Merry Xmas / Happy Holidays

What’s a Christmas Day like for a vegan? Well, I ended up opening my presents before going to bed on Christmas Eve. I was overjoyed at receiving lots of great vegan items… everything from a vegan slogan T-shirt to an animal rights cotton carrier, vegan chocolate bars, some Lush bodycare and an Animal Aid mug. I think I got the most vegan related items than I’ve ever had – which is great, as I think this means awareness is spreading. I love my friends that put thought into getting items that really matter to me.

Vegan Pressies 2011:

So after getting up late (did I mention I tried one of the Angell vegan choc bars before going to bed and loved it?) and realising a cold was coming and my throat was getting killer sore (think edgy razorblades), I took a multi-vitamin and had my usual soya hot chocolate (I say ‘usual’ – this is usual at weekends and holidays, as on work days or getting up early days I need an energy drink due to lack of sleep instead). I went to see my folks before starting on the big Xmas dinner. This year I’d decided to actually try a proper vegan turkey-style Christmas dinner. Usually I just eat anything… whether I feel like beans on toast, veggieburger, veggie cottage pie or whatever else takes my fancy. But since I do always wish meat eaters would try veggie turkey I figured maybe I ought to have one for a change so I could really show first-hand what it’s like.

I discovered the week leading up to Christmas that there are actually lots of different veggie roasts you can buy. In Tesco you can buy Quorn veggie roasts as well as a Tesco meat-free Chicken roast (ok, chicken’s not turkey, but still!). In Asda you can buy Linda McCartney’s vegetarian roast plus various nut roasts. The best vegan roast in the UK however is Redwood’s Celebration Roast – available from Holland & Barrett and various vegan/health stores. Some of the veggie roasts such as Linda McCartney’s we can’t eat as they have milk and eggs in. Redwood do a 100% vegan roast.

The ‘Celebration Roast’ actually comprises of six turkey style pieces, plus 4 ‘pigs in blankets’ – veggie sausages with vegan bacon wrapped around them. You also get some vegan gravy mix. This is cheaper than buying a real turkey – plus if you buy one of these, an animal doesn’t die. You’ve saved a life. Win win all round.

I put everything in the oven… and waited… After x amount of time I decided to see if they were done and opened the foil to see how the turkey-style pieces and pigs in blankets were doing… The aroma was very ‘meaty’ – in fact, I was almost put off wanting to eat it – the thought of eating something so ‘turkey-like’ almost sickened me, as I haven’t eaten anything tasting of turkey in the last 21 years, since going vegetarian. I was a little apprehensive and told my mom she may end up having to eat all of it!

I put the sprouts on the grill and then added hot water to the gravy granules. The gravy smelt very beefy! I’m used to having vegetable gravy granules while this Redwood gravy was more meaty too.

Eventually the moment I’d been waiting for arrived. Everything was ready so I served it up… Trying a piece of the turkey (fake, don’t forget!) was daunting… I put it in my mouth with a piece of potato and sprout. The taste WAS very turkey-like. In fact I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to eat it all. Thoughts and flashbacks of real turkey filled my mind. It almost tasted too much like real turkey. The sausages almost tasted too much like real sausages too. (I should at this point point out that I’m one of the pickiest eaters on earth when it comes to food. Even food I CAN eat, a lot of it I don’t like…. like I don’t like asian food… or indian food… even if it’s vegan).

The end result:

While I think I’m happier eating non-meat-like items, unless it’s a veggie burger or things like cottage/country pies, I think this roast would actually be perfect for anyone who eats meat that might like to try a meat-free roast – because it really IS similar to real turkey, and real sausages and bacon (the bacon’s not as crackly and softer, but still. Actually I eat the Redwood’s bacon sometimes when I make a BLT – I just wasn’t so keen on it wrapped around a sausage). Seeing and trying something like this makes me wonder why more meat-eating folk don’t actually bother trying it. Why do people keep eating slaughtered animals when they can try something so similar they probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference? Is it out of laziness? Is it just because they THINK they love the taste of what they’re eating and couldn’t try anything else? Why aren’t people open to trying different food?

After finishing dinner I ate my Moo Free chocolate Santa, which was another Christmas present from a friend, had a look around Facebook and discovered that California now makes McDonalds state that chemicals in some of their food can cause cancer. Wow. I didn’t know about that. After googling a bit it turns out that Acrylamide is the chemical that has been discovered to cause cancer and it is particularly high in high temperatured fast food such as McDonald’s fries. Here’s an article from 2004 - http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11351 – it’s interesting how so many people eat McDonald’s but really don’t care what they’re doing to their bodies. It’s also no wonder cancer rates are getting higher when so many people eat at fast food places such as McDonalds. Is it worth paying their cheap prices if you’ll eventually get cancer? It’s funny how people don’t care about what they put into their bodies – until they actually do find out they’ve got something like cancer. They don’t care about animals getting abused and murdered… and they don’t care that the food they’re putting into their bodies could bring on something like cancer either. What DO people care about? They don’t care until it’s too late to care.

I tried watching a couple of movies… first Ice Age, then Kung Fu Panda that I’d recorded earlier… but neither of them interested me. I ate a vegan carrot cake that I’d bought from Goodness Direct, and ended up finishing the night reading a book (how rock n’ roll… Although to be fair it was Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries book which I’ve had for years and never got around to finishing it - I finally got it finished at 5.45am). My mom told me she loved the pigs in blankets (not at 5.45am) – yep, she got the ones I didn’t eat. My mom eats meat, yet everything vegan that I give her to try she loves… It makes no sense why she doesn’t go vegan. I guess she buys meat mainly for my dad… and eats it too.

Now it’s Boxing Day and I’ve just read in the paper that Tory minister Jim Paice is declaring that the fox hunting ban failed. I think that’s insane. If it HAS failed it’s only because the stupid toffs that go out fox hunting are so disrespectful that they don’t care what they do. How is it that the smoking ban managed to be successful when so many people were involved? The general public managed to abide the law of not smoking in public places – yet these moronic fox hunters, of which there are a lot less, think that because they’ve got a bit of money they can disrespect laws and do what they want? That shows how screwed up this country is. The general public with less money has more respect and are more law-abiding than these despicable toffs. Yet the law is not enforced when it comes to people with money that say ‘tallo-ho’. It sickens me, it really does.

Happy Xmas! Ha.