Leah Michaelides: Plant-based Christmas food ideas!

Hello people! Welcome to my first food blog! I set up a Facebook page in 2015 called Deaf & Nutrition with the aim to educate us deaf folks more about nutrition, healthy eating, cooking and eating habits. It has over 2,000 members and its jam packed every day with tasty, healthy ideas.

It came about as I was concerned about the lack of information in BSL to educate deaf people how to eat healthily and stay healthy. Since then I have also created Eat, Food, Love! A trendy website for health conscious, BSL accessible recipe ideas with videos!

The other thing that I’m focused on is the unavoidable but upcoming Christmas! Oh what to do! I know for sure that it’s going to pull on my purse strings a lot! But maybe this time, it doesn’t have to…

Christmas as we know it, has always been about kindness, generosity, love, spending time with families and spreading goodwill all around. People who are poor and have families, manage to have a good Christmas because they have each other and have a great time celebrating Christmas.

This Christmas, how about we spread the goodwill a little bit further? You could choose to not have any meat or fish for your Christmas meals, which is gentler on your purse strings and also your digestion. Leaving you with extra cash and plenty of energy to have fun with your loved ones.

Plant-based Christmas meals, with some creativity and practice in the kitchens prior to Christmas, can be absolutely and amazingly tasty. Your taste buds will tingle and twinkle like the Christmas fairy lights on your Christmas trees!

For Christmas meals, you can have the typical Christmas dinner of roasted vegetables, Brussels sprouts with cranberries, Yorkshire puddings and mashed potatoes with onion gravy.

Instead of typically roasted turkeys or chickens to carve, you can have a gold roasted stuffed butternut or a chestnut, port and thyme strudel. Heck, you can even have an eggnog afterwards!

To show off your culinary finesse, you can serve desserts such as gooey brownies, apple tarts or Christmas puddings on fire!

For recipe ideas to create these wonderful and creative plant-based meals, why not check out recipes from the Vegan Society or Viva! online. Here are a few to get you started!

For more nutritious, plant based Christmas food ideas be sure to join the popular Facebook group, Deaf & Nutrition.

Happy Eating!

Here are a few recipes:

Yorkshire Puddings (Vegan Society)

Ingredients

115g plain flour
1 tsp chickpea flour
Salt
Vegetable oil
285ml soy milk

Method

Sift plain flour, 1 teaspoon of chickpea flour with a pinch of salt into a bowl. Make a well in the centre. Add the soy milk a bit at a time, stirring well until the mix is smooth.

Get a Yorkshire tin, fill each basin 1/3 full with vegetable oil. Put in the hot oven for 5 mins. Carefully remove the tin from the oven and put the batter mix into the hot oiled basins. They will bubble a bit.
Put back in the oven and cook for 20-30 mins depending on the whims of your oven.

Eggnogs (Vegan Society)

Ingredients

3/4 cup (113g) cashews (soaked and drained for 30 minutes)
6 medjool dates (pitted)
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 cups (625ml) of water
Optional: 2-3 shots of rum
Method

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend for 1 minute

Serve and enjoy decorated with a cinnamon stick in a glass and a dash of cinnamon powder on top.

Strudel

Ingredients:

1 packet puff pastry, defrosted
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 sticks celery, finely sliced
450g chopped nuts
1 packet vacuum-packed pre-cooked chestnuts, chopped
1 tin of chestnut puree
60g breadcrumbs
2-3 tsp fresh thyme, chopped, or 1/2 tsp dried
4 tbsp port
1 tbsp soya milk
Salt and black pepper

Sprout mixture

10 Brussels sprouts
1 tbsp Pure margarine or other dairy-free spread
Ground black pepper to taste
Soya sauce if flash frying

Method:

1. Pre heat oven to 180°C.
2. Lightly fry the onions, garlic and celery until soft. Add the rest of the filling ingredients and stir.
3. Steam the sprouts until just tender then mash with margarine and pepper. Alternatively, shred them and flash fry in a little oil then drizzle with soya sauce just at the end.
4. Line a baking tray with foil. Oil it then mould half the filling into a rectangle. Using a spoon, make an indentation down the centre and spoon in the sprout mixture, pressing down. Layer the rest of the filling on top and smooth off with a palette knife into a rectangle. Bake for 20 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, flour the work surface and rolling pin and roll thinly into a rectangle, three times the width of the filling. Using two fish slices, carefully move the filling on to the pastry. Cut neatly round it, removing excess pastry in whole pieces.
6. Use this excess pastry to cut into thin strips. Layer half of the strips diagonally and neatly across the strudel – see the picture above. Place the other half of the strips in the other direction, creating a lattice effect. Brush with soya or other plant milk.
7. Use any excess pieces of pastry to decorate the strudel with holly leaf shapes and berries or anything else you fancy – and also brush these with a little plant milk.
8. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the pastry is golden.

Leah is a foodie, health nut and keen cook. Loves coffee, unicorns and fairies. Based in London. Follow her foodie ideas at Deaf & Nutrition via Facebook and be sure to check out www.eatfoodloveweb.wordpress.com