How to Plan Christmas Day Food + Free Downloadable PDF Christmas Menu Plan and Shopping Template.

Food is often at the very heart of getting together with family and friends over the festive season, whether you’re planning a formal sit-down meal or a barbecue in the backyard. Creating a Christmas meal needs a bit more planning and consideration than you might do with a regular weekly grocery shop, no matter if you’re going for simple or spectacular at Christmas. There are food tastes and preferences to consider, and, of course, the all-important budget.

Read on for tips on how to create a Christmas Menu, plan your shopping for the festive season, and get a free downloadable Christmas Menu Planner and Shopping list PDF template.

What you’ll learn

• Planning for a day of Christmas culinary delight
• Shopping strategically for Christmas Day
• Using our free downloadable PDF template for Christmas Shopping and Menu Planning

Plan for a day of Christmas culinary delight.

Sharing food is considered a way to bond and come together with other people in most cultures. Christmas Day is one of those days for many people that they set aside each year to spend time sharing a meal with family and friends. Whether you’re hosting, planning a meal with extended family or friends, contributing to a shared Christmas feast, or even on your own, plan it out to make it a day of taste sensations!

Tips for planning Christmas food include —

• Create a menu to cover different tastes.
  Take a moment to think about all the people you’ll be sharing your Christmas meal(s) with. Are there any special preferences and requests? For example, that Christmas pudding recipe handed down through the generations. Do any of the people you’ll be catering for have any specific dietary requirements, restrictions, or food allergies, such as diabetics or people with gluten intolerances? Are any people you will be sharing Christmas with vegetarians or vegans? Knowing this will help create a menu that caters to everyone and includes something that everyone will enjoy.

• Have a hearty breakfast or brunch.
  A hearty breakfast or brunch is always a great way to start the day and Christmas Day is no exception. Think festive. Add red and green fruits such as strawberries and kiwifruit to those fresh pancakes, or a dash of cranberry sauce with your eggs benedict, hollandaise sauce, and hash browns.

• Include festive snacks, appetizers, and starters.
  Lead into your Christmas feast with snacks, appetizers, or starters to set the stage for sharing and being together. From chips and dips to cheese platters and charcuterie boards, these starters and snacks will help to set the tone.

• Mix traditional mains with something new.
  Many people have a traditional centrepiece at a Christmas feast. For example, a turkey, ham, and/or a hot roast. If you feel like something different this year, do it! Get out the recipe books or search online for a recipe or something different and go for it.

• Enhance your side dishes.
  Complement the main components of your meal with an array of tempting side dishes. Again, experiment with new recipes or go with family favourites. Look for new and creative ways to cook and present fresh produce that is in season with your salads, sauces, and vegetable side dishes.

• Make the grand finale something sweet.
  Delectable desserts to end the day are a must-have! Christmas puddings, pavlova, and cakes are always a hit. Even if, at the end of the day, you find you haven’t enough room to eat any more, there’s some desserts that make good keepers for leftovers on Boxing Day.

• Use our Christmas Menu Planner PDF template to get organized.
  Download our free Christmas Menu Planner template PDF to help with getting ready for your Christmas Day food preparation. This is an interactive PDF template that you can add your dishes to on the first page and check off what you already have and what you need to buy.

Shop strategically.

Once you’ve decided on a menu and dishes that you’re going to make, check your pantry to see what you already have and then make a detailed shopping list. Creating a well-organized shopping list will help prevent buying things you don’t need and forgetting to pick up things that you do. Tips for Christmas food shopping include —

• Shop early and strategically.
  If you can, and your budget allows it, consider shopping for your shelf-stable pantry and frozen ingredients in advance. That way, you may be able to spread out the cost of extra groceries a little more and buy ingredients when they are on special. You’ll also avoid some of the last-minute chaos and queues as Christmas Day gets closer.

• Go for quality with fresh, it’s best.
  Fresh, locally sourced produce and high-quality meats will help enhance the flavours of your dishes. You might have local farmers markets in your area, and growers selling direct to customers at this time of year. Fresh ingredients will always enhance the flavours of any dish and help to make your Christmas food taste truly exceptional and memorable.

• Pre-order and online shop.
  Consider online grocery shopping and pre-ordering options offered by supermarkets and local butchers or specialty stores. This can save you time and help to guarantee you can get any specific items that may be popular and sell out fast during the holiday season

• Add the festive touch.
  Take into account any Christmas decorations to set the Christmasy scene. This might include table decorations and any other festive-themed items like Christmas crackers, napkins, and candles.

• Use our Christmas Menu Planner PDF to get organized.
  Download our free Christmas Day Shopping Template PDF to help with shopping for your Christmas Day food. Add your ingredients to this interactive Xmas list template, add costs, and check them off when you’ve got the ingredients ready to go.

Use our free downloadable PDF template for Christmas Shopping and Menu Planning.

Once you’ve downloaded our free PDF template for Christmas Menu Planning and Shopping, you’ll be able to open it in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader on your phone or desktop, Adobe Acrobat Online, or an Adobe Acrobat application.

Tweak and adapt the template to suit you and your Christmas plans. You can make changes to a PDF online, without downloading an app. For example, you can —

• Edit PDF pages
• Add pages to a PDF
• Convert image files to PDF
• And more.

Related content.

Keep exploring. Some of our other articles for using PDFs at home include —

• Get Cooking with PDFs for Recipes and Meal Planning

• PDFs for Travel Planning: Getting Ready for Your Family Holiday