Family Get Together, any suggestions please?

A huge oven tray of roasted vegetables, falafel balls and wraps are perfect for vegans.
Green salad, feta and watermelon salad, coleslaw lots of really good quality butchers sausages to oven cook.
Big dish of new potatoes.
A big bottle of homemade dressing and lots of mayo.
To finish, big bowl of summer fruits and vegan ice cream.

Matildamay when I was catering it was at work and the budget I was given wouldn’t have run to M&S. These days thankfully I rarely have to cater for anyone.

teabagwoman

*married*, is it possible to ask the vegan guest for suggestions? Back in the day when I had to cater for 30 including vegans and gluten free baked potatoes where my standby.

There are plenty of Vegan foods at Marks and Spencer, and most supermarket sell vegan, and other types of food that are for people with different types of allergies.

It is not like the old days when there was no variety. It may take longer to find them in the supermarkets but I am sure the shelf will be labelled to tell you what is what.

loopyloo

Order food from m&s?

Definitely,

When putting on a family do, it is always a buffet, never a sit down meal as we have young grandchildren and they love to come and go with their little plates.

I place an order and then go and collect it.

If forks are allowed, I’ve always found a macaroni pie very popular. Basically like macaroni cheese, but with eggs and baked, so it can be cut into squares.
IIRC, 1 lb each of macaroni and good strong Cheddar, 1 pt milk, 3 eggs, salt, pepper and a good dollop of English mustard. Bake at 160 fan for 45 mins ish until set but not rock hard.
There’s a recipe online somewhere.

married, is it possible to ask the vegan guest for suggestions? Back in the day when I had to cater for 30 including vegans and gluten free baked potatoes where my standby.

I am vegetarian so the only meat was cooked sausage. It was it Italian week at Lidl!!

NotSpaghetti

Calendargirl the Prosecco was "pub prices" as in a pub.
I expect lots of pubs charge that much.

Much less in a supermarket, obviously.

Yes, I realise it is so much more expensive in a pub, but what a racket!

It’ll only be run-of-the-mill stuff, and no one will be any the wiser if it’s cheap stuff or dear, as it’s just for the toast, I assume.

I would ask about alternatives.

🍸

Calendargirl the Prosecco was "pub prices" as in a pub.
I expect lots of pubs charge that much.

Much less in a supermarket, obviously.

I’m sorry to go off topic OP, but this question reminds me of the questions we used to have for domestic science exams back in the day, where there were a selection of people, all of who required different foods!

My mistake there Chardy

Sorry to be a veggie killjoy, but there's an awful lot of meat here, it's off-putting just reading it. Personally I love a homemade quiche but please label what's in it.
Plenty of baguettes, vegan spread and non-meat/fish dippy stuff.
Veggie pizza.
Fresh fruit salad for pudding
Btw a vegan won't eat frittata, eggs.

Don't be cooking on the day. Have a lovely time.

French=fresh

I typically roast gammon the day before, chill, slice. Make a few loaves of breads. Make a few salads (we like Italian potato salad, rice artichoke salad, veg salad, green salad, and fruit salad). New potatoes, some cheeses, nuts, olives, tapenade, hummus - with dippers / spreaders, and biscuits for the children. Ours love french strawberry biscuits (currently). And Summer pud for the adults.

I hosted 15 of my family recently partly in the garden -we put up a gazebo, and a table laid inside with buffet.
Homemade Quiche, cold meats, chorizo etc olives and pickles, crisps, baguettes, lovely cheeses, salads and I baked a cake and made a pavlova.
It was all eaten!!

Drinks were outside. I bought wine and fizz (prosecco from Lidl) my DS bought beer and probably paid for some of the food.
I enjoyed it very much.
Actually my biggest expense was buying a couple of new garden chairs. It stayed dry but could have been warmer.

Ever optimistic!
I hope you have a lovely time.

crazyH

I didn’t mean to hijack the thread . Sorry OP

No problem at all.

I didn’t mean to hijack the thread . Sorry OP

Good idea. You might get a discount for ordering so many. 🤞

Yes Maggiemaybe - I guess it is - thinking of calling the Landlady tomorrow and negotiating the price of the Prosecco.

I assume that’s the bar price, crazyH? Still, it’ll work out expensive for you for so many.

Calendargirl I thought so too - might change my mind about the Prosecco

My family has an assortment of dietary requirements, so I do finger food and salads with little colour coded cocktail stick flags to state what they are free from.
For children I have done little pizza bases with DIY toppings served separately, although cooking them to order was a bit of a pain.
For dessert I have done home made individual meringue nests with fill-it-yourself ingredients.
I hope you have an enjoyable day.

Nannynoodles

I would do salads, French bread, new potatoes, bread sticks as a base for all and then do meat, salmon, sausage rolls, cheeses etc for the meat eaters plus hummus and falafels for the vegan.
Just rol pastry is vegan so you could do a vegetable tart for all and some of M&S samosas are also vegan.
In my family the vegans don’t like the meat substitutes or vegan cheeses so I wouldn’t bother with them but plant based butter is ok.
Young children will probably be ok with bread sticks, hummus, cheese and cut up veg.

Sounds good to me.😃

Some great suggestions for buffet food here, but I don’t think anyone’s mentioned pizza? It’s so easy and always the first thing the younger generation look for at our family gatherings.

* JdotJ*
^ I'd ask everyone to bring their own food!^

I do that more often than I used to.
I tried sending out a menu of what would be on offer, but though most invitees were happy with that, a few asked if I ^could possibly do some . . . as they didn’t really like . . .
Now I say what’s on offer and ask if people can let me know if they’re bringing something else.
I’m really happy that it’s only 2-3 times a year.