As the saying goes, ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’.

Now, whilst that might be something you probably heard your parents (and even grandparents) say when you were growing up, you’ll no doubt agree that it does make sense.

And whilst Christmas is a time for fun, family get-togethers and, of course, fine food, it can also be lot of hard work, too, particularly if you’re hosting it.

So, in a bid to get you ahead of the game and thinking about what you’d like to eat over the festive break, we’ll be providing a few of our festive favourites over the next few weeks in the hope of inspiring you and your choice of Christmas menu.

And on the point of getting ahead, we’d like to remind you that the final day to buy smoked salmon and fine foods from Scotland online from John Ross Jr is Monday 21^st December.

As part of this series we thought it would be appropriate to ‘start with a starter’ – and in this case we’ve revisited our festive favourite, smoked salmon shots.

For the full recipe click the link above, however for a quick breakdown of what you need to add to your shopping list here are the key ingredients:

• 500g tub of John Ross Jr’s Smoked Salmon Pate
• 100g pack of John Ross Jr’s Traditional Smoked Salmon
• Good quality breadsticks (1 – 2 boxes)
• Enough spring onion to garnish the number of shots you wish to serve
• One lemon, chopped into fine segments

Visit our blog next week for the next instalment. Equally, if you’d like to see your recipe published on our blog then send it in to johnrossjr@johnrossjr.com.