christmas pudding update and our christmas lunch

after all that waiting, yesterday was christmas! My daughter was so excited and woke up at 6:30am, (even though she is usually a sleepy head like her daddy) running to see if there was something from Santa!
The weather was nice and perfect for a nice family day.
Neither my partner or I have families in Melbourne or in Australia so the christmas is usually a quiet affair. This year we invited a good friend of ours and her adorable daughter and had a christmas lunch.

The menu was....
slow roasted root vegetables with whole sweet garlic.
Grilled whole snapper served with chunky tomato salsa
Green salad with roasted nuts dressed in liquid gold dressing.
kalamata olive tapanade


and the christmas pudding served with vanilla custard.

my wonderful vegan friends and readers may be wondering "fiiiiiiish?"
I suppose even though I am on plant based diet 98 percent of time I recently realised it is a positive thing to be able to share something with other people. In our society the food is such a big thing and I have to say I did enjoy the experience yesterday. there are things that I wouldn't have such as meat and dairy because of my strong belief. It is different for everyone I am sure.

Animal food is an extremely yang food. It is a good idea to balance that out with more ying food. Lots of macrobiotic people consume seafood occasionally and often served with more ying food such as potatoes, tomatoes and dessert.

The christmas pudding was a great success!
so moist and very traditional minus all the refined sugar and animal products. I have to say I was a bit greedy. ( I had the biggest piece...)

Merry christmas!

christmas pudding

I have to say I am not really into christmas. I suppose I am not a religious person and where I grew up the christmas was not really an important family event either. We did celebrate christmas but not like it is celebrated here.
As much as I think the whole thing can be all about commercialism and presents and etc..... I do understand christmas is the time to bring people together.
This year I decided to make a christmas pudding. Vegan version that is. Lots of vegan christmas puddings contain vegetarian suet or margarine, which I 'd rather not use. but hopefully my receipe will work.

the first thing of course is to soak some dried fruits. I used raisins, goji berries, chopped figs and apricots. along with chopped almonds and sunflower seeds, lemon and orange zest, grated ginger and spices, I left it in some freshly squeezed orange juice, rice and maple syrup and brandy. when the mix was ready I mixed the wet ingredients with spelt flour, grounded almond, sourdough bread crumbs, coconut butter and non-dairy milk (I used coconut milk). Steamed it for4 hours. It is still left in the fridge and on the christmas I will be steaming it again for about 2 hours.
I will be making worm custard to go with it. maybe flavoured with vanilla.
I just hope it's not going to be a hot day though!

frost for cakes

vegan frost that doesn't use any vegan margarine?

I found it!

I tried it with coconut butter for the creaminess, kudzu to set and coconut sugar to sweeten.
It worked really well. I suppose you can try other sweetners such as agave, maple, rice syrup or maybe stevia?
Only thing is it doesn't like the heat. It gets pretty soft when the weather is warm.

I have been using a little bit on a toast for a raw choco treat as well. Yum!

seeds

because of the weather lately my garden is loving it!

little seeds have been coming up all over the place. the ones I have put in and the ones that I haven't!

I usually wash things and use the water for the garden. When I washed amaranth seeds some must have escaped and ended up in my garden too. here are my precious little amaranth leaves!

I always thought nettle was winter veges but not in my garden. but don't tell that to my partner and my daughter. they hate the prickly things. well I don't like the way they hurt either but sure love the power they give me nutritionally!