It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

This past Sunday my family held Christmas.

Yep, you heard me. Christmas!

As a family, we tend to head in different directions on Christmas Day so we like to organise a day where we can all catch up together to eat, drink and exchange pressies.

For something a little different, this year we decided to head outdoors and ended up eating and relaxing in the Carlton Gardens on one of the most glorious days Melbourne has had recently (definitely not like last weekend!)

Positioned under the beautiful trees, we set up our picnic (and claimed one of the trees as out honorary Christmas tree for the day).

Without having a lot of spare time on my hands lately I decided to re-create a couple of dishes I've made lately, rather than start experimenting. I always have loads of ideas of what I want to make for our Christmas get-togethers but I have a huge problem in saying "no" to friends/events and end up with no spare time for playing in my kitchen! I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem.

Here's a little sneak peak of what we ate....

Green beans wrapped in prosciutto (a family favourite), a mixed salad filled with feta and artichoke, and meat, meat, and just a little bit more meat, including my brothers delicious roast lamb cooked with lemongrass, little chipolatas, and chicken stuffed with capers and lemon and wrapped in prosciutto (as you can see my family loves prosciutto).

My potato and chorizo bake....

....and dukkah crusted lamb cutlets with pomegranate.

After having a little break and opening pressies, we started on dessert, including my sister's chocolate cheesecake.

My baked ricotta with basil and a fresh berry salad tossed in a cardamon and vanilla bean syrup.

And to finish off, Christmas cake!

It wouldn't be a Christmas feast without Christmas cake, and in fact I'm eating the last slice of it right this minute....love it!

To my family - thank you for a really lovely and relaxing day filled with lots and lots of yummy food and bubbles (one of these years we'll finally manage to make the right quantity of food, and not over indulge as we always do!) Thank you also to Kris Kringle for my pressie!

xx