Have your teens suddenly decided to become vegan?

Do you have a vegetarian relative coming for Christmas or are you looking for a festive dish that does not involve meat?

Planning a vegan or vegetarian festive feast should not be so difficult with recipes like this.

At home we have the traditional roast, but I always like to have something lush and Moorish as a vegetarian option. I have been making this dish on and off all year on retreats or while entertaining and it has proven a winner.

It is tweaked from a recipe from the book Jerusalem, by Y Ottolenghi and S Tamimi, my undoubted kitchen gurus.

The method is simple. Heat the oven to 200C, cut the butternut squash into long wedges and the onions in quarters, toss the ingredients in a baking tray with the olive oil, sea salt and pepper and roast until the onions are cooked and the squash is golden.

As the roasting happens, you make the sauce by whisking the tahini, the garlic, lemon juice, water, salt and olive oil. You are looking for the consistency of runny honey here so you might need to add water. You also toast the nuts and chop them, and remove the arils from edible seed pods from the pomegranate.

When the vegetables are cooked you prepare a pretty serving dish with slight depth, and you arrange them. Be artistic! Drizzle the sauce on top, sprinkle the nuts and the pomegranate, and scatter some coriander leaves.

At the end, using your fingers, dash the finished dish with zaatar, a middle eastern spice which derives from a sour berry. Serve at room temperature.

If people do not compliment you on this dish I will be surprised.

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Food for thought: Have yourself a vegan little Christmas

It's a tough operating environment in retail right now -- not that Costco investors would know anything about it. The warehouse giant this week made it look easy by posting another quarter of market-thumping revenue growth. Sales rose by 7% in existing U.S. stores. And that's a result that competitors from Whole Foods to Wal-Mart just couldn't touch.

Third-quarter comparable-sales results. Data source: Company financial filings.

The organic food opportunity Costco's membership model is clearly resonating with customers on everything from televisions to bulk paper products. But there's one area that likely stood out from all the other grocery departments: organic food. Costco has targeted that category as a key growth opportunity, and not just because so many shoppers are choosing these healthier products. The warehouser also likes organic groceries because they cost more than other comparable food items.

However, Costco doesn't see that higher price point as an invitation to goose profits, like many other retailers do. Instead it's a chance to deliver bigger savings and thereby win loyal members. In other words, organic food offers a nice showcase of Costco's strength as a price leader.

Here's how Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti explained the strategy back in October: "We can generally provide a better savings than others [in organic] because other retailers sometimes will use it as an ability to get more margins, and so we show greater savings."

Amazon.com 'sCEO Jeff Bezos put it another way when he said , "Your margin is my opportunity."

Winning market share That explains why at least some of Costco's recent organic food sales gains seem to be coming at the expense of Whole Foods. The organic food grocer sports a 4% profit margin, which is huge by grocery standards. Kroger and Costco, by comparison, both stay consistently below 2% of sales by that metric.

Meanwhile, Whole Foods has seen its comps growth slow for five straight quarters as Costco and others fight to capitalize on the popularity of healthier grocery shopping.

Whole Foods' quarterly comparable store sales growth.Data source: Company financial filings.

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How High Organic Food Prices Are Boosting Costco's Results