Did you overdo it at Christmas? Don’t say no, because we know you did and even if you didn’t well, you can’t tell us that, we’re still in rich food hangover mode and you’re just going to make us feel guilty!

If you did overdo it, well good for you, Christmas is the time for feasting and celebration, but likelihood is that you are now feeling a little bloated and in need of a post Christmas detox! We know we are!

First things first, NO FAD DIETS. We’re sure the soup diet is really great for people who are actually undergoing heart surgery, but for anyone else, it’s a fad and a miserable prospect, believe us! The best way to feel better after a month of sugar, booze and big dinners is to simplify, reduce and detoxify.

So without starving, how do we best detoxify?

Well green smoothies are a great way to improve health, increase energy, fill up and feel good. You can juice pretty much anything but always always always throw in some raw greens. We love alternating spinach and kale. Check out cancer survivor’s Kris Carr’s site www.crazysexylife.com, this woman literally saved her life by eating the right foods and juicing!

Other foods to increase in your diet and that are excellent for detoxifying the body are listed below:
• Fruits – easy to digest, full of antioxidants and body flushing water
• Greens – as already mentioned these MUST be in your diet.
• Lemons – great for digestion and flushing, drink a cup of hot water and lemon every morning before you do anything else!
• Green tea – great antioxidant
• Garlic – keep the vampires at bay and also stimulate your live to detox
• Omega 3 Oils – avocados, hemp, flax seed oil, these goodies will help lubricate the digestive tract and shift stagnant waste
Good luck with the New Year detox, we’re sure it will work out really well!

If you didn’t get one for Christmas, get one in the sales, because slow cookers are THE way to cook your veggies and make delicious vegetarian dishes.

It is actually quite surprising what you can cook in a slow cooker and because of the cooking time, everything tastes extra delicious. Slow simmering achieves a richer more complex flavour which is why for pasta sauces and curries you’re going to get a taste explosion you don’t usually get with the stove.

First things first, if you are just getting started, the best vegetarian slow cooker recipes are soups and chillies – we’ll give you a terrific recipe further down. But something you might want to try is simple roast veggies. I love to do roast veggies but quite often if I have just got in from work, I won’t bother because they take a little too long in the oven. By using a slow cooker, I can quite literally leave everything to cook whilst I’m at work. This recipe takes about 8 – 9 hours to cook.

All you need to do is throw carrots and potatoes in your slow cooker, add a chopped tomato, 3 cloves of minced garlic, 2 tbsp water, 3 tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper, stir it all up and leave on a low heat for 8 hours or until veg is tender. Remember to experiment with other veg too, I love throwing in parsnips.

For a great slow cooker chilli, follow this recipe found on allrecipes.com:

• 2 green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
• 2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 (15 ounce) cans crushed tomatoes
• 4 onions, chopped
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 4 (15.5 ounce) cans black beans, drained
• 1 (14 ounce) package firm tofu, drained and cubed
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 6 tablespoons chilli powder
• 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon liquid hot pepper sauce, such as Tabasco™

Directions – So Simple!!

1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions; cook and stir until they start to become soft. Add the green peppers, red peppers, garlic and tofu; cook and stir until vegetables are lightly browned and tender, the whole process should take about 10 minutes.
2. Pour the black beans into the slow cooker and set to Low. Stir in the vegetables and tomatoes. Season with salt, pepper, cumin, chilli powder, oregano, vinegar and hot pepper sauce. Stir gently and cover. Cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.

Once you have simple soups and chilli down, you can build up a pretty good slow cooker recipe list. I love to make sauces in my slow cooker. The beauty of the slow cooker is that the flavours are enhanced and maintained so food is tastier than ever before, plus you can throw it all in and walk away – bonus!

Here’s an easy slow cooker tomato sauce for pasta, try and tell me you don’t love it as much as I do! You can use canned tomatoes if you don’t have fresh or don’t have a blender.

• 10 ripe tomatoes or 3 cans of tomatoes (put tomatoes in boiling water for one minute to loosen skins, then put on ice until they are cool, this makes them easy to peel and seed. Blend in blender.)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced -
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 stalks celery
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 cup Burgundy wine
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste

Directions:

1. Cook onion, bell pepper, carrot and garlic in oil and butter until onion starts to soften.
2. Pour all ingredients in slow cooker, cook on low 7 – 9 hours.

For some, Boxing Day is as big a feasting day as Christmas. It’s a great chance to incorporate leftovers, enjoy some more family and friend time and finish off those Quality Street!

Of course the traditional Christmas leftovers mean turkey casserole, turkey sandwiches and turkey turkey but for us veggies leftovers have a whole different meaning. Cold nut roast is of course delicious but might not be that appealing for you or your friends and family!

If you have Christmas dinner leftovers a great and easy meal idea is to make up a soup, adding all leftover potatoes and vegetables and adding lentils and a good vegetable stock. Served with homemade bread and scones, this is a nice light lunch or a late dinner that can be kept in the fridge until finished.

If you did cook up a nut roast for dinner and honestly, most vegetarians do (time to get creative!) then try something new for Boxing Day. Our favourite Boxing Day recipe and one which we’ve used for Christmas dinner too is a veggie pie. If you do have leftover vegetables from the ‘big day’, these can be incorporated, just roast up more peppers and garlic and add cheese (we use mozzarella) before baking in a homemade pastry shell (or store bought if you know a good brand and can’t make pastry!) If you are roasting up more veggies, use aubergine and courgettes, they roast to perfection!

If you know your way around a kitchen and have the time and energy, try something daring for Boxing Day. A cheese roulade, cheese tart, baked squash filled with couscous, bruschetta or mushroom wellington will get all your guests salivating, vegetarian or not.

If you are participating in a Boxing Day buffet or pot luck where everyone is required to bring a dish, we recommend simple drop scones with goats cheese and herbs (rosemary is lovely). Throw in some chopped olive and tomatoes and prepare to dazzle your fellow party goers. Drop scones require self raising flour, milk, eggs and sunflower oil (drop scones are fried not baked).

Now we may have mentioned nut roast a tad too often over the last few Christmas dinner posts! We must all remember cooking our first vegetarian Christmas dinner and I bet for most of us, it was nut roast. It’s easily the most common turkey substitute on the big day and as delicious as it might be, now we’re older, wiser and sick of being ribbed of producing the same old ‘hippie stuff’, it might be time to step it up a notch.

So what is the best veggie Christmas dinner?

Let’s quickly talk trimmings. Brussels are a must if only to torture the kids and your picky brother.  If you can get your hands on it, brussels with truffle oil are without a doubt the best veggie on the table. Brussels also go well with some gruyere cheese, walnuts, lemon, breadcrumbs, chestnuts or slivered almonds. Roast parsnips, roast potatoes, carrots and swede mash – all veggies you expect to see on the Christmas dinner table and for good reason! They are just so delicious and keep everyone happy and well fed.

Other great vegetable options for Christmas dinner include soft sweet potato biscuits – heavenly, spinach and cranberry salad.  Some people think salad is weird at Christmas, we think it’s great and any leftovers work will go down a treat for your Boxing Day buffet. Throw in some feta cheese and walnuts and this salad makes a great small starter.

For mains, the best vegetarian Christmas dinner has to be…. a nut roast. Just kidding! Wow, it’s hard to choose just one. Okay, our top five dinners are in no particular order:

1. Vegetarian Wellington, we made this a few years ago after seeing the recipe in The Guardian. It’s actually a vegan recipe full of chickpea goodness, puff pastry, peanut butter (strange but true!) delicious herbs and oat bran.

2. Chestnut Pie, again a recipe found in a newspaper, this one has a half bottle of red in it… gotta love booze in food!

3. Risotto stuffed veggies. Use squash or courgettes and top with a carrot ‘gravy’ basically carrots roasted in butter and blended!

4. Pie or tart. Go veggie, go fruity, go both but always add blue cheese.

5. Nut roast, sorry, we just can’t help it! We love it for nostalgia as much as anything else, but get it just right (nice and moist) and a nut roast can be delicious.

Our favourite part of Christmas dinner? Well that will be the mushroom and walnut stuffing! Here’s a quick recipe:

Ingredients:
1 large onion, diced
1/4lb. unsalted butter
1 cup chopped chanterelle mushrooms
1/2 cup sliced shitake mushrooms
4 stalks of celery, diced
2 large carrots, shredded
1 cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped
1/2 red pepper, diced
2 loaves multigrain bread (diced and dried for at least one hour)
2 tbsp.chopped fresh thyme, sage and parsley (each)
3 eggs
3 cups warm vegetable or mushroom stock

Directions:
Over medium heat, melt butter. Add onions, all mushrooms, celery and red pepper. Cook until vegetables are tender. In a large mixing bowl, combine diced dry bread, shredded carrots, walnuts and herbs. Whisk eggs and pour over top of bread mixture. Add half of the stock and vegetable mixture. By hand, turn and mix all ingredients.

If the mixture is very dry add more stock. Put in a casserole dish, cover and put in a 375 oven for 40 minutes. Serve with a mushroom or veggie stock gravy.

You can’t go wrong with this recipe, your meat lover friends will be begging you for your secrets we promise you!

Christmas demands just two things to keep me sane, booze and cake. Actually that’s year round isn’t it? Okay, so howsabout for Christmas we merge our two favourite things and create….. Christmas cake vodka! Sounds good!

A lot of effort may go into making a Christmas cake, but Christmas cake vodka is really easy and really tasty. Basically what you are making is a vodka infused with all the flavours and aromas of Christmas, you can alter the recipe as you see fit. For instance, we’re using real almonds and vanilla essence, you can if you prefer use vanilla beans and almond essence – you get the picture.

Here’s what you need:

Ingredients:
1 bottle vodka (one litre/700 ml)
1 tbsp dark muscovado sugar (refined sugar cane also called Barbados sugar if you can’t find it use brown sugar to taste)
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 cinnamon sticks
1tbsp mixed spice
50g raisins
50g almonds, roughly chopped
peel from one large orange
peel from one lemon
8 cloves

Instructions:

1. (If you have the time, do this step two months before drinking.) Throw all ingredients in a large container and seal or cover with plastic.
2. If you have two months prep, turn or stir mixture once a week, if you only have a week or so before beverage is required, stir everyday or every other day.
3. On day of consumption, strain mixture through very fine sieve or coffee filter paper, squeezing to remove all liquid.
4. Pour into bottle, screw on lid and place in fridge.
5. Save all removed fruits and fold into ice cream for a very alcoholic Christmas dessert!

There you have it, a really easy way to bring the festive season into your usual vodka tipple, enjoy and remember to always drink wisely!