Expecting about 20-30 relatives for lunch and dinner. Assuming they'll arrive around 10-11 in the morning and stay all day. Aiming for food I can cook in my sleep, to make it easier. My aunties will be there, so they may well take over some dinner prep, which is fine with me. :-)
Morning: Take frozen curries out to start thawing. (Which curries freeze well? The meat curries, I know. Salmon? Veggies?) Clean up anything that needs cleaning. Set out jigsaw puzzle.
8:30: Make quiches.
9: Heat soup, assemble sandwiches, heat TJ's tarts, assemble salad, heat sausages.
10 - 1: The goal here is food that I can make in the morning or beforehand, set out by 10, and then have very little fussing to do. American brunch style, with a bit of traditional Christmas flavor, ideally.
Broccoli-cheddar quiche, swiss and leek quiche, sausages, green salad (maybe with dried cranberries, goat cheese), squash and gruyere soup, roast beef and horseradish sandwiches (do a big baguette and cut into small slices), roast turkey and cranberry-jalapeo sandwiches (ditto), smoked salmon and cucumber crostini, TJs caramelized onion tarts, fruit trifle, berries, dates, and clementines, spiced nuts. Coffee, tea, juice, champagne.
1: Clean up brunch food.
3: Start frying short eats and assembling ribbon sandwiches.
4: Sri Lankan short eats and drinks, including another round of tea and our signature cocktail, the Serendib Sunrise (https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/posts/10153933114114616:10). Fish cutlets, mutton rolls, ribbon sandwiches. *Maybe* chicken patties; we'll see. (This is all somewhat contingent on having time to do most of these in advance and freeze, so they just need to be fried on the day of.)
6: Start rice and start reheating curries (do some in oven).
7: Dinner. Beef and potato curry, pork curry, salmon curry, roasted beets, lentils, carrot curry, lime-masala mushrooms, kale salad, eggplant sambol, coconut sambol, saffron-sultana rice. Vatallappam, caramel pudding, marshmallows, cashew milk toffee.
This is the ambitious version. Some things may get cut. But the milk toffee is already made. :-)