A large red (tinsel covered) Christmas panic button...#itsthyme

Our Christmas menu is live, the family group text is fired up & there's a distinct sense of panique permeating your general sense of wellbeing as you realise that it's officially silly season. Questions like "who's bringing the ham", "we're coming to yours obviously - you've got the pool" & the classic "assuming you'll do some roast potatoes, your grandfather loves a roast potato" (even though roast potatoes were NOT on the menu) are being tossed in your direction like confetti & you're beginning to wonder if a one-way ticket to a rooftop pool in Singapore for December 25th is a solid investment in your wellbeing and happiness.

Before you utilise those frequent flyers, burn family bridges, destroy roast potato dreams & let Christmas chaos win this round, let's do some Box Breathing together, take 15 to browse our spectacular Christmas feasting menu & remember that these little pigs have 10 years (going on 11) experience under their soft pink hides in delivering deliciousness alllll over Perth. Sceptical? Think we're just tooting our own horn? Here's what VIP Piggo Colette had to say about her Christmas feast: 

"Thanks so much for taking the worst part out of Christmas - the meal planning and shopping!"

Colette we're thrilled you mentioned the meal planning & shopping because we're VERY good at that part. Our planning for this year's menu started 6 months ago in a sunny outdoor brainstorm with both a brilliant ex-chef & a food obsessed creative director sitting in the sun plotting deliciousness. From there? It's a deliciously epic journey of tweaking, talking & setting up the all-important testing days (see the video below for the behind the scenes goss) before we even finalise what's going up on the website & being delivered to your door.

This is just some of what we think about when we're planning the Christmas menu (so you don't have too):

It's hot, 40-deg-in-the-shade kinda hot.

• You want- The oven on for a minimal amount of time, you want meals that you can throw together quickly in advance and hold up in the heat, you want flavours that wow your guests but don't make them break out into a light sweat.
• You need - Get the coolest (quite literally) party on the block started with that divine prawn salad (so fresh, so light AND THAT DRESSING OMG), paired with our incredible salmon tarator (your oven is on for 15 min tops, we promise) & a platter piled high with slices of an exquisite honey & cider glazed free range ham & a bowl of fresh peach relish that you whipped up last night. Add in our sensational sides pack featuring a fresh salsa verde dressed potato salad, adorned with crispy pancetta, soft boiled eggs & pickled onion (also prepped in advance because our kits are pretty great like that...) & a fresh leafy salad with pops of smoked almonds, creamy goats cheese & juicy nectarine wedges stopping the party from dissolving into a sauna.

It's a terrible time of year for fresh produce & I'll need to shop last minute so everything is fresh...

• You want - Produce that is fresh, vibrant and fabulous, fruit that isn't flaccid & meat & seafood that is prepped as much as possible, comes with or is already marinated & lasts perfectly until you're ready to cook it. You'd also love to avoid the sheer hell of the shops in the day before Christmas *shudders.
• You need - Us! We shop directly with brilliant local suppliers & producers & source the majority of our fruit and veg direct from the Canning Vale markets so it's outragously fresh. Our seafood comes from the team at Coral Seafoods & is prepped & vac sealed (the prawns are peeled, cleaned & snap frozen, the salmon prepped & vac sealed) & our meats come beautifully marinated in our handmade marinades & prepped for you (i.e. the ham is alllll prepped ready for glazing, the chicken butterflied & marinated & the porchetta & turkey rolled and ready to go). We deliver it alllll to your door (helllllo skipping the shops) in our fabulous cooler boxes, you don't even need to be home. The best bit? Each kit is packed up & portioned perfectly so you just pop that bag into your fridge until you're ready to create some magic.

I've got so many ages, stages & dietary needs to cater for, this is a nightmare

• You want - Something that will suit the whole gathering from roaming hangry toddlers, to your vegetarian sister, to your grandfather who loves a roast veg & your fabulous aunt who demands fresh, light and fabulous as to not ruin her figure or crisp linen.
• You need - Our expertise from 10 years of delivering deliciousness. We design the menu to suit all ages, stages & Christmas situations & adore nothing more than a good chinwag about what we recommend for your Christmas plans. There's a whole blog post here that breaks down the menu with our pairing recommendations & some ideas that can help to take the stress out of planning the menu. We also have dedicated & delightful customer service in the form of The Ginger Pig who is like your menu planner in your pocket. Drop him an email here or give the swine line a call on for a yarn. Our top tip? Do as these little pigs did last year and get each guest to order a different dish off the menu, prepare in advance and bring on the day, it was MAGIC.

We reached out to last year's Christmas customers for their feedback after the big day & got SO many lovely emails, text and social media messages back from people who had ordered the packs. This delightful message from VIP Piggo Sonia really stood out as a lovely celebration of one of our biggest "whys" in how we plan our Christmas menu - in a nutshell we want to take the stress out and leave the deliciousness in for what many people find a rather overwhelming time of year.

"Thanks very much, we were delighted with everything - delicious and great quality and easy - was a fabulous way to share the load without having to direct things - we loved it. Will be doing our next family dinner in Perth with an order!"

Don't forget that every Christmas order goes automatically in the draw to win the rather spectacular KitchenAid Evergreen stand mixer (valued at $1199) - drawn on December 13th after our orders close.