Topping and Tailing January

We began the month with a New Year lunch at our place.  Lindsey, Ian and Stella came.

We finished the month with another lunch at our place.  Lindsey and Ian came again.  And so did Freyja and Simon.  And our friend Pat. And our friends Julia and Travis with Baby Henry and Travis's daughter.

I had been wandering around my copies of Vegan with bite and Vegan (ish ) in search of inspiration and devised a menu loosely based on some of their recipes. Jack Monroe's very pretty cauliflower and lentil salad with spinach and pomegranates. I upped the pretty-ness level by adding some edible flowers. We had Shannon Martinez's "deconstructed lasagne" with lots of lovely green veg. We had Jack Monroe's spinach dumplings in tomato sauce. And we had roasties, dips, munchies not from books.  Plus we had a mango and raspberry trifle, much like the one I made for Christmas. And a "grazing plate" of donuts, which I bought from a pop up donut van that appeared in the car park of the Elaine Farmgate shop, cut into bite-sized pieces and presented on my cake stand. The donuts were not vegan friendly but, although I remembered to ask if they were, I forgot to ask why they were not. I must ask, the next time the Gypsy Donut van pops back into my life.

Freyja's dessert photos:

Grazing donuts

Trifle, much like the Christmas one
but topped with chocolate rather
than cherries

We ate all this outside on the patio, under the gazebo - for the weather was pleasant and clement and properly conducive to eating outside.

We were lucky with the weather.  It rained and it rained and it rained and it rained and it rained on Friday. It was also windy and cold.  It didn't rain much on Saturday but it was on the cool-side and it wasn't very pleasant.  It is on the cool-side again today, and it is cloudy and grey. Yesterday the weather was perfect!

I do need to find an alternative to vegan cheeses though. The ones I have found are not really very pleasant. I use nutritional yeast a lot but it would be nice to find something else as well.

And now here we are.  February already. It will be Christmas before we know it 😝