Preparing for Christmas the vegan way

This time of year, I like to work with classic and seasonal ingredients, just like my mother and grandmother did. This is a good time to eat plenty of lentils, pumpkin, cabbage, beetroot and other root vegetables. Use it to make pickled cabbage soup, casseroles and stuffed cabbage! I will definitely use apples and walnuts for sweets, and the pears for cooking compote. I work with both old recipes and my own experiments, but I think that goes without saying in a vegan kitchen.

Allow me to respond with my favourite motto; simplicity is greatness. Besides sustainability, my other fad is supporting local retailers. I buy 90% of my leguminous vegetables, grains, other vegetables and fruit from local shops, in my case from around Lake Balaton. Only the dry ingredients made from soya are harder to come by here, but I rarely buy those in the first place, they are not my favourite. I select the spices at the butcher’s. Yes, I go there too, but more on that later. I seldom go to the big supermarkets, but there is a big selection, too.

In my experience, this is not common or not yet fashionable in our country. I have been informed that it has already been done in Vienna. I have personally encountered something similar in Athens. There it was called a natural fair and it was fantastic to see that three quarters of the products were purely plant-based. I myself tried a so-called vegan market here in Almádi. If all goes well, we will move to a new location early next year and I plan to reintroduce market unloading there.

We will have bean goulash, mushroom dishes, pumpkin cream soup, and the aforementioned stuffed cabbage. For dessert, I am making an apple and walnut tart, a millet-cottage cheese and poppy seed pie and bejgli (foldover). In the latter, the poppy seed filling is from my grandmother’s recipe book, the pasta recipe is my own development. But I also like to include Christmas food from other nations on the menu. So I also plan to bake Russian-Polish pierogi or blini, i.e. Russian pancakes. In my kitchen, I proclaim international peace.

Let me give you an example: lentil stew instead of meat. Let’s start with it at our own comfort level. It is not a good idea to start with gluten-free desserts straight away, you need to have some routine. For example, I recently posted about making pumpkin risotto, and before that, quinoa and zucchini casserole. Participants receive the information in bulk in my cooking courses.

It depends on what you do. But, as a general rule, cooking the “vegan” way is time-efficient and energy-saving. These are not negligible aspects these days. I also cook meat at home for my older son, and I see that chicken casseroles take three times as long to prepare as vegan casseroles, for example. For some reason, there is a widespread perception that vegan cooking methods complicate the process, when, in fact, they can save a lot of time and contribute to a sustainable future, helping global wildlife to survive. Can you think of a more festive thought?