I hope you are ready and looking forward to Christmas next week. I’m as ready as one can be, even though our presents aren’t here yet (they’re lost in those huge bins you see in photos from USPS, or so I hope). In spite of this, we still plan on enjoying this holiday season.

Christmas for us is a time spent at home. We don’t usually travel (and more so this year), and since our families don’t live close to us, it’s generally just the two of us, cooking (with Christmas music playing in the background), eating, then video-chatting with our loved ones, followed by a long walk in our neighborhood to walk-off all that food, and ending the day with a holiday-themed movie.

As I do all the cooking for the holidays, I’ve already planned my menu this year, and yes, it looks very similar to our Thanksgiving one.

This Christmas, as we have somewhat fallen off our plant-based diet (we still follow it most days), I am roasting a chicken and following this recipe with potatoes and carrots (I’m replacing margarine with coconut oil); I don’t like or make/buy gravy, but if needed, we use this Trader Joe’s jalapeno sauce for [everything] the chicken - be warned, this stuff is addicting!

I’m also roasting Brussels sprouts with olive oil and dried herbs/spices (a must for us), and I’m cooking my delicious stovetop roasted potatoes with garlic (go to the last story in my Healthy Eating IG highlights for the recipe), along with stuffing. I’m also making this Eastern European salad that a few years ago had been a tradition for us (I’m making it ahead of time with homemade mayo, and cooked chicken instead of Bologna; in previous years I was using cubed/diced ham). I stopped making it once we changed our diet, but I wanted to bring it back this year.

For dessert, I’m again baking pumpkin and apple pies from scratch… Yes, it seems like a lot of food just for the two of us, but I enjoy having leftovers and not having to cook for a few days after.

This Christmas won’t be much different than other years for us, with the exception of having more time. In our “previous life” we could never get off work during the holidays and were always constrained by time, hence why Christmas became a quiet day at home. I’ve come to love this tradition now, though we’ll see what the future brings.

What Christmas Day traditions do you have?

Until next time.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

-Em