Meatless Monday: Christmas traditions.

Everyone seems to have a Christmas meal tradition. If you grew up in my family, you would have had cheesy meatless lasagna with assorted veggies (olives, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, etc.) and garlic bread for Christmas dinner (or Christmas Eve, depending). It's a tradition my brother and I continued into adulthood, and only recently, when Allen and I became vegan, did we abandon the tradition. It's a little sad, but there really isn't any vegan substitute for what we had, so I'd prefer to let the memory of a delicious meal remain a fond one and start a new tradition instead. (My parents went out to visit my brother in Arizona this year for Christmas, and they did, in fact, have the "traditional" lasagna.)

Since we are on the eve of having our first baby, it's time to start some traditions of our own. And, since it was just the two of us this year, we tried what we thought was something novel. Chinese food on Christmas. Turns out, not so much. There was actually a wait for a table at our favorite Chinese place. We were kind of shocked. The food was delicious - our local place has an extensive vegan menu - and was much more cost effective than putting on a huge "traditional" Christmas dinner for just two people. I don't know if this will be our go-to family tradition from here on out. We're unlikely to have many Christmases with "just us", and I'm not sure how amenable either of our families would be to Chinese Christmas dinner. I'm not even sure it's something I'd like to do frequently. It was a nice change of pace, to be sure, but there's something about baking and cooking while chatting with family and smelling the pies in the oven that just screams Christmas to me. Maybe my own old traditions are buried deeper than I thought?

One tradition that we've started that is sure to stand the test of time: homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning. There is a super easy (with a stand mixer) recipe in Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Joy of Vegan Baking. (Pages 175-176, available in the Google Books preview.) It's well worth your time.

I hope your holidays, whatever your cause for celebration, were happy and full of fun and loving (and maybe one or two of them meatless...) traditions.