Hello 2017. Please be as good as 2016 were!

It has been one year already! 

2016 has been a truly magical year for me. I became vegan, I submitted my dissertation, I graduated from university, I moved to London and I became a marketing executive.

​What a year... but today I want to talk about my choice to turn vegan and share couple festive ideas with you. It's been my first vegan Christmas, and despite the fact that I spent them here in London, I kept them as traditional as I could.

When I was younger, I didn't really care about traditions as much as I do now. Since I moved to UK five years ago I found myself missing traditional Lithuanian food a lot, and now when I'm vegan, I can't really eat majority of it.

​But as I said in many of my posts, eating cruelty free food not only is better for you but more fun too. It makes you more creative for starters 😇 so today I will share a very traditional Lithuanian New Year's Eve salad, just adjusted for vegans. I also have few other ideas for vegan Christmas that are not traditional or anything, but you might like them.

For my salad you'll need:

🌱 4 boiled beetroots
🌱 2 boiled potatoes 
🌱 2 large pickled cucumbers 
​🌱 2/3 cup of carrot strips
🌱 2/3 cup of cooked peas (equivalent to a small tin)
🌱 some fresh parsley 
🌱 salt and pepper
🌱 6-8 large spoons of plain dairy free yogurt 

The recipe:

It's extremely simple recipe, but even my mum who is so far away from being vegetarian or vegan, said that it's been a truly amazing salad 😍  first of all, boil potatoes and meanwhile chop beetroots. You can buy already cooked beetroots - it will be faster, cheaper and easier. Unless you happened to live in a farm or something and grow them by yourself... in that case I'm jealous 😍 

While potatoes are boiling, chop carrot strips, pickled cucumbers and parsley. Take potatoes away from a pot and slice them too. Mix everything in a large bowl and season to your taste. I will just give you a quick tip for choosing your dairy free yogurt. Even though I am a massive Alpro fan, I wouldn't recommend putting it in this salad, because it has a bit sweet taste. I started using Tesco "free from" brand for salads and dips, and I really like it 🤗

And that's it - give it a go and enjoy! P.S. I wanted to share another super traditional Lithuanian Christmas / NYE salad with you but I might leave it for next year 😇

Lithuanian Traditions: 12 Christmas Eve Dishes

I don't know much about Christmas in other countries (except from UK because I lived here long enough to know that their Christmas Eve is 100% different from the one in Lithuania) but in Lithuania we must have 12 dishes on our Christmas Eve table.

If you are a vegan that can be challenging, but once again - you just need to turn your imagination on and make cooking fun and creative. For example this year I had at least 3 dishes with carrots, but they were all very different from each other. All of them were so simple to make that I am just going to add few pictures below ​for you 😇

Spicy Garlic Carrots

Boiled Carrots & Peppers

Few words from me:

I hope that your 2016 were as good as mine were, and I wanted to wish you a successful and fun 2017. Enjoy every day and keep discovering things! Also, don't forget to smile and laugh.

And try to be a vegan, even for a day. You never know, maybe you will enjoy it as much as I do 😍  

Love you all!

Best wishes,
Viktorija 💋💋💋