Plant Based Holiday Dinner

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Over the holidays, people struggle with many things. One of them being staying healthy with so much buffet style food at gatherings. Other people may deal with challenges as well. For myself, I sometimes take for granted having such a supportive family when others do not. I want to extend my love and positivity to those who need that, especially over the time of the holidays. A lot of people in my family know that the choices I am making are helping and have reversed what I was dealing with health wise. I feel amazing now and the other people in my life notice how much better they feel when they try my cooking. I do not mind sharing because I am so open to showing people anything if they have any questions and I love helping others. I also love hearing about how much better people feel when they tell me they try a recipe or food that I have recommended. A lot of people in my family are open to trying these dishes even if they do not plan on making a transition to a vegan, vegetarian, or plant based lifestyle. For others, they have seen how delicious everything still can be from seeing my posts or talking to me. They over time realize that you do not have to cut out anything by going vegan and everything I have eaten before can be made vegan. These dishes can also taste so similar and sometimes even exactly the same as the traditional version. 





(photos by Danielle)

I have enjoyed everything I have had so far and have taken notice of recipes my family has had in the past and for the holidays, we have been making the vegan version. Chao cheese is delicious and very popular already. It tastes exactly the same as cheese and since most of my family gets stomach problems from dairy, this being put on the table was well appreciated. It was wonderful to see that Chao cheese was eaten all up and the dairy cheese was still left over. For lunch, we also had crackers, bread, and both red and green grapes.

We usually do as soup as well...so this year my grandma gave me a wonderful recipe that I will be making on the regular. The recipe for this soup is tomato soup that is pureed with some tomato chunks. The soup also has delicious ingredients including olive oil, parsley, garlic, onion powder, turmeric, brown rice, and broccoli. 






For the meal during dinner, we had a Tofurky ham with a beer glaze as an alternative. This got eaten up very quickly and it was delicious. I would definitely purchase this again! For sides, we had black olives, pickles, cranberry, applesauce, corn, green bean casserole, potato puff, and yams. I also made a linguine with marinara sauce mixed with cashew cream. I really like this because if all of the cashews do not fully blend up, there is a parmesan-like texture. I also made some of the meatless meatballs from Trader Joes and crushed them up as well to have a meaty texture in the pasta as well. You can add some garlic and nutritional yeast to recipes like this as well for extra flavor. 



(photos by Danielle)

For desert, my grandma made an apple and cherry pie. We also had ice cream from So Delicious. We tried their vanilla soy milk flavor and it was wonderful. Trying this made me want to try more of their flavors, but also it made me want to make some of my own from whole food ingredients. I hope that some of you check some of these recipes out if you have any upcoming gatherings. 



(photos by Danielle)

Stay positive and happy Friday!
-Danielle

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