Healthy Vegan - Things in my kitchen for the New Year

Happy New Year to you bloggers from around the world.

My kitchen this month is heavy with gifts from the festive season, as well as lots of leftovers as our eyes were bigger than our bellies (no Turkey though, remember I am vegetarian!).  

So let me begin.  Above is some left over homemade beetroot horseradish pate smothered over slices of Germanic style rye bread. For those of you interested, I will share the recipe later on in the month.

In my kitchen is this ceramic hen that holds some little jars of jam and marmalade.  I was also given some chutneys and boxes of chocolates (in fact I am eating a piece of dark chocolate right now).  If you want to see my Chocolate collection, then please have a look at my festive eats blog post if you click here. 

In my kitchen are empty containers that once held a very large Panettone.  The panettone is gone but the tin remains.  The tin will be used to hold some delicate Christmas decorations when we put away the Christmas tree back in the attic later today.

In my kitchen is a loaf of sourdough white bread.  I have been making sourdough bread a lot over the festive period, as I was mostly home alone on most days with D still having to go into work.  Its still hit and miss though. 

Non-vegans and non-vegetarians please look away, unless your curious.  I made some more mock meat with vital wheat gluten.  This time it was vegan 'ham' and 'facon bacun' the recipe comes is from The Gentle Chef and has been slightly adapted. I will blog more about it later on in the month too.  I had so much of it, that I shared some with my vegetarian work colleague on return to work early this week. 

I am a sucker and am sometimes sucked in by packaging, which is why I picked up these Coconut & Treacle Oat Biscuits, also it pulled my heart strings a little as I reminisce a bit of my time in Scotland. 

I have not been eating crisp much of late, in fact I cut down drastically last year, that I felt I was able to indulge over the festive period, but truth is these Kettle chips have not been opened yet as we have been munching mostly on savoury nuts and cheese crackers.

Talking of munching, we picked up a big tub of mixed olives. 

In my kitchen are also two jars of vegan black seaweed pearls, these are Ikeas answer to vegan caviar.  I have still to crack open the jar and look forward to comparing it to my homemade Welsh Laverbread caviar, that was also vegan by the way!  Has anyone tried it? 

In my kitchen are some leftover colourful green spinach and beetroot wraps that I used for making some festive canapes.

I picked up some croutons. I cringe a little as I write this as I make them easily at home, but these appealed because of the colours and flavours: beetroot, spinach and carrot croutons - its unlikely I would make these flavoured croutons at home in one go, so I felt able to justify buying them to try. And some stollen, I missed out on stollen the previous two years and was not going to miss out this time. I have to say though, come this Christmas I will try and have a go at making my own.

We have a variety of chillies including Scotch Bonnet left over from the festive season, used in a number of dishes including homemade Scotch Bonnet and Apple Chutney that was gifted to a number of people in my life. 

In recent years, I have found myself using Himalayan Pink Salt a lot more in my kitchen.  I also picked up some harissa powder.  I do make often make my own harissa from scratch, but thought I'd give this ground powder a go, not sure if its any good but worth trying.

And finally, I found a bottle of Rootbeer.  I don't recall having root beer in my life, but D has assured me that I have.

I am sharing this post with Sherry Pickings for In My Kitchen series, it was started by Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial. I find In My Kitchen series a lovely way to meet bloggers from around the world, as well as have a nosy to see what in their kitchen.