My year 2023

 

 

Hello everyone! It has been a while, but I’m still here. I still live in Copenhagen and I still cook vegetarian food even though not so imaginatively this year. If you are on Instagram you can see my food posts there almost daily. I have just been too lazy to blog. In any case I wanted to share some of my foods and other things from this year and just say hi and wish everyone a nice festive season and end of year.

I have been cooking my usual food and of course summer veggie barbecues had to be part of it. I got these excellent new potatoes in the farmers market and I really loved to grill them over the summer. Visiting different farmers markets has been one of my favourite pastimes also this year and I found some nice local produce there.

 

Over the year I made many Finnish dishes like the Karelian pies and cheesy oven sausages. Those dishes are full of memories for me. In the summer I had a delightful visit to Finland, as we detected that there were three hoglets roaming in my mum’s garden. My nephew was also very fond of them and wanted to make a warning sign for drivers to take care. It was so much fun observing those tiny hoglets and my mum’s garden is a real haven for them. 

 

As you might know, I’m quite fond of pasta and often eat it. Some of my this year’s pasta innovations were a cheese fondue sauce with white wine, smooth roasted pumpkin sauce with roasted chestnuts and a butter bean based carbonara sauce with facon. 

 

Earlier this year I got a Moroccan tagine and have been experimenting with it. It takes a long time to cook with it, but doesn’t actually require that much work so you can do other things while the veg is cooking and you can put pretty much any vegetable in there. I especially enjoyed some squash tagines in the autumn.

 

I didn’t do much balcony gardening this year, but the berry bushes are still there and we got a new fig tree, which is quite fun. Magpies liked to visit the balcony and the plant pots in the spring. 

 

Now I would like to wish you all a nice and cosy Christmas time and a happy and healthy New Year! 

 

 

Your VegHog

Foodie gifts and festive food

 

I wanted to share with you some of the foodie gifts that I received for Christmas and also some of the festive food that I ate with my family. We had the perfect Christmas weather in Finland, lots of powdery light snow and -20C. That certainly called for mulled wine!

We had some friends over before Christmas and I made these vegan sausage rolls for them. They are not veggies, but loved the rolls so much that next time I’ll have to make more of them. On the second picture you can see our sustainable and allergy-friendly Christmas tree. We also brought a fir in from the balcony and decorated it. Soon it will be returned back outside.

It is traditional to have rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar on Christmas Eve, which is the main celebration day in Finland. Here are also some parts of our Christmas dinner with the vegan centerpiece, the pigless tofu roast. Is anyone interested in the recipe? I think it’s quite good.

I got loads of chocolates, sweets and coffees for Christmas. Now I’m trying to get through them, so no veganuary for me…

 

These are a Danish Christmas classic, Æbleskiver = lit. apple slices, but they haven’t even seen an apple. They are basically puffy pancake balls that are traditionally served with strawberry jam and icing sugar. This is a plantbased edition of the classic.

 

Then a few drinks: a festive edition of my favourite Danish soft drink Faxe Kondi, a Medieval mulled wine like spiced wine and a sour beer featuring a Finnish comic character, the swearing hedgehog.

 

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

 

Merry Christmas!

 

I wish you all a very merry Christmas! May all your wishes come true. Eat some good food and above all, stay safe! 

Your VegHog

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas my friends! 

Have a lovely time and enjoy a lot of nice food. 

Souvenirs from Finland and presents

Here is a little post of some of my Christmas presents and things that I brought back from Finland to England. This post is once again full of Moomins and hedgehogs, which seems to be quite the trend for me now. But I just love all those cute items. The holiday feels like far away now, but at least I have these things around me.

I absolutely fell in love with the new seasonal Moomin mug series with a snow horse and a pitiful but lovable dog character called Surku, Sorry-oo. I got the mug a bowl from my mum for Christmas, and bought the Surku and Ancestor spoons and mini mugs in the Moomin Shop at the Helsinki Airport on our way back. I also bought a winterly Moomin tin. 

My mum got me this quirky recycled hook made from an old baking utensil. How do you think that my mini cups look hanging in there? This may not be the final installation yet.

I bought the hedgehog baubles before Christmas, but also got a lot of hedgehog themed items from my partner, like a set of four coasters, a keyring and a hedgehog and hoglet sewing kit.

I of course brought some Finnish food items with me, like oat crackers, filled chocolates with endearing artwork on the box, tooth friendly blueberry pastilles and cranberry salt received from my mum. 

There were many other items in my bag as well that I didn't have time to photograph anymore. It was quite a good bounty, which eventually arrived, even though our hold luggage got delayed by a day.

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog