New Years Eats

I am not one who celebrates the new year, or makes resolutions, or does recap posts. Time is time and it just keeps on passing. I certainly don't stay up until midnight, that is way way way past by bedtime/ But I do like food traditions, so I have a few that I have made around the new year.

New Year's Eve I will normally make pizza and pie for dinner and dessert. This is what I made this year.

Chard, Coriander, and Cashew 'Cheese' Pizza from Greens 24/7 by Jessica Nadel: This pizza has a base of Chard and Coriander Pesto, topped with some broccoli florets and sliced red onion, and finished off with blobs of a delicious and easy to make cashew cheese. I used a store-bought crust for ease. The cheese and pesto were very easy to make as well. This is a really fantastic combination of flavours, and not the usual pizza suspect. The pesto recipe is lovely on its own, and uses sunflower seeds to make it nut free.
Rating: Pizza :), Pesto :)



Creamy Banana Pie from Hearty Vegan Meals For Monster Appetites by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: This is a very rich pie! First up, a word about the crust. The instructions say to bake in a pie plate, but then remove it from that to completely cool. Do not do this, mine completely fell apart. I think this must be a mistake? Unless they meant a tart pan with a removable base. Anyway, I ended up with crust bits. I blitzed them up in the food processor to crumbs with the intention of making a cookie crumb base by adding some melted Nuttelex. I followed some proportions for this from Joy Of Vegan Baking, but it ended up being too sloppy. Oh no! But I ended up just pressing it into the bottom of a lined 9 inch springform round cake pan. The filling is a mix of tofu, Mori Nu vanilla pudding mix, almond butter, and chocolate chips. I used regular chocolate chips instead of white chocolate like the recipe called for, because I hate white chocolate. As a result of my fiddling around with the crust, now really just a base, I just used a single layer of the sauteed bananas on top, not an extra layer in the middle. The base actually set up in the fridge and worked out pretty well, like a dense brownie base for it. But as I said, super rich!
Rating: :)



On New Year's Day, I like to start the day with some pancakes for breakfast, and end it with some beans and greens.

Banana-Chocolate Chip Pancakes from Tofu 1-2-3 by Maribeth Abrams: This recipe makes a lot of pancakes! It says 15, but I got 16, so between three people we had several left over. I made half with chocolate chips, and half just plain. To be honest, for breakfast I preferred the plain ones, the chocolate chips make pack a pretty rich punch first thing in the morning. The pancakes have silken tofu and a banana blended into the liquid ingredients. Lovely served with maple butter, maple syrup, blueberries, sliced bananas, and some peanut butter.
Rating: :)



Coconut Black-Eyed Pea Curry (Lobia) from Vegan Eats World by Terry Hope Romero: I took a different spin on my greens and beans this year. In the past, I have made many versions of Hopping John, normally having to make my own black eyed peas from scratch because you can't get them tinned. For a brief few months though, there were some tinned ones available. Sadly I only bought one, and now they are gone again, but I used that tin for this recipe (with a second tin of kidney beans). This is simple, you make an onion/garlic/spice paste in the food processor, but then it is just sauteeing that and simmering beans in a coconut-milk broth and then mixing through some coriander. I served it with some spinach for the greens (no collards where I live), and some brown basmati rice. This served three people.
Rating: :)



However you do or don't mark New Year, I hope you had some nice days regardless.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



The one tradition I very much do care about is going to sleep and waking up next to this precious baby for the new year, and if fact for every new day regardless.