So what are you having for Christmas dinner this year? (This IS France after all, and food is super important at this time of year.)

We normally do the traditional Christmas eve dinner of seafood - smoked salmon, oysters, champagne and pop corn (ok, I added the pop corn part - need some sort of veggie...)

Then on Christmas day, I usually make something out of the Julia Child cookbook (the first one!) like boeuf bourgingnonne or carbonade de boeuf (DH isn't into poultry).

So what's on the table chez vous? Do you stick to your home country customs or have you come around to doing things à la française?
Cheers,
Bev

Traditional English - we have drinks on Christmas Eve morning serving sausage rolls and mince pied (with brandy butter). Christmas Day is roast turkey stuffed with sausage meat one end and chestnut stuffing the other, roast potatoes, bacon-wrapped chipolatas, cranberry sauce, possibly a veggie. Followed by Christmas Pudding with brandy butter.

Drinks and nibblers to fill in the gaps

Cheers

__________________
David
follow the blog here: http://ca2brittany.wordpress.com/

Can you get the cranberry sauce ready-made, or do you have a source of cranberries? I haven't seen them in the hypermarket yet - but I've been avoiding the big stores until this week. Will check when I make my Auchan run tomorrow.
Cheers,
Bev

We're a mixed bunch: French, English and French Canadian so it'll be a mixture of all the things we like, especially scallops in wine sauce, sausage rolls and stuffed capon, roast potatoes and brussel sprouts, mince pies and grandpères, waffles and maple syrup... not necessarily in that order. Hope to find some stilton!

Oceanspray cranberry sauce is available in Carrefour, but we bought a can on-line from "MyAmericanMarket".

Cheers

__________________
David
follow the blog here: http://ca2brittany.wordpress.com/

I just hit Carrefour today for the first time in quite a while. Big mistake! The place was mobbed. And the only fresh cranberries they had were in a little plastic tub - 250g for €3.50! Ten or fifteen years ago, they used to carry the bags of Ocean Spray cranberries in the couple of weeks just before Christmas.

I've found the Ocean Spray cranberry sauce around here in the jars, but not the jelly kind of sauce in cans.
Cheers,
Bev

We found both, whole berry and jelly in jars at Carrefour. Bought the whole bean can on line. But our sausages seem to have gone astray - sent yesterday on 24 hours but no sign so far

Cheers

__________________
David
follow the blog here: http://ca2brittany.wordpress.com/

So far I see no mention of brussels sprouts. What kind of "traditionalists" are you? My one Christmas spent in the UK, everyone told me that brussels sprouts were absolutely essential for a real UK Christmas.
Cheers,
Bev

June would totally agree with you - but I happen to have an allergy to certain green vegetables, even the smell of them cooking (especially cauliflower or cabbage) can turn me a funny colour. Took years before my mother believed this

Cheers

__________________
David
follow the blog here: http://ca2brittany.wordpress.com/

My In-laws being in the Coquillage Business, naturally it's seafood and in addition to oysters and mussels, they are able to buy seafood at the wholesale price.

I was at an OVS gathering and asked the question how far back does the tradition of eating seafood through all of France go? No one seemed to know. Some of the food we find here really doesn't have a long history, for example, baguettes didn't appear until the 1920's. My OVS meeting was in Sete. One of the specialties there is tielle, a pie filled with minced octopus in sauce. This only dates back to the 1930s. I'm guessing people along the the coast ate seafood for a while but I'm also guessing it really didn't catch on as a tradition for all of France until the late 50s' or 60s'.

The day will probably be turkey or capon as we'll have to have enough for 7. Last time we had turkey, I made the stuffing and my wife liked it so I may have to make it again.

I like scallops too but prefer the taste of the North American ones which you can find at some frozen food outlets.