Woman in Real Life

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Hard to believe it's over. So much work leading up to Christmas, and then it goes by in a flash.

Here's a What I Ate Wednesday look at some of the food I enjoyed this past week, including on Christmas.

For our Christmas Eve Open House, I made these nuts and bolts, above. If you use the right cereals and pretzels, you can make this gluten-free. I served it in individual Dixie cups.


With my parents in the house, my husband and I headed out sans kids for a couple of "dates." Here is a look at our Friday night pre-movie dinner. We went to an Asian fusion place. Pictured: vegetarian fried rice and tofu with mango. We also had lo mein.


The next night, we went to King's Cafe vegetarian restaurant in Toronto's Kensington Market. This is the huge bowl of hot and sour tofu noodle soup my husband had. My bento box dinner looked grotesque in the photo, so I'm not sharing it.


We didn't cook much this week. We were too busy trying to wrap presents, organize and clean the house and make cookies. But, I did manage to make some banana bread to snack on.


We made all kinds of cookies. These are the only ones I got pictures of. The kids and I made vegan shortbread to cut out and decorate. This year, I bought edible pens and gel icing to add to the fun. The kids tired of it pretty quickly though and I ended up finishing them myself.

I have more of all the cookie kinds in the freezer and we will be eating them for weeks!


Unfortunately, this is the time of year for sniffles and coughs, so I have been guzzling Emergen-C to try to cure my cold and prevent any other illnesses.


Which brings us to Christmas Day. We had a quiet dinner at home with my parents. I never did make it out of my pajamas.

Mom made a new stuffing recipe with squash and dried cranberries. It was yummy.


Here's my holiday dinner plate. It made up for the lack of homemade meals this week. We had a Gardein vegan roast, while my parents had chicken. The vegan roast comes already stuffed, with a gravy to serve on the side. Gardein makes the best vegan meat. And they don't pay me to say that. I wish they would pay me...in product! We also had stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, broccoli and cauliflower, beets and cranberry sauce.

How was your holiday meal? Oh, and what are you doing for New Year's Eve?