Festive Holiday Eats & Annual Cookbooklette Giveaway!

Happy Holidays to You!

Happy belated winter-festivity of choice! Happy New Year! 

I've had a full and festive holiday season - cooking up homemade gifts, baking cookies for my yoga students, drawing and writing my holiday cards, drawing my annual cookbooklette (giveaway at teh the end of this post!), packing up packages and standing in line at the post office, decorating the house, hosting a holiday craft party, and lots more! I suppose now it's all winding down, and it's basically time to pack it all back up again! ha ha. 

Christmas Craft Party!

We had our annual Holiday Craft Party - it was so fun. We had a few super fun friends over to eat dinner, decorate gingerbread cookies, make paper snowflakes, and play with pipe cleaners. Good clean fun! 

Hummus Bites // Broccoli Soup // Farinata

For appetizers, I made a big platter of cuke slices with homemade hummus. I sprinkled them with some dukkah and then topped them with a tomato slice. Holiday colors, but healthy and light! 

For dinner, I made one of my favorite soups of all time - the Broccoli Soup with Roasted Red Bell Pepper Creme from the Real Food Daily Cookbook. This soup literally calls for 3 lbs of broccoli. And a huge ton of fresh spinach. It's so good for you, and it's also SO GOOD. It's one of my favorite dinners when I want something really satisfying and emotionally rewarding, but also healthy. Since we were going to be eating lots of cookies, I figured I had better make a dinner that wasn't too much of a gut bomb! ha ha. 

One of my best pals is gluten-free, so I decided to make a big batch of farinata (aka torta di ceci, aka socca). I used the recipe that my friend Nicoletta's mom gave me years ago... and, um, you guys, it was SO GOOD. I *literally* teared up when I took a bite!! Ha ha ha. I don't think I've ever had that reaction to food before, but this stuff is so nostalgic for me, I just love it so much. Here are some posts I've written about it in the past:  cinque cinque sandwiches from Italy, and recreation from home.

Look at all these cookie decorators!! 

I made a ginormous slew of gingerbread cookies, four colors of frosting, got out all the sprinkles, and made other cookies for us to eat while we were hard at work. Ha ha. It was so fun. I just love friendly fun like this - chatting, laughing, goofing around. It was a wonderful evening. If you look at the bottom of the frame, somewhere in the middle, you'll see the weird and hilarious grumpy little cookie man that Mr. VE&T decorated. Ha ha ha. Omg it made me laugh so hard. It was the only cookie he made! He blamed it on all French noir tv show he was watching!

festive supplies:

Fancy little chocolates with sprinkles on them, spice drops, two kinds of gluten free cookies (Snickerdoodles from Oh She Glows, and Ginger Chai Chocolate Chip Cookies from Plant Crush). I made so many gingerbread people, and I made a batch of gluten free gingerbread people too (on the small tray). I always use the recipe for Lower-Fat Gingerbread Men from The Joy of Cooking. It's easy to veganize and it's a really fantastic recipe. I really recommend it! 

Christmas Eve Dinner!

In our family we've always had our big family holiday dinner on Christmas Eve at my parents' house. A few years ago we decided to mix it up and we switched to an Italian-inspired Christmas theme. It's so fun! We all love it. See how my mom makes such a beautiful holiday display on the table? She made some beautiful platters of veggie antipasti - olives, eggplant, fennel, peppers, squash. Man, does she have the magic touch. My aunt Laura made a beautiful salad with pears and nuts and grapes. It was so delicious! I never put fruit in my salads, it was such a fancy touch.

Lasagne!

For our main course, we have lasagna! Is there anything more festive than lasagna?? One of my all-time most favorite foods. My brother's wife made a non-vegan lasagna, which shan't be mentioned again. I made TWO vegan lasagnas, using my own recipe (link here) - the smaller one is a vegan "SOS-free" lasagna, which means it has no oil and no salt (and no sugar). My aunt and her partner are vegan and they also eat a SOS-free diet. It's not much work to make an extra lasagna for them while I'm making my own, and I want them to feel included in the lasagna-fest!! 

My Christmas Dinner! 

Buccellati!

For dessert, I asked my Italian friend Sara for some traditional Italian Christmas dessert ideas, and one of her suggestions was these cookies called "Buccellati" (also called "Cucciddati"). She sent me a recipe in Italian, which I scanned and then also ran through Google Translate just to make sure. One of the ingredients in the batter that I was confused about was "ammonia" - baking ammonia!! I quickly ordered some on Amazon. What a crazy ingredient. I read about it online. Apparently ammonia was a common leavener before the invention of baking powder. It can only be used in doughs that aren't very moist, because it needs to evaporate during baking. But, while it bakes, it expands and makes little air pockets, resulting in an incredibly light and crispy cookie. 

It was quite a gutsy move to make such an adventurous dessert for the very first time for everyone's Christmas! ha ha. 

ta-da!

But I'm delighted to say that they turned out AMAZING. We all loved them! I'll definitely make them again! There are many different variations on the filling - I made the one filling in the recipe that my friend sent me, and I used a filling that my friend My Zoetrope generously shared with me from her grandmother! Looking around online, I see that there are infinite variations of filling for these cookies, but they all have dried figs, raisins, nuts of some sort, spices, maybe some orange zest, maybe some alcohol... but you can really do it to your own liking. 

The cookies are meant to have icing and sprinkles, but for a more sophisticated look (and to use what I already had on hand), I used sparkling sugar for the cookies that didn't have chocolate in the filling, and demerra sugar for the cookies that did have chocolate in them. We still have a few of these cookies left over and to our amazement, they still taste just as good this many days later. I chalk it all up to that secret ingredient of ammonia in the dough! 

If you're interested, I could share the recipe I used in a future post. But you'll have to track down some ammonia! Let me know. 

Christmas Morning Waffle Breakfast!

the gang's all here!

On Christmas morning, we all gathered at my parents's house again for a waffle breakfast. I made a double batch of the raised waffles from Vegan Brunch (our family favorite!), and my mom made a huge batch of Field Roast breakfast sausages. There ended up being some non-vegan offerings on the table too, but it was a very vegan friendly affair, and I feel lucky to have such a cool family to roll with the vegan punches! 

a few Christmas pics of our sweet little gang enjoying the holidays. 

Tasty Christmas Gifties! 

One of my pals stopped by on Christmas Eve and brought me this beautiful platter of vegan cookies!!! Isn't this amazing!?? I don't think I've ever in all my life had someone make me a big festive platter of vegan cookies like this before. I got so emotional. There were so many great cookies - peanut butter, ginger, fudge, wedding cookies, a fruity oat bar, and some chocolate coconut tasty biz. Plus fancy teas and little chocolates. Isn't it glorious!?

Over at the PPK, we had a holiday swap and I got one of my favorite swap pals from Munich. She and I were swap partners for a similar exchange several years ago, so we already knew that we were both committed to sending some seriously abundant packages. I asked for fun Euro Snacks, and BOY did she deliver!!! This vast supply of sweeties and savories should keep me going for quite a while!! ha ha. 

Homemade truffles

Swoon! Several of my students brought me delicious treats for gifts, and I wish I had taken more pictures. What a lucky teacher! But I did snap a picture of these amazing homemade truffles. Holy bonkers these were delicious!! I am so impressed. 

*** COOKBOOKLETTE GIVEAWAY! ***

  

This year's edition of my annual holiday cookbooklette features several of my favorite recipes that I discovered this year (and a few old favorites too!). I'd like to give out 10 copies to you all, my trusted and loyal blog readers. I'm especially impressed if you've actually read all through this long post, and if you've even bothered to check my blog after I unintentionally took such a long break!!

10 winners! Open to anyone, anywhere, in the whole world! To enter just leave a nice comment on this post - tell me about your holidays, a winter tradition you enjoy, or what you're looking forward to in the new year... (and PLEASE leave your email if your blogger account isn't linked, so I can tell you if you've won!). Good luck!