Pre-Christmas Christmasing

Hello friends! It is Boxing Day here, the day after Christmas day. I hope whatever this time of year does or doesn't mean to you, you had a lovely time. And shout out to those who were working as well, I know not everyone gets holidays off.

This year, I decided to go Full Christmas to distract myself from the gaping grief hole that is my girls having all passed on. Last year was spent in a grief haze, just four weeks after Dim Sim passed. I am excellent and distracting myself and dissociating, so let's get Christmassy! I went hard from the 1st of December, with decorating and Christmas carols, and buying some special Christmas cat related things. But to be honest 25 days is too long to keep up the festive cheer. I flagged in the final week. But that's OK because I still made some lovely fun food!

My mum always makes the Christmas cake every year, veganising it using Nuttelex and vegan egg baking replacement. This year's cake was exceptional, very yummy! It was gone long before Christmas! I didn't get a photo of the whole cake, but here is a slice I had. Gentle heated and spread with some Nuttelex, my favourite way to eat it!



I bought four different types of vegan roasts this year. Yes, four. I could have bought more. We were only going to have one at Christmas, so I decided to have the Inaugural Week Before Christmas Christmas Dinner. Why not, I was being festive!

I decided to try the one roast I had bought that I had never tried before, the Woolworths Plantitude Vegan Roast. It was also gluten free. It came out of the box in vacuum packed plastic and it did not look promising. It was this flat, grey looking rectangle. I took the roast out of the plastic, tried to shape it into something more roast like, and roasted away. In the final roasting stage put on the cranberry glaze that comes with it. When it all came out of the oven, it was sitting in a pool of greasy liquid that I drained off. Friends, this was not good. It tasted weird, the texture was not good. Glad I didn't save it for the actual day! Would not buy again. Do not recommend.



Creamed Spinach from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen by Chloe Coscarelli: I'd been wanting to make this recipe for a while, and this seemed like a good time to make it! It was very simple, a cashew cream sauce and sauteed baby spinach, finished off with a sprinkle of nutmeg. I made the whole lot, and got three side serves out of it. It was lovely.
Rating: :)



I finished off the plate with some jarred cranberry sauce, and some salt and vinegar roasted potatoes. This recipe came out of the Christmas edition of The Australian Women's Weekly magazine. You boil the potatoes in vinegar and salted water, then squash them, dot them with butter and salt, and roast. We were looking forward to a good vinegar flavour, but they only had a hint of it. And they needed much longer in the over to get properly crispy. And definitely add some extra salt to them!



I also did some fun pre-Christmas baking, because why not.

Cranberry Cheesecake Cookie Cups: I made these from an Instragram recipe by Thriving On Plants, which you can find here. I halved the recipe to make three, because there are three of us and also I only had half a tub of cream cheese to use. This recipe is delicious and SO easy! The cookies cups were incredibly simple, and make it look so fancy! We really enjoyed these. Would make again. And I am also going to keep that cookie cup recipe in my arsenal so I can make super easy but very fancy looking things in the future!
Rating: :D



Mincemean & Apple Squares from The Festive Vegan Table by Aine Carlin: I made these for a Christmas bake sale, and they were delicious. But I did have some practical issues. I accidentally added all the water for the dough, which made it a wet dough, far beyond the crumble stage. I added a bunch of extra flour back in, but it never quite went right. For the filling, I cut open my orange to juice and found it was black inside. Ewww. So I googled and found a way to sub it with orange extract and water. After baking, the filling with very runny, so I would suggest just added some orange extract and no water or juice. Maybe it was because my jar of fruit mince had extra moisture? I don't know. But regardless of some issues, these were so yummy and very festive! The apple combined with the fruit mince was lovely.
Rating: :)



Stay tuned for several more festive posts to come!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


Dim Sim made sure everyone knew that she was NOT happy about being Santa Claws. Coal for everyone!