? We are having a traditional turkey at youngest Daughter's home on Christmas eve. And on Christmas day a fondue at oldest Daughter's home. The fondue will be fun, so many meat pieces to cook up, I am drooling already. Always have a nice pot of chocolate keeping warm for the kiwi, strawberries, grapes and bananas too. Some side dishes like artichoke and spinach dip, and that yummy shrimp in cream cheese layers she makes. Oh boy, got the appetite going at 7:00 AM. Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

Wish I could give you a recipe, but I made it up years ago. Here is the basics....Broccoli salad is just a kicked up version of the original. I add half cauliflower though. I also add pine nuts, bacon bits, dried cranberries or cherries and onion. The dressing is honey, and Dijon mustard. More honey than mustard, then a splash of a berry flavoured balsamic vinegar or syrup. I add only a tablespoon of mayo to thicken a little and that is it. I don't like the mayo based dressings so I made this one up. The whole family loves it. Even my 2-year old.

The carrots are easy. I cut them into match sticks and roast them with butter, honey (not lots) and a big tablespoon of finely chopped candied ginger. Cook with lid on until juice starts to form in the bottom of the dish and then cook with the lid off. The carrots take about 2 hours. You want them overcooked and shrivelled a little. It consentrates the carrots natural sugar and makes them very yummy!!

The trial run of the Wellington was a success. Perhaps it may be a new Bowker tradition.

So many good foods mentioned! I loved candied yams, all things Ukranian, fondue is a great idea, prime rib...yum, yorkshire pudding...yum. I think turkey is ok but depends on who cooks it and where it comes from. Some is so dry it is horrible except the dark meat but if someone does a good job of cooking it I do enjoy it but would rather have ham or Ukrainian food.

I may try a fondue this year.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is the mashed turnip...either alone or in with the spuds.

I am generally not very traditional, trying to set our own family traditions the last couple of years.

Well, girl, I think that the homemade dressings are the best, and I have honey and Dijon mustard, smiling. I have copied the information into a word document and will certainly be making this style salad and carrot. Thankyou for taking the time to tell me (and others too of course) how to make this stuff. Those candied carrots sound absolutely amazing and I got lots of me garden carrots still in my fridge, yummmmmeeeee. A new dish to try. We had a broccoli salad that a friend had made and brought to Daughter's home last weekend for a lovely dinner. That salad was to die for too. It sounds a little similar to yours, but the dressing was slightly different. Gads, it was so good. I am not a lover of broccoli, really, unless it is in a cheese sauce. I don't dislike it, just don't like it much, but honestly. I loved it in that salad, so that tweeked me to a different level of eating broccoli. Now yours has got my interest too. I would omit pine nuts. I do not, absolutely do not like pine nuts, probably substitute slivered almonds, now I love those!! I will be needing to find out from the friend of Daughter was the dressing was, I have forgotten. I did ask, but a blurr. I think it was equal parts miracle whip (yep, sometimes that is the one that gives a really good flavour, like in my potato salad, NEVER use anything but miracle whip in a potato salad, just does something nice to the flavour) and vinegar with some sugar (in this case, sub honey too, something about the taste and texture of honey).

OK, going a little further Bowker. Do you think that any kind of squash could be candied like the carrots? That long baking to form the necessary taste and texture. What you think? I have squash coming out my ears, all kinds and need to figure out how to get onto eating this more often. Too much in the freezer of squash items and I just don't know what to do with it all....candied squash? On the other hand too, has anyone else tried to candy something like spaghetti squash? And oh that banana squash, how much can one eat? They are massive, so massive, so massive. Rats, 7:00 AM and I am now craving dinnner time foods, what's with that Beautiful days to us all. CynthiaM.

Oh ya, I LOVE cauliflower, cooked raw, whatever, so that is a given that I would put that in the salad too. I want to grow something that is hybrid that is called broccoflower this year, broccoli and cauliflower borne together, a pretty vegetable too, just gotta find the seed. Two beautiful things to put in this salad that I will make for yuminess!!!