My 2016 in review

I wanted to collect in this post some of my 2016 favourites from my blog to mark the end of the year. This year has been quite productive in the end, even though I had some quieter times. I hope you like this post.

Cooking challenges

One of the clear highlights of the year were the several cooking challenges that I was able to host and also to take part in. I co-hosted Eat Your Greens with Shaheen for the first year and we will be continuing next year, so that's very exciting.

I got to host My Legume Love Affair for the first time in December kindly invited by Lisa, and the round up of the recipes should be up tomorrow.

Then I had two of my own cooking events: The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week in March and The VegHog's Tomato Festival in July. I fully intend to host these both again in 2017, so hopefully there will be many recipes from you as well alongside with comments.

I was also very lucky to take part in other lovely vegetarian and vegan cooking challenges, so many thanks to the hosts.

International cuisine

Throughout the year I very much enjoyed cooking and eating international foods from all over the world, which got me experimenting more with different vegetables and spices. I have to say that I really am getting better and better at eating spicier foods. Some of my international favourites were these recipes:

Keralan style vegetable curry 

 

Vegan Haggis 

Roasted cauliflower with lentils, freekeh, pomegranate seeds and tahini sauce  

Spätzle bake with mushroom sauce 

Thai green curry 

 

Chilli cheese macaroni balls 

 

Udon noodles with tofu 

Sweet recipes

My regular readers will probably know that I'm not too keen on desserts or baking, but I still sometimes do it. I think that my partner occasionally appreciates some things for his sweet tooth. These sweet recipes were especially my favourites this year:

Blood orange sorbet

Rye rye whisky brownies 

 

Spelt puff chocolates 

Danish style cocoa and rum balls 

New ingredients

I also got to experiment with some ingredients that were new or less known to me, like jackfruit and the new Finnish protein product Pulled Oats. I first ate a jackfruit jalfrezi at a food market and then had to make it myself as well. I was very pleased with the results. I also made a couple of other dishes with jackfruit and they were all excellent, I really like it as an ingredient.

In Finland I tested the new very much hyped vegetable protein product called Pulled Oats. It was nice and easy to cook with, straight from the fridge, and there are so many possibilities where to use it. It's definitely one of my new favourites.

Another novelty for me were black badger peas and red fox maple peas, which are a really handy dry staple to have to make all sorts of protein-rich dishes.

Jackfruit jalfrezi 

Pulled Oats with Thai flavours 

 

Black badger pea hummus 

Dish of the year

I had to choose my Hedgehog porcini ravioli that I cooked for the Hedgehog Awareness Week as the dish of the year. The looked cute, tasted good and created a bit of a twitter storm.

Party of the year

There were a few parties this year, but my own birthday Dino Party will have to be crowned to the best party of the year. There were nice snacks, drinks and excellent company, what do you need more.

Travelling

I was lucky that I got to travel quite a bit this year, mainly to Nordic countries, where my heart is. I spent Easter and Christmas at home in Finland and a couple of weeks in August. I went to Copenhagen in April and to a railway journey to Norway in October. These were all such lovely trips, I wonder where to go in 2017...

This was my brief review of 2016. I'm glad you relived these moments with me. I hope you all had a good year and will have an even better 2017! See you soon!

Your VegHog