Blogger Fiona Peacock from Watching You Grow and her Project Manager husband Laurie will be celebrating a vegan Christmas with their three year old daughter, Ebony, this year. The family from Stockport are experts when it comes to celebrating Christmas with compassion.
Fiona Peacock and family
Me and Laurie have been vegan for eight years. I'd been vegetarian since I was eight and progressed to veganism when I found out more about the plight of dairy cows when I was 21. We did our research and knew lots about the health benefits of a plant-based diet and so naturally decided to raise Ebony on a vegan diet. I think when you feel passionately about something, whether that thing is social justice, animal rights or the importance of eating breakfast, you want to pass those beliefs down to your kids.
Ebony eats what we eat and has done ever since she started enjoying solid foods. She's three now and has a varied diet with plenty of fresh vegetables, greens and fruits. She eats lentils and beans as well as the occasional fake meat product. I don't worry about her getting enough nutrients because I know she eats well and is thriving. She knows that some of her friends eat meat and that we don't. I haven't gone into the specifics about factory farming with her, but we've discussed the wider issues. If we don't need to eat meat at be healthy, then it's not really worth taking an animal's life for. I first realised that when I was eight years old and am proud to see Ebony understanding the same issues now.
There are lots of options available for vegan Christmas dinners. From the traditional nut roast to more recent mock meat roasts. Personally, I'm a big fan of vegan haggis for Christmas dinner, but I think we'll be having home made mini pies for Christmas this year. The one thing Christmas dinner was missing for me was yorkshire puddings, but I've recently mastered the art of the vegan yorkshire pudding so we'll be enjoying those this Christmas too. My parents will be joining us for Christmas dinner, they're lifelong meat eaters but join us for a vegan Christmas every year.
Our family traditions have changed as we've grown older. One of my favourite Christmas traditions was that we would always start the day with lardy cake for breakfast. I've only ever eaten it on Christmas Day, huddled around the dining table in my parent's house. It was originally made with lard, but when I went vegetarian my dad started using butter instead. Now that we've vegan, he's switched to using vegan margarine. It's still delicious and is now a much healthier version of the original loaf. It's really lovely to have supportive parents who adapt and change traditions so we can continue to share them as a family.
We tend to spend Christmas at our house with family, but when we do visit others we're pretty lucky in that all of our friends and family are quite adventurous when it comes to serving vegan meals. I always offer to take food, but people seem to quite enjoy the challenge of trying something new in the kitchen. Luckily, us vegans aren't as rare as we used to be and the internet is filled with simple recipes for delicious vegan food, so vegan cooking is quite accessible. If you're interested in trying out some plant-based dishes this Christmas, a quick Google search will bring up lots of recipes to inspire you.
Lardy Cake
Dried Yeast
Sugar 5ml
Tepid Water 300ml
Strong White Flour 450g
Vegan Margarine (Vitalite or similar) 100g
Caster or Demerara Sugar 100g
Mixed Spice 5ml
Sultanas and/or currants 75g
Sunflower or Rapeseed Oil
Grease a 20cm x 20 cm tin. Mix the flour, sugar yeast and salt and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in size. Turn dough onto floured surface and knead well for 10 minutes. The best results are obtained by using a bread making machine on 'dough' setting for these two stages.
Roll out dough into a strip approximately 20cm wide and 0.5cm deep. Cover two-thirds of the dough with small blobs of margarine, 45g of sugar and half the spice and mixed fruit.
Fold the uncovered dough onto the coated dough and then fold onto the remaining coated dough (so you have three layers of dough with the coating between the layers. Roll out again to a strip 20cm wide and 0.5cm deep. Repeat the process with the remaining margarine and spice and 45g of sugar. Fold as before and roll out so that the dough fits the tin, pressing down so it fits the corners. Cover and leave in a warm place to double in size.
Brush with oil and sprinkle with the remaining sugar. Bake in an oven at 220*C (Gas Mark 7) for 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm with margarine.
The dough may be left for its final rise overnight if you have a warm place and then popped into the oven for breakfast. Alternatively, the finished Lardy Cake freezes well but warm before serving.
For more info on vegan food, please visit peta.org.uk