We have our main Christmas meal on Christmas Eve as we like to go out on Christmas Day and eat Indian food. It’s become our tradition – it’s our favourite food and if we can’t eat our favourite food on Christmas Day when can we?
I don’t really care for roast type dinners so Christmas Eve is the only time of year when we have one. We usually have a light starter and this year I picked the Greek style courgette fritters from Veganomicon. I thought they were the highlight of the meal – light, fresh and tasty.
For the main course I decided to make the meatloaf that was featured in the free digital edition of VegNews (it doesn’t link properly but if you google VegNews then go to Subscribe you will find it). It was a very meaty loaf made with rice, lentils, mushrooms and lots of herbs and veg. It’s basted with a smoky tomato sauce which actually I thought was a bit overpowering and next time I’d halve the sauce. Still, it held together well, was easy to slice and tasted fantastic in a sandwich later on! I served it with roast potatoes, leeks, green beans, roast potatoes, stuffing, yorkshire pudding, bread sauce and gravy. My Yorkshire puds were a bit cakey, despite following the exact same recipe which worked perfectly last year. I made the stuffing up as I went along but I used a couple of Realeat veggie sausages with lots of celery, onion, garlic, sage, thyme and breadcrumbs. It was delicious. This is a picture before I attacked it with gravy:
On Christmas Day I made US style biscuits with gravy. I use the VWAV biscuit recipe, and served them with smoked almond gravy which is a really tasty gravy from the new brunch book. I’ve said it before but I really can’t understand why we haven’t embraced biscuits and gravy over here. They’re a wonderful start to the day!
We went to a local South Indian restaurant, Hanging Mangoes, for our main meal. It’s only a small place but it was quite busy with local Indian families spending Christmas there. I’ve only got a decent picture of the masala dosa, but we also ate chilli fried idli, cauliflower 65, dhal, spinach masala, vegetable noodles and coconut rice. Delicious as it always is!
So Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were filled with delicious food and wine with more to come over new year. Yes, we vegans really suffer at Christmas time!
Cooking the Vegan Books 
Oooh, your biscuits look really nice! Everything else too, but I could really go for those biscuits.
I got the same requests to add some info to Book Blogs. Do you think I should make a group about bookish charities, mention it in the discussion, or leave these kinds of things out of the site altogether? What do you think?
Geez oh man, it all looks incredible!
And yeah, we vegans *really* suffer…..
What a fantastic feasting!
The idea of eating biscuits and gravy for breakfast does seem a bit off to me – it’s not really the done thing in Australia. But perhaps I shall just have to give them a whirl! Maybe I can start a biscuit revolution?
Any chance I can get the recipe for your vegan Yorkshire puds, please?
I’ve been trying to find a good recipe for them since I went vegan.
Thanks, Toni.
Well, mine didn’t work this time – they were way too cakey. But they have worked before – i’ll dig out the recipe soon and retry it before I unleash it!
Everything looks wonderful!!
I know I’m probably teaching Grandma to suck eggs but was the oil hot enough for your Yorkshires??
Says the girl who’s not been brave enough to try vegan ones yet!!