It’s beginning to feel like Christmas

I’ve been trialling different recipes for Christmas with the hope of creating something absolutely scrummy that even hardened meat-eaters will enjoy. Last week I tried making a vegan wellington based on this recipe in The Guardian but with cauliflower instead of squash since my fussy family don’t like squash. It turned out really well.

First I baked the cauliflower and while that was cooking made the duxelles and spinach.

I then spread it in layers onto the pastry. First the duxelles.

Then spinach and garlic.

Finally the roasted cauliflower.

The pastry was bought and unfortunately it is ultra-processed white flour. I’m not aware of any commercial wholemeal pastry, which is really crazy given the epidemic of bowel-related diseases in our society. We need to stop eating white bread, white pasta and white rice. All the nutrition has been completely stripped when we remove the fibre and it wreaks havoc with our gut. But I digress ….

The end result was superb and it tasted delicious despite or perhaps because of the pastry.

Today I’m trialling making my own wholemeal pastry made with 100% wholemeal spelt flour, olive oil, and water. I’ll see how it goes and whether it might work with this. I don’t think it will have the nice flakiness of the bought pastry.

We put up our tree today.

Victoria was overseeing the proceedings.