What Do You Have for Christmas?

The title of this entry will be, I dare say, familiar to all veggies.

If I'm feeling a bit mischievous, then I'll answer "Anything I like. What about you, stuck with the same old turkey again?" I always like to point out that, as a vegetarian, in the run up to Christmas I'll have several different menus at the various Christmas ' do's' that one gets invited to, while most meat-eaters will have had the same dish of roast turkey et al several times by the time that they sit down at the table on Christmas day to the same dish, once again.

Don't get me wrong, I love all the other accoutrements of Chrimble-din - roast potatoes, sprouts, stuffing etc - so I do tend to try and find something that will go with the aforementioned vegetables. Eating a lasagne or mushroom stroganoff just doesn't appeal to me.

I tend to shy away from a standard nut roast or a manufactured meat substitute like a Quorn roast, probably because I see that as the easy option.

Last year I made Delia's parsnip roulade, the year before was chestnut bourgignon pie I believe. Before that, my memory is a blur.

For my first veggie Christmas, sometime in the mid 90's, I made a stuffed meatless loaf using the recipe from Linda McCartney's Home Cooking book. This year, I decided to revisit it. It's easy to make - it's just a mixture of several types of soya based meat substitutes mixed up and baked. It's a bit time consuming as you have to start cooking it the night before, then stuff it and finish cooking it the next day.

But it's very tasty, and goes well with gravy and vegetables. It is also very nice cold with pickles and bubble & squeak ( a Boxing Day tradition in my family) and if there's still some left over, you can chop it up and throw it in a curry. A true Christmas turkey substitute if I ever saw one!