Ukrainian Christmas!

Long live the extended Orthodox holiday season!  For those of you who may not know, the Orthodox religion celebrates Christmas on January 6/7th instead of the 25th, following the gregorian calendar of yore.  Quite a few members of our little group have some Ukrainian in them, among other things, thus, we all grew up a on pierogies and cabbage rolls, and look for any excuse to indulge on the dairy heavy cuisine of our ancestors.  Our challenge this was to satisfy our friends with a vegan Ukrainian Christmas Feast that could hopefully be comparable to Baba’s.  Those were big orthopedic shoes to fill but I think we did it!

I did not make up these recipes myself so I will simply link to where I got them and tell you what I did to make them vegan.

Cabbage Rolls

I found this recipe on allrecipes.com and chose it because it most resembled Jay’s Baba’s cabbage rolls, and was pretty much already vegan.  Just replace the butter with Earth Balance, or your favourite vegan butter and voila!  Tip: Instead of cooking the cabbage first, put the entire head in the freezer the night before.  Remove and let defrost on your counter. The leaves will become wilted and pliable as you pull them away from the head.  I also like to cut them in quarters for tiny cabbage rolls, instead of big ones, just like Baba does.

Pierogies

I found this recipe for pierogies (or varenyky) after quite the hunt for a simple dough reminiscent of my Baba’s recipe.  I substituted egg replacer for eggs, and used Daiya cheddar and Earth Balance in the potato and cheese filling.  They turned out great!

We rounded out the meal with saurkraut, hot mustard, pickles and vegan sour cream.

And don’t forget the vodka shots with a “pickleback”!

These recipes are super delicious, though time consuming and not the most nutritious.  Experiment by filling the cabbage rolls with millet and different spices and using coconut oil instead of vegan butter.  Also try using wholewheat flour for the pierogy dough and filling them with spinach, mushrooms, maybe even yams? Cashew cheese?

Let us know what you come up with!

~The Vegan Project

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