Christmas Recipe Round-Up: Part 3

Onto the big meal! For the appetizer posts click here and here.

There is no way to really make this meal look pretty, unfortunately. Most traditional roast dinners are a bunch of veg, potatoes and meat smushed together on a plate and covered with gravy.

Because we were hosting non-vegetarians and because my mom is a traditionalist at heart, we went with the traditional roast dinner, just subbing out the meat for a nut loaf that I made (and this is NOT your average blah nut loaf, I promise!).

That way my mom could have all her sides, her cranberry sauce, her gravy, and our guests could see that Christmas Day doesn’t have to be so different just because you’re vegetarian.

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So let’s break this down step by step.

• I served mashed potatoes which don’t really need a recipe – they were vegan and were simply Yukon potatoes boiled, mashed together with half a stick of Earth Balance vegan butter and some almond milk till creamy. Easy! You can throw garlic in there for garlic mashed potatoes but pretty much every other dish I was serving had garlic in it, so I thought I’d give us all a break with the potatoes!
• I served Dijon sherry marinated roasted vegetables on the side – see below for the recipe
• the main dish was a mushroom hazelnut leek loaf from Green Kitchen Stories – delicious, and I found the recipe here. I followed it word for word and it was perfect. I just used a little less rosemary as I found that a bit strong when I made a ‘test’ loaf before Christmas
• the gravy was from Angela – I just omitted half a tablespoon of the molasses as the molasses flavour was too strong on my test run, and it got too thick as well, so I doubled the quantity of vegetable stock. Otherwise it was thick and creamy – perfect! Click here for Angela’s recipe.
• the naturally-sweetened cranberry sauce served on the side was posted yesterday

So on to the recipe!

Dijon Sherry Marinated Roasted Vegetables

INGREDIENTS:

Vegetables of choice (I used baby carrots, halved lengthwise, parsnips, asparagus and Brussels sprouts)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 tbsp sherry
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 tsp garlic

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl, then add veggies and toss to thoroughly coat.

2. You can let veggies marinade for a couple of hours if you have the time. If not, just roast at 400 F until cooked.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow, as my mom is going to share her chocolate cheesecake recipe (well, I may have hijacked the recipe a bit to ‘healthify’ it…!). You know you want some:

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