Share your inspiration for Christmas Day food and drink with a difference - chance to win Lidl vouchers NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

The team at Lidl have their festive food all ready and waiting - now they want to know how MNers make Christmas lunch memorable for all the right reasons. They’d love to hear how you change things up on Christmas Day to make your meal extra special and please all of those celebrating with you - without breaking the bank.This can include main dishes, sides, puddings, and drinks.

Will you be going down the goose route this year, or opting for some seafood? Or maybe you have an interesting turkey treatment you'd like to share. If you are catering for vegetarians or other dietary needs, what options have gone down well - do you tend to do veggie variations on a roast or something completely different?

What about sides - do you have a cunning way with sprouts that makes everyone love them? Or a potato dish that knocks the usual roasties into a hat. For dessert, do you have a Christmas pudding variation? Or something different entirely that you always end your Christmas lunch with?

Drinks-wise, what's top of the drinks list for you? Do you create mocktails for the youngsters or anyone needingnon-alcoholic options? Or do you have an alternative to the traditional Buck's Fizz or a special version of mulled wine that sets you up for the day?

Inspire others with your personal takes on Christmas Day food and drinkbelow and you’ll be entered into a prize draw where you could win one of five £50 Lidl vouchers.

Thanks and good luck

MNHQ

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We have a competition to come up with the best pudding. We split in to 2 teams and go off to the shops and then come back and each make our dish. Then on Christmas Day the rest of the family chose their favourite and the losing team have to wash up. Our mince pie crumble with cinnamon whipped cream won last year.

As I'm French, I can get lots of inspiration from LIDL, where there are lots of continental foods on sale, especially before Christmas. Our family has never liked the traditional turkey roast anyway.

I'm a vegetarian so like to make something which tastes & looks good but is also healthy. This is my Roasted butternut squash, new & sweet potato with Mediterranean veg, feta, black olives & pine nuts

Sprouts in our (veggie) house are pre cooked and then finished in a sauté pan FULL of butter. Scrumduddliumptious!

We have curry for our Christmas meal as it is our favourite food! For a few years way back we went and ate out at an indian restaurant, but now we cook our own from scratch as our Christmas Eve entertainment. We spend the afternoon cooking with a great playlist and a beer or two and then we have curry for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day! Also as we don't like feeling overfull in the afternoon we have a light lunch as normal and our main meals in the evenings! We have made up our own traditions and no regrets at all!

We have curry for our Christmas meal as it is our favourite food! For a few years way back we went and ate out at an indian restaurant, but now we cook our own from scratch as our Christmas Eve entertainment. We spend the afternoon cooking with a great playlist and a beer or two and then we have curry for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day! Also as we don't like feeling overfull in the afternoon we have a light lunch as normal and our main meals in the evenings! We have made up our own traditions and no regrets at all!

Theres just the three of us on christmas day, so we can do as we like! Previously we've had party food dinner, an all pudding dinner, as well as an assortment of roasts. No decision yet on this years, but it has to have trifle somewhere in the day - thats non negotiable.

I love to make a Christmas pudding with a difference. Basically rocky road made in a bowl then decorated. The first photo is one I made which I copied from the internet, the second is one of my own designs. Thinking this year of using icing to make it look like a present :)

We make our own stuffing with sausage meat, cranberries and orange

I always make my own chocolate truffles. They are baileys truffles and they get covered in different coating - flaked white chocolate, cocoa dusting, chocolate strands and edible glitter. They look fab, are so easy to make and taste yum!

We always have an Italian meal on xmas day as its what I had as a child.My dad is Italian and the recipe is passed down from my nonna.We have Braciole which is thin rolled beef steak filled with fresh chunks of parmesan,parsley,ham and garlic.fried in red wine,onions and garlic.Then cooked in a tomato sauce.We have it with pasta,salad ,bread and frittata.

My husband loves sprouts - nobody else can stand them - so every year I am trying to find a different method of cooking them that might tempt the children into eating them!! So far I have tried tossing them in butter, serving with chopped bacon, making them into a kind of gratin dish with cheese and breadcrumbs, so far no takers. I am still trying to come up with a new idea for this year!

Every year without fail we have bacon sandwiches for breakfast while the kids open their presents. Then the adults do theirs and we get dinner on and usually eat by about 3pm.

Chocolate bomb all the way instead of Christmas cake!

We always do Christmas food fusion style as we have family that is English, Italian and from various Caribbean islands

So Breakfast is usually ackee and saltfish - Jamaican style

snacks are always homemade sausage rolls - English style, and saltfish fritters and fried dumplings - Caribbean style

The starters are usually parma ham wrapped figs - Italian style

and then the main is roast turkey with all the trimmings, as well as curry, rice and peas and escoveitch fish with various salads for the Caribbean contingent

Christmad puds and Jamaican black cake round out the meal and all in all everyone is well and truly stuffed

Traditional turkey here but I always go overboard with the trimmings and snacks. It's easiest to buy nice ready made sides to just heat up e.g. pigs in blankets, nice stuffing, ready made cranberry sauce. Got to have lots of cheese and crackers and cold meat as well. Ooh and mixed nuts!

We usually have a few desserts to last the Xmas period too, Xmas pudding, yule log, loads of mince pies, trifle, and chocolate pudding.

I stock up on interesting fizzy drinks too as we're all teetotal. Got to have plenty of tonic water and soda water as most non alcoholic drinks are too sweet after a few glasses. I also like to look out for new ideas for drinks.

We don't have a starter as such, but the pigs in blankets never get as far as the table. We do all the veg prep the day before and take the turkey out of the fridge before we go to bed - that way it's at room temperature when it starts to cook, doesn't take too long so doesn't dry out. We have mountains of roast potatoes and roast parsnips, roast onions just for me, carrots, sprouts, green beans (and mushy peas if Phil comes!). The gravy is a labour of love, with a serious slug of port. And one in the gravy. Then we have a rest, some silly games, some cheesy tv, and have traditional Christmas pud with cream in the evening. But the best bit is having it all again on Boxing Day, with none of the prep or clearing up, just a ping of the microwave.

Christmas Dinner is largely made and ahead so we can enjoy the day. Starters over the years have ranged from homemade pate to scallops and black pudding. Turkey is replaced by chicken and I do mean honey roast carrots and parsnips. Homemade roasties, Yorkshire puddings and sprouts are plentiful and this year I am trying out a cranberry and apple stuffing. I ask in advance for dessert requests but year after year am told there would be disappointment if I didn't do my homemade sticky toffee pudding, that's how you know it's Christmas. My youngest has a dairy allergy and last year it was a dairy free version which went down better than the original version!

A special thing we always do is to put butter between the turkey and the skin, it always leaves the bird extra juicy. We also have honey glazed parsnips, we add crushed horse chestnuts into the stuffing, and we make 2 lots of cranberry sauce, one normal and the other with a touch of sweet chilli sauce, try it as it is amazing! We also have the obligatory snowballs throughout the day which seem to make the day easier :)

Make sure you have the essentials in, and don't go to mad on the stuff you don't normally buy ....who eats brazil nuts anyway lol?

I love cooking for family and friends. A fairly traditional roast pleases everyone, but I do beef and turkey so there is a bit if choice. Jamie's get ahead gravy, sausages wrapped in bacon, stuffing, Yorkshires, roast spuds parsnips and carrots, sprouts, broccoli, peas and green beans. And a v low sugar Christmas pud full of nuts and dried fruit to cater for diabetic guests and an alternative pud - one guest always brings a trifle - or pavlova.

Roast chicken, potatoes, lots of fruit and vegetables

Add some bacon to the sprouts and saute them in butter, you'll soon see even the biggest sprout-a-phobes reaching for seconds!

I always like to serve batton veg eg, peppers and carrots, and dips to nibble before lunch ( instead of a starter) and serve a fresh fruit salad as an alternative to usual puddings. Or else I will burst !!

If we're not hosting guests, then our Christmas dinner is really quite ordinary. However, after years of both hosting and being a guest, I decided that catering for everyone's needs in one meal was just a huge minefield (likes/dislikes, too much food on their plate - my gran's battlecry!, folk on a fickle diet - and I don't mean genuine dietary requirements here!, etc etc) so I just do a buffet and make everyone help themselves, which really seems to go down well. And I've found that anything old fashioned goes down the best so it's a retro buffet full of sausage rolls, cheese and pineapple hedgehogs, Ferrero Rocher, Black Forest gateau, pigs in blankets and the rest.

Our Christmas Dinner is essentially a big fancy roast. We always have turkey, lots of roast spuds, at least 5 veg. We never have a starter, and we usually have a cold pudding, but always have to light the Christmas pudding for my dad who drowns it in whisky. We buy the pigs in blankets ready made.

We always have bucks fizz made fresh as well now, instead of buying the premixed stuff.