It's a good few days into December now, so time to start thinking about what to make for Christmas dinner. I grew up in the 80s which meant that for our Christmas dinner starter we had to have Prawn Cocktail. Through the more sophisticated 90s this developed into Avocado and Prawns in Marie Rose Sauce and with the turn of the new millenium the menu became Smoked Salmon Salad served with dainty pieces of buttered wholemeal bread, sliced into neat little triangles with the crusts cut off, very posh. The rest of my family still have this. I however have brought trouble with my fussy ban on animal food stuffs. There is, however a good simple solution, which so far has been universally approved of by all it has been served to - soup. Quick and easy to prepare, not too filling and almost impossible to mess up. You can even make it the day before, so save yourself that little bit of stress on the big day if you're the kind of person who gets their knickers in a twist at just the thought of preparing what is really just a fancy Sunday dinner. Mind you, I suppose we ...

Cheese cheese cheese. Here's another mission for the trip- find the perfect cheese board. Ah what a terrible task. Best someone gets it sorted though or we'd all be stuck. Andy and I have really put ourselves out for this one and are sampling cheese boards in various pubs and restaurants around the country. As yet there is no marking criteria, maybe we need to sample more cheese so we can perfect this first or it would not be fair. We've been to a couple of places so far, here are two of the best, will keep you updated with more hot spots for cheese around the UK. Hurrah! I mean poor me. The Gurnards Head Near Zennor, St Ives Erm you can't really see the cheese on here, I was distracted by the amazing elderflower pudding with gooseberrys that I accidently ordered when we got the cheese. Some how we also accidently ordered main meals aswell. I would recommend doing the same. While the choice for veggies wasn't huge what there was was lovely, and if you're not veggie the meals looked amazing. I'm pretty sure they will have sourced a lot of it locally too as there are ...

This Christmas I have mostly been eating. And drinking. And eating more. I've probably eaten more over the past couple of weeks than I did for the whole of the rest of the year... ok maybe that's a bit silly, but it was definitely a lot. Very nice it has been too, lovely people, lovely food and lots of fun. The feasting started a few weeks ago with the first of 3 Christmas meals we somehow volunteered to make for people. For the main course I'd made a Mushroom Wellington, which was so nice we decided to make the same thing for the other two Christmas meals. (Image nicked from Yum Blog - hope you don't mind! ;-)) Mushroom Wellington 500g Puff Pastry 60ml sunflower oil 675g onions, chopped 4 garlic clove, crushed 450g chestnut mushrooms, left whole 2 tbsp chopped tarragon 4 tbsp soy sauce salt and fresh ground black pepper 320g broken cashew pieces 175g fine breadcrumbs, freshly made, white or wholemeal 320g ground almonds 1 egg, beaten Roll out the puff pastry into two rectangles, each 30 x 23 cm, and set aside in the fridge to rest. Meanwhile, make the filling. Heat ...