成人快手

After all the Christmas gorging, many of us put eating less cake or top of the New Year resolutions list - even though scientists have been telling us for years that If you resolve to get healthy for 2011, do have a peek at the . But then again, what's the point in setting a resolution you know you won't fulfil?

A fishy resolution?

Far better to set something that might give a little pleasure along the way. Organise that folder of printed-off website recipes you've had lurking in the sideboard all last year; or perhaps start a to share all the great recipes you've been making; or maybe give a different cuisine or new ingredient a go?

My resolution is to try to eat most meals with my son. It will mean getting more organised and eating earlier - on some days as soon as I get back from work - but it's definitely something to strive for.

I asked some 成人快手 chefs and food writers about their New Year food resolutions. Hairy Biker Si King says, "I'd love to spend more time in the kitchen with my youngest son, encouraging him to learn some basic culinary skills", while fellow biker Dave Myers would "really like to continue raising the profile of British cuisine, which is something very close to my heart."

The presenter of new series Baking Made Easy Lorraine Pascal says, "In 2011 I will be growing a lot more of my own food, herbs and leafy veg - the kind which need little or no tendering. I also intend to give up my monopoly on the kitchen and give others a chance to cook (well only a little bit!)"

Baking expert Dan Lepard says he "must spend more time debunking all the bad baking science out there (somehow) and continue to say no to the requests to 'dumb it down' for readers." While food maverick Stefan Gates is as off-the-wall as ever: "My New Year's resolution is to stop making difficult, counter-intuitive, arcane food programmes and instead to write a best-selling romantic culinary bonkbuster novel and bring out my own range of frilly napkin rings in pastel pink. You think I'm joking?"

However Raymond Blanc won't make any promises to himself this year: "Actually, I will not make a New Year's resolution for 2011. In the past I have broken each one. Why set yourself up for disappointment?"

Have you made a New Year's resolution involving food or drink? Comment and tell us about it.

Ramona Andrews works on the 成人快手 Food website.

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Why on earth would anyone in their right minds or ? Well...

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Like any good dad, I used to invoke that ancient parental mantra "Don鈥檛 play with your food" whenever my daughter Daisy mushed her lunch into a swirling mess. I moaned at her for smearing yoghurt over her face, for squeezing each of her peas until they popped and I whinged when she fondled every juicy morsel of food with her fingers before eating it.

Then one day Daisy turned her sweet, mucky face to me and said 鈥淲hy not?鈥� and I realised I had no credible answer. In every other area of her life Daisy was encouraged to play 鈥� with words, with music, with paint and water. Play is where the good stuff is, where the fascination, inspiration and wonder is. I want to inspire her to enjoy eating, to taste as many different foods as possible and to find food as fascinating as I do.

So then and there I made a parental U-turn and decided that mealtimes should be where the fun is, and if I had to wipe daughter and table clean after supper, that鈥檚 a small price to pay for getting kids fascinated by food. I went a step further and called up the head of C成人快手 (well, her PA at first) to ask if I could make a wild kids鈥� food TV series, and we鈥檝e made 26 episodes of the enormously successful Gastronuts teaching recipes such as the legendary .

The best thing you can do for your kids鈥� long-term health is encourage them to eat as wide a range of food as possible, because that鈥檒l give them the best chance of a balanced diet. If you make meals fun, surprising and occasionally a little bit naughty, you鈥檒l be surprised at how many different foods kids will try. Daisy and her sister Poppy will eat almost anything: , , , sushi, curly kale and oysters. They don鈥檛 love every food they try, but they love to cook, love to eat and love experimenting with their food.

So what can you do at home? My kids like听 because it鈥檚 a little bit magical and happens so quickly. It鈥檚 also dead easy and cheap (all you need is double cream and a jam jar) and they can eat it as soon as it鈥檚 made.

We also love making bread in flower pots. Use a , stop before the final proving (rising) period and put the dough into very clean, well-buttered flower pots so that it fills each pot up to about half to two-thirds full. Bake in a preheated oven at 220C/420F/Gas 6 for 15-30 minutes. When the bread is nicely browned on top and sounds hollow when tapped, it's done.

Another fun method of cooking that fascinates kids (and adults too) is cooking , and, for adding a little science to your food, try making fluorescent jellies, a vinegar volcano or a cola fountain.

But what about manners and propriety? Well, I grew up learning lots of manners that seem to have no point to them at all. I鈥檓 not advocating daily food fights 鈥� that鈥檚 just silliness 鈥� but by making food fun, I鈥檓 making my kids healthier and helping them live happier, longer lives, and I鈥檓 not sure there鈥檚 much in the world more important than that.

What do you think? Should we instil our children with old-fashioned manners when it comes to dinner time, or should we be more concerned with making mealtime fun and food fascinating?

Stefan Gates is a 成人快手 presenter and food writer.

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鈥楾is the season for food traditions: the crumbly mince pies, the warming mulled wine and the fistfuls of chocolate and sweets you鈥檒l eat almost unconsciously between now and New Year. The turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pudding can all be reassuringly ticked off along with Santa鈥檚 list... or so it seems. We may all essentially be eating a glorified roast dinner, but delve a little deeper and you鈥檒l find that every household has evolved their own fascinating set of festive food foibles.

My uncle serves his family steak for breakfast every Christmas. It may sound overly indulgent, and who has the stomach for sirloin in the morning anyway? But what could be better to kick-start your metabolism for the main event than a huge portion of protein? A colleague鈥檚 husband, whose family are a complicated set-up of step-kids and step-parents, solves the problem of veggies, picky eaters and more importantly whose turn it is to cook by ordering a take-away curry the night before and reheating it for Christmas dinner. No stress, no mess. They go for a nice long walk and then come back home to day-old chicken dopiaza and saag aloo.

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Happy (stress-free) Christmas!

Some family food traditions are so engrained, they just continue without question. Take the flatmate whose friends were perplexed when she served a perfectly halved turkey. Realising this wasn鈥檛 the norm, she rang her mother who in turn had to check with her grandmother. The grandmother explained that she once had a really small oven which couldn鈥檛 accommodate a whole bird. And so three generations had been cooking their Christmas turkey in two ever since.

There鈥檚 the nurse who prepares a whole live lobster after finishing her shift on a neonatal ward on the 25th; the dad who spectacularly takes a risk on the big feast by scouring the supermarket aisles until closing time on Christmas Eve to nab a turkey bargain; the family who must have macaroni cheese on their list of trimmings; and the kids who took over the kitchen one year by making their own pizza toppings.

So what are your unique festive food traditions? Are you forgoing turkey this year for something completely different? We鈥檇 love to know...

Nora Ryan works on the 成人快手 Food website.

There's a question that tends to preoccupy me around this time of year, when the chefs start lining up their Christmas specials and the first mince pies start creeping into the office鈥hen is The Right Time for the children to take responsibility for the听family's Christmas meal?

I'm not talking child labour here. I'm getting on for 30, I love cooking, and I work on a recipe website. On paper, I'm a perfect candidate for Christmas hostess. Yet however many times I might offer to make a dessert, bring a ham, or take over completely, year after year I end up going home and playing a minor role in getting the Christmas Day shebang on the road.

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I can only assume that, even though my mum finds Christmas stressful, she's trying to protect me from bearing the brunt of this annual feat of consumption.听Either that or she's scared of the monster I'll become once let loose in the kitchen 鈥� whirling around it with hot pans, ducking and weaving听like a champion boxer when anyone enters my space, and making loud verbal to-do lists in place of normal conversation.

Don鈥檛 get me wrong, I love being spoilt, and my mum's version of this meal is everything a girl could wish for. But I can't wait to put my own twist on the proceedings 鈥� and give my mum a rest.

So what's the benchmark when one generation is at last听recognised as听ready to take over from its elders? Is it once you've bought a house big enough to听accommodate everyone? Is marriage the answer 鈥� or do offspring make good bargaining chips?

Karen Mulholland, 45, from Northern Ireland, took part in the forthcoming series of The Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best, due to hit our screens in the New Year. She told me I'll most likely have to wait until I have children before the mantle will be handed down.

"Our main reason [for taking over the Christmas dinner] was the children," she said. "They don't want to be taken away from their toys. When you get married you tend to have a few years of, 'Well, we鈥檒l go to your parents this year and next year we'll go to mine'. When the kids come along it's more logical for everyone to come to you 鈥� and by that time you have more room. It's a natural progression."

When the time does come for me to take over, Karen recommends making gradual changes rather than stunning the family with a Tudor-style extravaganza or single-handedly trying to give Delia a run for her money.

"The first year I did parsnips instead of carrots. The parsnips were well received but the feedback was 'Can we have our carrots back please?'! Slowly but surely we tried different things."

Or perhaps I should take a leaf out of Rebecca Simpson-Hargreaves' book? Rebecca, another Mums Know Best participant, went to her parents' house for Christmas dinner every year until she got married 鈥� when her husband took over.

"The only time I made Christmas dinner was when I was about 30 because my mum had just got so fed up of cooking it," she says. "But usually I just make the gravy, the vegetables and the pudding."

I tell myself that I won't听get my knickers in a twist over the turkey like last year, that it's only a meal and that it would be fun to try to feed the five thousand. But deep down I'm not sure that I really will听be听a paragon of听zen when I finally take the helm of the听family Christmas. However, even if I do bite off more than I can chew, I'd like to have a crack at it while my parents still have their own teeth.

Who makes the Christmas dinner in your house? And should I enjoy my extended childhood while it lasts?

Nicky Evans works on the 成人快手 Food website ...and is going back to her mum and dad's for Christmas.

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When I was younger it seemed the whole world was against me because I loved Christmas pudding. It was seriously uncool. It was cool to like chocolate log, or the profiteroles I used to get at my friends' houses that were from 'Marks & Sparks', but my love of Christmas pudding evoked the same sneers you got when you wore the wrong thing on Own Clothes Day. Needless to say I never spoke of my mum and me frying up leftover Christmas pudding in butter and dousing it in cream!

Despite my adoration of the stuff, the question I get asked most at this time of year is what my favourite alternative is to Christmas pudding.

I was pretty much bought up on . It鈥檚 possibly one of the best cakes in town, but if you鈥檙e looking for a pud, serve it warm with butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream. It鈥檚 THE pudding to rival Christmas pudding and, dare I say it, I think it kicks the bottom of the best sticky toffee puddings. It鈥檚 brilliant for dinner parties if baked in individual dishes.

Another more calorie-laden pudding and a great way of using up any excess panettone over Christmas is . There is rarely any left in our house; as you can imagine the Christmassy spices and fruits in the bread make this really special.

I don鈥檛 know if this is just me, but Christmas feels a bit wrong without the inclusion of trifle somewhere on the menu. You can make it really seasonal by using winter berries and I am smitten with . I have made it with amaretti biscuits in place of Madeira cake, as I prefer the taste and it knocks down the calorie content a bit to boot.

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I adore a chocolate log and the great thing is that the cake base is really low-fat as it鈥檚 got no butter in it, meaning it鈥檚 a great slimline cake! Who鈥檇 have thunk it? OK, let鈥檚 not mention the topping and filling... Anyway, I think , but what I love to do is swap the cranberries for 200g/7oz of chestnut pur茅e mixed with three tablespoons of icing sugar, and spread it on the log before spreading with cream. It鈥檚 what I鈥檒l be eating this year.

So what鈥檚 on the dessert trolley this year at your house? Are you a traditionalist, favouring Christmas pudding slathered in brandy butter? Or do you dare to be different with a festive trifle, cheesecake or Yule log?

Gizzi Erskine is a food writer, chef and TV presenter.

One of the most regularly asked questions I get is, 鈥淗ow do I make Christmas dinner exciting for my son/daughter/boyfriend?鈥� Well, what non-vegetarian people are really asking is 鈥淗ow can I make a vegetarian Christmas dinner exciting for ME?鈥澨� In my opinion are pointless. If you want to eat meat, just eat meat!

Vegetarians like vegetables; it鈥檚 what they eat all the time. There are, of course, horror stories from the veggie guest. I鈥檝e been told about those who have just been given a plate of sprouts, no gravy (as it was made with meat stock), a salad or a veggie lasagne ready-meal and the like. But it doesn鈥檛 have to be that way.

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So much success can be had by making sure that you have big flavours in all the veg side dishes. So for those of you cooking for a vegetarian, remember not to do your roasties in duck or goose fat and don鈥檛 add bacon to the sprouts! But a good selection of veg is a great start 鈥� roasted root veg, like carrots, parsnips and squash are good. Dauphinoise potatoes 鈥� rich, creamy and very naughty 鈥� are a regular guest at our house on Christmas day.

A good, homemade with plenty of spices is what you need. Maybe add roasted beets to your sprouts, together with a little orange zest and toasted almonds for a truly inspired veggie treat. In fact all of those dishes are spectacular, whether Mr, Mrs and Ms Veggie are coming to eat or not!

So what about the main event? Again, I think big strong flavours are the order of the day. If you鈥檝e ever made nut roast, you鈥檒l know that it can have an awful, tasteless, sawdust-like texture with that bottom-of-the-hamster鈥檚-cage (small rodent, not ) taste. My recipe for nut roast packs a huge amount of moisture into the fella, including bread soaked in milk to keep it juicy. I also like to include plenty of herbs, spices and a spoonful of mustard. It鈥檚 quite a time-consuming recipe, but it is Christmas after all.

I also like gravy. Add things like caramelised onions, garlic, rosemary, tomato pur茅e, red wine and vegetable stock to get your tastebuds going.

Another winner is my filo pastry strudel (pictured above) with leeks, tomatoes, mushrooms and cream cheese. This is so packed full of flavour and texture, meat-eaters may end up fighting veggie guests to eat it. I love it with port wine sauce, which takes some beating for a Christmas sauce.

Can a meat-free Christmas menu be magnificent? Are you veggie? I鈥檇 love to know what you鈥檙e eating this year. Share your tips and recipes for a vegetarian feast to remember.

Simon Rimmer presents 成人快手 Two鈥檚 Something for the Weekend.

Those simple mince pies you see stacked in boxes at the supermarket at Christmas looking ever so manufactured and modern link us to a British heritage that鈥檚 essentially been forgotten. Like a species that has eluded evolution, the mince pie that you see in shops around the country in December is virtually the same as it was over 350 years ago: two crusts of pastry holding a rich fruit, sugar and spice mixture, and baked in small tins.

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Their history extends back into more drunken and rowdy and though they鈥檙e a part of today鈥檚 Christian festival of Christmas for many, the association of mince pies with a few good slugs of spirit and bit of festive shoulder rubbing hasn鈥檛 gone away. In fact, for a night on the razzle half a dozen warm mince pies can take the place of dinner for some of us.

It鈥檚 somewhat of a myth that mincemeat was once always made with meat. adds meat as a variation at the end, in a recipe that layers the currant-rich mincemeat with layers of candied citron. There were some that felt that there was enough slaughtering of animals during the season without adding it to mincemeat as well, and others that just didn鈥檛 have it to spare, so keeping mincemeat vegetarian today still fits well with tradition. Suet was later added, a relatively stable hard animal fat that melted when the pies were baked and mingled with the filling, making it thicker. Do leave it out if you prefer, or stir in a little thick apple pur茅e to give it more body.

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Shop-brought mincemeat can be really good, and the average types are often best: the extra economy ones and the ultra expensive both seem a bit off the mark to me. Start by tasting it, then add extra flavours that suit: nearly always add a little freshly grated lemon or orange zest, extra spice, extra brandy or rum and some cherries or nuts. The old recipes, used caraway seeds steeped overnight in , a kind of fortified wine like sherry. Today, you can follow Nigella鈥檚 lead and use cranberries and clementine zest to brighten the flavour.

Now, the pastry. Though , I鈥檓 a sucker for the slightly sweetened rich shortcrust pastry. The food writer Orlando Murrin has an for making a tender all-butter pastry that plenty of readers have commented on. My friend Angela Nilsen wrote a lovely recipe that so it becomes a mini-dessert in a pastry case. I do make my own pastry, but if you鈥檙e not feeling up to it there are some excellent all-butter shortcrust and puff pastries available. Also, there is a certain indestructibility to mince pies, and they can usually be frozen before (in the tin) or after baking (packed in an airtight bag) without a worry. Just make sure to bake them until piping hot inside before serving.

But when to make them, and when to stop? Samuel Pepys writes in his diary from 24th December 1663 that he returned home that evening to find his wife making mince pies, and I must say that I鈥檝e usually had my fill by Christmas Eve. But there鈥檚 no historic reason why you shouldn鈥檛 , even as far the evening of the 5th on what鈥檚 known as the .

So tell me, are you a mince pie buyer or a maker? I鈥檝e a few secrets on how to get them out of the tin, but I鈥檓 not giving them out without a struggle. And that upper crust, do you crumble, roll, lattice or something else entirely? After years of mince pie making, I鈥檓 ready for some new ideas鈥�

Dan Lepard is a food writer for and a baking expert.