This post is brought to you by Woolworths

Woolworths twisted my arm and asked me to try some of their new products and share my Christmas menu with you all. Oh it was soooo tough, cooking and eating all that delicious food before Christmas actually arrived. Woolworths have just released their Gold range, a new premium range and you might have seen some of the delicious goodies at your local Woollies already. I did because the Vintage Christmas pudding with the orange slices on the outside had to come home with me the first time I saw it. And we took it upon ourselves to taste all of the puddings in the range. I know, life’s tough.

In the lead up to Christmas I spend hours flicking through my stash of old magazines and cookbooks trying to work out the perfect Christmas menu. Will I try a new salad or dessert or will I stick to my old favourites. Decisions, decisions. We always do the cold meat, seafood and salad lunch. That’s because for as long as I can remember growing up we’ve always had a cold Christmas lunch served buffet style.

Retro daddy on the other hand grew up with the traditional sit down hot lunch and after the meal all the ladies get up and do the dishes while the menfolk look after the kids and sometimes play a bit of cricket outside. I’ll never forget the first Christmas I spent with his family while we were dating. I was just glaring at him from the kitchen waiting for his eyes to meet mine so that I could express my displeasure at being in the kitchen. But it does mean when these lovely ladies come to my house they jump up and do my dishes so I can’t complain.

But anyway back to the food. I had a bit of fun putting this menu together incorporating the new Woolworths Gold range. You’ll find my salad recipe cards here. All of the ingredients came from my local Woolworths including a small smoked ham, a kilo of cooked prawns and their delicious marinated chicken which my little ones always love when I roast. Why? The stuffing. They go crazy for stuffing. I prefer the salads and hot bread rolls with a bit of chicken on the side. I think it’s all those years of being vegetarian. Or maybe it’s just because I save room for dessert. Or maybe it’s because I’ve eaten so much in the kitchen already.

Assorted hot finger food with sweet chilli dipping sauce

King prawns, roast chicken and sliced ham

Warm baby potato salad

Roast pumpkin, spinach and feta salad

Tomato and cucumber butter bean salad

Warm bread rolls

Assorted Christmas puddings served with vanilla custard

Almond shortbread and fruit mince pies.

The Woolworths Gold range includes three frozen entrees that should keep everyone happy. We just tried the Oriental Treasures and Lattice Balls and these are not your usual offerings from the supermarket freezer. They are definitely fancier than the frozen spring rolls I buy which are stuck to each other at one end of the box.  However, I opened these packages and everything was all neatly lined up in it’s own little spot.  Just 15 -20 minutes in the oven and we had a selection of prawn and vegetable hot yummies with some sweet chilli sauce on the side. I tasted everything on the plate and loved the prawn toast best (they don’t call me retro mummy for nothing). Everything tasted fresh, was nicely flavoured and smelled so good. We enjoyed them so much that I served up another 2 packs before dinner that night!

And from the start of the meal to the end of the meal. Dessert! My favourite part! I’m always in charge of desserts and the sweet stuff at our family Christmas. And as much as I love to make sweet Christmas goodies I’ve never actually made a Christmas pudding. Yes you read it here. Retro mummy has never made a Christmas pudding before. I do frozen puddings but never a good old fashioned Christmas pudding. I’ve always bought one or had it given to me. Thankfully there are four delicious Christmas puddings in the Woolworths Gold range so we decided to try them all. I mean why not? If we’re going to pretend that it’s Christmas then we might as well overeat. So we had a sort of pudding road test. All prepared and served under similar conditions.

You can steam or microwave the puddings and I decided to take a slice or two of each pudding and microwave it so that we could save the rest of the puddings and enjoy them for the rest of the week. And retro daddy did just that! I served each pudding with a dash of vanilla custard which is my favourite way to eat pudding. I just love the whole hot pudding and cold custard concept full stop.

And how did the puddings go down in our house. Well the little ones loved the belgian chocolate pudding, retro daddy liked the Hidden Cherry pudding best until he tried Vintage pudding and then declared that he was a traditionalist (no surprises there) and that he loved it the best because it was full of fruit and nuts and tasted like his mum’s (she always does a few Christmas pudding each year). And me? I liked the Hidden Cherry because it was traditional with a twist. But if you want to go for wow factor then you want the Hidden Orange pud! From the outside looks like a normal pudding………yes retro mummy that looks like a normal Christmas pudding to me.

But cut it open and you have a show stopping whole orange in the centre with a sweet and rich orange sauce oozing out. So I’d recommend having everyone sitting down to wow them with this one. And its a substantial pudding too weighing in at a not so little 1.2kgs. And it was easy to reheat – just steam or microwave it, leave it to rest for a few minutes (seems like hours) and bring it out to the table.

The only downside of trying all 4 puddings in the Woolworths Gold range is that now I can’t decide which one I’ll serve on Christmas day.

And to finish off all of that pudding and a delicious lunch we decided to open the shortbread tin- well I couldn’t very well talk about it if we didn’t actually taste it. We opened up the tin to find these delicious cookies. Indulgent roasted almond shortbread. These are made in the Yarra Valley by a small Aussie business and are beautifully presented making it a lovely present for someone.  I always like to have a few little goodies tucked away for when I get an unexpected present and need to give a little something in return. Plus the gold tin will be something nice to keep. I love tins in my sewing room for storing my pins and little sewing supplies.

And that my lovely readers is my Christmas menu. We had a lot of fun making and tasting and I have to say that the Gold range not only looks good but tastes good too. Have a little look the next time you’re out at Woolworths and stock up on  few goodies because they all look good enough to give away as a little present. Well, if you don’t eat them before then. My biggest issue with buying Christmas goodies is the eating  before Christmas arrives. Do you do that too? I’m terrible at it……………………….thank goodness  I get to do blog posts like this one where I actually have a good excuse!