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Three cheers, gold star and three house points for Martino for that recipe. Well done mate!

Martino, I am genuinely touched that you went to all this trouble for me. I have written down your recipe and will definetely try it out. Thanks for all your help.

OK.

Thinking something Italian and something trad brit. Thinking of children and thinking of ease. I did this last night to see what the children thought as a boxing day lunch for an English family in Italy.

Chop one onion and 100g of bacon then gently saute in 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add in thin slices of turkey breast (200g) and allow the flavours to develop together. The flavours only get better if it is made earlier.

Add a tin of good quality chop tin tomatoes (or better still skin and deseed 500g of fresh ripe firm tomatoes) into a seperate pan with 200g of frozen peas (fresh if you can get it) add salt pepper and an Italian herb (I used Marjoram). Simmer and allow the sauce to thicken. Add some drops of water if the sauce starts to dry. Can also be made up earlier.

Put on a wide shallow pot of 4 litres of water, cover with a lid and bring to the boil. Make sure the water does not come to the top of the pan as pasta can increase by three times its dry volume. Add 40g of salt only after the water has boiled. Add straight away 400g of pasta I used the butterfly ones as they will have stickability for the sauce. Add the pasta a little at a time. Bring back to the boil and then turn to simmer. Stir regularly to stop sticking. If you suffer with sticky pasta try adding a little olive oil to the water just before you add the pasta. When the pasta is done, taste it! (see how long on the packet) add a glass of cold water to stop the cooking process and sieve. keep a little of the water.

To assemble, add the warm tomato sauce to the turkey and bacon stir in well. If you cooked it earlier bring the mixture to very warm state stiring all the time to stop burning. Put a little of the pasta water in the bottom of a serving bowl add a little of the sauce, add all the pasta and stir well. Pour the remaing sauce over the top of the pasta.

For my family: A fresh block of Parmesan cheese to grate at the table and a pepper mill. They like a lot of pepper on this one.

There you go it is easy even if I wrote a lot!

Can use left overs work out the substitution but dont forget to let the flavours blend before mixing.

Thanks everyone for all your ideas. You know I might just do a buffet from everyones suggestions and have a global feast! Martino, we all love pasta (apart from mum), so I would love some recipes. You never know she might be converted by the new year.

Oooh Pigster, please can I have an invite???? We are staying with my parents until Boxing Day and traditionally it is cold meat and chips - but your offering is so much more appetising!!! Might have a word with Mum....

Bradso, I dont do the tradional Christmas fare anymore, but I do a hugh homemade Chinese, it is easy and most of the kids will like it I do noodles rice stir fry veg the frozen stuff is good, lemon chicken, hot and spicy beef, prawns in a light batter, also I buy a lot of those ready mad spring rolls and appertisers from Tesco or marks, so then every one can help themselves and you find people will try new things.

Bradso, you could poach a large salmon and serve it whole on the table "help yourself" style - either hot or (my preference) cold, with trimmings such as a home made potato salad, or Delia does a lovely recipe I think it is called "four star slaw" in her Christmas book which is a colslaw made with celeriac as well as cabbage, it is a bit garlicky too I seem to remember. My experience of children is that if there are lots of different things on the table they will pick the things they like and leave the rest but will always eat enough, whereas if you j ust give them a plateful of food and they think they have no choice they can sometimes turn their noses up!

This is hard to call I think. We all have such fixed rooted ideas about Christmas. My family for example eat Christmas dinner on Christmas eve and by the time we get up on Christmas day just a full cooked breakfast takes us all the way through to Boxing day or the feast of St Stephens. By the time we get to boxing day we have so much delights left over we have a buffet of a variety of stuff.

Here would have a cured leg of meat on the bone in a rack for people to help themselves. Stilton a whole round or what is left. Lots of pickles and nibbles including things like onion tartlets fritatta and sausage rolls made with proper meat.

Finishing this lot we probably would be boring and have a chocolate fondue.

Pasta at Christmas? Not for me sorry. But as we eat it almost every day I can give you some superb recipes that would be a little different and please all.

Sorry as I said a bit tough this one.

Well the other year, I wanted something totaly different as the tradtional bit had been done to death over the previous weeks and so I thought, sunshine, the medeterranean to be a complete contrast.

I had 14 to cater for including children and so did italian dishes of pasta, meat, vegie and fish. There are loads of recipes on this site for Italian and I'm sure Martino could give you some ideas.

I find that it's relatively quick so alot of different dishes can be made (thus making it look as if you've created a feast for them to marvel at) and I haven't met many children who don't like pasta of some kind.

Jamie Olivers recipes are good for this type of thing too, and you can find his recipes on the BBC web site or in his books.

May be this is too drastically different from what you had in mind. But worth a thought anyway.

We will all be having a turkey dinner on Christmas day. My mum usually cooks a roast for everyone on boxing day, but as I'm doing it this year I wanted something different. My sister suggested a buffet style main meal. I don't really want to have a discussion with my family, as its the first year I've cooked for them all and would like it to be a gorgeous surprise, but I also don't really want to be exhausted at the end of it!

A lot will depend on what you all will have consumed on Christmas Day.Have you had Traditional Fare -or better still has your Mum had It ?If she wants it could you go fo Goose etc.Ask them and perhaps could have a mix.of Things .There is wonderfull cutting in a Ham..I would imagine a good discussion on this would solve a lot