We’re all friends here, so I’ll keep things brief: it’s summer, it’s hot and Christmas is banging on the door.

It is during this one blazing, dry month that our planet seems to suddenly shift gears. Life’s treadmill kicks up a notch (or ten) and your options are clear, simple and honestly, a little intimidating: keep up or fall on your face. Attend all the dinner parties, get your presents wrapped on time, bring a dish to every event, and dear god keep your house clean, smelling of cinnamon and decorated to a specific colour theme (apparently this year a ‘coffee palette’ is in). And don’t forget to look nice and be happy and relax and enjoy it!

I estimate that my number of social events in December equals my total number of social engagements through all of winter. Which seems totally insane, but here we are. And I could spend this paragraph bemoaning the fact that if we just distributed things a little more evenly December would be a lot less stressful and winter would be a lot more fun, but that’s not the point of this blog post.

This blog post is designed to acknowledge the madness and give you the tools you need to combat it with style. Specifically, a range of very easy and very delicious vegetarian and vegan recipes for your Christmas menu. These Christmas recipes can be thrown on a barbecue, brought along to a picnic in a giant bowl or added to a festive feast.

They’re not hard recipes because, let’s be honest, I have not been to chef school and I suspect I lack the culinary skills to actually write hard recipes. You don’t have to flambé anything, poach anything or knead anything and cross your fingers that it rises. These are easy, fresh summer salads, tasty vegetarian mains (which, if you like, can always be served with something non-vegetarian off the barbecue to keep all your guests happy), sweet Christmas treats for dessert and - should you wish to indulge - a tasty cocktail or two.

I hope you like them. I hope they make your Christmas delicious, colourful and fresh, and I hope they help bring you a little bit of that peace and chilled-out merrymaking that I keep seeing on all the Woolworths ads at the moment (or, at least, a close approximation).

Menu 1: A Christmas BBQ

This is a menu that’s packed with flavour but actually - secretly - very easy to throw together. The potato salad is punchy and delicious and best served right from the oven, the haloumi and corn ribs are perfect eaten right off the barbecue and the baklava can be made well in advance, leaving you free to flip burgers, float around the pool on a blow up flamingo and, perhaps, indulge in a vodka slammer or two.

Menu 1

Roast Potato Salad w/ Fennel Leaves, Parsley & Chives

Corn Ribs with Grilled Haloumi

Five Nut Baklava

with

Pink Grapefruit Vodka Slammer with Ginger, Mint & Honey

Menu 2: A Warm Evening Picnic

This is a menu that transports well and won’t lose its mojo after an hour on a checkered picnic rug. Each dish is equally delicious warm from the oven or eaten at room temperature off a plastic plate…I mean, except the G&Ts - keep those babies ice cold!

Chuck your corn and haloumi salad in a big bowl, wrap up the potato frittata and the upside down berry cake, pop them all in some kind of beautiful woven basket situation and take them wherever the sun is shining and the grass is soft!

Menu 2

Barley and Charred Corn Salad

Confit Garlic & Fried Potato Frittata

Sumac & Berry Upside Down Cake

with

Gin & Tonics with Basil and Coriander

Menu 3: A Festive Dinner Party

This is the menu you need for that fancy Christmas dinner party you’re hosting. If you tend to take on more than you can handle and freak out minutes before everyone arrives, this menu will keep you sane. See, it’s not actually that hard. It just sounds fancy because of words like ‘grilled nectarine’, ‘honey glazed apricots’ and ‘gin-fizz’ and because the flavour combinations are a little unexpected - and delicious. So go on, throw on your top hat and tails (or…er, whatever you wear to dinner parties) and give it a red hot shot!

Menu 3

Grilled Nectarine Salad with Chilli & Croutons

Five Cheese Fig Galette

Honey Glazed Apricots w/ Tahini Oat Crunch

with

Raspberry Kombucha Gin-Fizz

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