Christmas menu for 8 people

With drinks: Shrimp with cocktail sauce; Charcuterie board: cured ham, salami, rillettes; Comté gougères. To start: Homemade salmon gravlax, lemon cream. For the main: Roast capon with chestnuts and baby potatoes. For the cheese course: Cheese board. For dessert: Vanilla raspberry ice cream yule log.

For 8 guests, the big picture: fresh salmon fillet (560 g), capon (3.2 kg), Brie de Meaux (180 g) and vanilla ice cream (80 cl). The full grocery list, aisle by aisle, is right above.

In two trips. Three days before, the stuff that keeps (18 items: produce, meat and seafood, dairy, pantry and frozen). Then the day before, the fresh stuff (12 items, like capon, cooked shrimp and fresh salmon fillet). You'll dodge the last-minute crowds.

To sit down at 8:15 PM, the first step of the big day starts at 3:45 PM: take the capon out of the fridge. The main (roast capon with chestnuts and baby potatoes) goes in the oven at 4:30 PM. Every step of the game plan is timed backward from when you sit down to eat.

It's not vegetarian: for a meat-free table, there's a full vegetarian menu. A kid counts as half a serving in the quantities.

Yep, from 2 to 12 guests: change the number at the top of the page, and the quantities, the grocery list, the budget and these answers all follow.