Here are some ideas on how you can spend a bit more on the essentials this Christmas, like your turkey, and save on other items or even add more delicious treats for your family and guests. Please read on and feedback with your tried and tested treats and we will add it to the list with your name.

Yes, I know Christmas is supposed to be a time of excess, but don’t be tempted by those TV adverts showing huge banquets for £6.95. Yes, its great to serve a big feast but watch out for the e numbers, colouring, fat and salt content furring up your arteries, waste, packaging, animal welfare, carbon footprint, etc. We should think about the carbon footprint or have a smart arse like me telling your guests that the Young’s scampi, for instance, that you so proudly served is caught in Britain but processed in Thailand to be shipped back here for Christmas.

So buy quality and fill your guests up with other cheaper tasty treats. Here are some ideas.

First the cheaper treats:

Delicious Crudites to take the edge off their appetites

1. Baked mushrooms
2. Chopped fresh carrots, celery, cauliflower, with home made houmus, and or cheesy dip
3. Liver or Smoked Mackerel pate with thinly sliced toast

To accompany the big roast to make it even bigger!

1. Loads of roast potatoes par boiled, bashed a bit, then cooked in olive or better still, goose fat
2. Bread sauce like the par boiled spuds cooked in advance and set aside to heat up.
3. Brussels sprouts roasted with a little bacon or carefully boiled to NOT remind everyone of school
4. Roasted parsnips
5. Stuffing to serve with the meat
6. Yorkshire pudding, actually invented to fill people up when meat was scarce, a treat with any roast

And for those with a wild side

1. Roasted Pigs ears, buy them from you butcher, remove the wax and hairs, cover in salt and a little butter and roast, or for sows purses, fill with a little stuffing
2. Devilled lambs kidneys for breakfast. A brilliant hangover cure.

And with all those savings spend a bit more on the quality foods like

1. A proper local free range traditional turkey or goose, the centre of your Christmas feast.
2. A hung and cured ham; for breakfast with free range eggs, for lunch with a salad, or in the evening with what you fancy
3. Local sausages, you can’t beat a great british banger
4. smoked salmon

These are some ideas we would love you to add to, so please click here and we will add your idea with a ‘thanks to you’.

Apparently, Christmas is not a time for change. A recent survey into the nation’s TV-viewing habits over the Christmas season reveals that even the most progressive amongst us suddenly become more conservative than a Tunbridge Wells pensioner at this time of year. This is not a time for avant-garde scheduling. Stick to the tried and tested formula – a nice James Bond, the Vicar of Dibley, Her Majesty at 3 o’clock – and we’ll all be perfectly happy, thank you very much.

The same goes for food. Some of us will eat food we can’t stand the sight of, for the sake of tradition. Stiff upper lip, what. Shovel it down for Queen and country. Sadly, there’s no medal for valiant service to turkey-eating, and anyone who doesn’t like turkey is likely to have realised that by now. Which may have lead them to start wondering about goose. If that’s as far as it gets, then it’s probably because they simply don’t know what to expect. And that, at Christmas, spells trouble.

So we thought we’d help anyone in this predicament by providing a quick ‘what-to-expect’ guide to goose.

Firstly, goose is different. If you’re hoping it’ll provide enough of a change for those who don’t like turkey, whilst going un-noticed by anyone that does, it won’t. Goose is a much darker, stronger-tasting meat with a noticeably gamey flavour. The taste is actually quite distinctive and doesn’t compare easily to other meat. It’s almost beefy, compared to other poultry, but it’s still obviously poultry. It is a fatty bird (you may have heard a lot about goose fat) but the fat forms a layer under the skin, rather than running through the meat itself. What this means is that it’s very good for roasting, because it effectively self-bastes, so you can expect the meat to be nice and moist. It also means plenty of excess fat for your roast potatoes.

Goose is unlikely to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s well worth trying out, especially if you’re fed up with turkey. There shouldn’t, in theory at least, be much to upset the die-hard traditionalists – goose actually has more heritage in that respect than turkey – but don’t serve it up before suggesting ‘that we watch something else on television this year’. The shock will be too much for some people.

Whatever you’re eating, we hope you have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Photo courtesy of John Wright

As you must have noticed Christmas is fast approaching. The high street is already full of decorations and Bernard Matthews is taking advertising space on the tele showing green grass and a big green tick across their new packaging. This is a bit misleading when nearly seven million of his turkeys are reared in vast, windowless, barren sheds and never see or experience life in a field.

Around 90% of UK turkeys are reared in such intensive systems, where sheds can contain up to 25,000 birds. The floor will be covered in excrement and release ammonia causing many birds to have painful sores on their feet and eye damage. This is without the worry of growth promoters and anti-biotic additives in the feed.

I am sorry to bring this to your attention but this is where the food industry has gone, and will continue to get worse unless we demand change or shop carefully. So to help we have added our turkey page to BigBarn. Visit our Turkey Directory to find your local turkey producers. You can order your turkey and pay online in our Localfoodshop and save on delivery charges by collecting your prize dinner just before Christmas. This will allow you to see the farm and quiz the farmer on feeds, turkey breed and how they have been reared. You may be so impressed you will want to book your turkey for next year.

And please have a look round localfoodshop for other Christmas goodies like a ham, Christmas cake, chocolate, cheese, goose, or great British beef by clicking on each, or using the search box when you are in the site. If we have not got what you are looking for we should have soon as more products are added every day.

Image courtesy Powters Newmarket Sausage

The celebrations have begun for sausage week. We British love our sausages and should be proud of the great quality and variety throughout the UK.

The last 20 years has seen a real renaissance in sausage making. I am sure when I was young sausages were suffering the same fate as beer, with tasteless Watneys Red Barrel and fatty ‘Walls hot Sausages’, dominating the market. We now have a huge variety with regional brands like Cumberland, Lincolnshire, made by many butchers as well as hundreds of special recipe mixes passionately guarded by their makers.

The best of course are those made locally by your butcher or farmer. Your local sausages will be fresh, and by meeting the producer, you to find out how they are made and what is in them. You may even be able to ask for something special, like a batch of gluten free. You can also avoid the misleading supermarket packaging, like the bacon my girlfriend bought recently that had a union jack on the packet but no mention anywhere that the pork was British. Obviously imported then cured and sliced in the UK.

We have hundreds of great sausage producers on BigBarn, including 110 in Localfoodshop where you can search and buy online.

To try online shopping in our Localfoodshop click here and type in your postcode. The site will display your nearest sausage makers, or, if you fancy something a bit unusual, like wild boar or venison sausages, type it in the search box.

And if your favourite sausage producer is not in Localfoodshop tell them to give us a call, you could then order online and save a shopping trip, or collect to avoid the weekend queue and delivery charge.