Christmas together | A short guide to an inclusive Christmas

With 6.4% of Canadian adults saying they are vegan or vegetarian^⁠1, it is possible that you will have someone over for Christmas dinner who has excluded meat, or even any product of animal origin, from their diet. There’s no need to shake up your plans though!

Before becoming vegan and making plant-based cuisine her specialty, Éline Bonnin felt stress rise when a vegan or even vegetarian customer showed up at the restaurant where she worked. “We were losing our means even if we had everything we needed,” recalls the founder of the culinary blog Patate & Cornichon and author of the recipe book Good thingsbecame vegan eight years ago.

By creating a recipe blog, she and her partner wanted to demonstrate that vegan cooking can be delicious. The proof is this simple, tempting menu that she offers us today, with easy-to-find ingredients, entirely plant-based, but above all, unifying.

You can find various recipes on her blog, including several desserts, her specialty, and a large selection of dishes for the Holidays, a period that she loves.

“Christmas is an additional challenge because we want it to be a little more noble. We can either break away from tradition by serving, for example, beautiful ravioli with wild mushrooms or stay in tradition and change a few ingredients in the recipe to make it plant-based, like the tourtière or the meatballs,” explains the one who was until recently co-owner of Muscade, a vegan café and zero waste business located in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal.

What is a vegan?

But first, we need to demystify veganism. A lot of confusion still surrounds this lifestyle, thinks the creator of the vegan culinary blog Loounie Cuisine, Caroline Huard. “I have often been served seafood or fish, because there are indeed pesco-vegetarians who do not eat meat, but who eat fish. We don’t know much about it and that’s normal because it’s very far from our traditional Quebec culinary culture, which revolves a lot around foods of animal origin. »

According to Caroline Huard, this confusion also comes from the fact that veganism is often associated with a diet, from which we can easily afford to deviate during a Christmas meal.

“What you need to know if you have a vegan for dinner is that this person will not consume any products of animal origin,” she continues. This includes meat, dairy products like butter, milk, cheese and cream, fish, seafood and eggs. The strictest vegans also refrain from consuming honey, especially if it comes from commercial beekeeping.

While some vegans or vegetarians agree to put aside their beliefs on occasion, others leave no room for exceptions.

For Josianne Marcoux, founder and co-chef of the vegan restaurant Archway, the key is communication. “I’ve often been invited and told: ‘There’s going to be a vegan option.’ Ultimately, it’s cheese. Hence the importance of communicating with the vegan person to ask them: “What do you especially not want to eat? What do you prefer ? Are there any product brands that you like?” If we start like that, I think it’s great. »

Caroline Huard, like Josianne Marcoux, often invites her guests to bring a vegan dish to share. “Last year, I created a liver pâté-style dish, but vegan, using lentils and nuts. It tastes like a good country pâté. I brought enough for everyone to taste and talk about. »

Adapt, without shaking up everything

There is no need to say goodbye to the traditional Tourtière du Lac or roast turkey to satisfy a vegan guest. For those who are intimidated by the main course, Éline Bonnin suggests focusing on small bites, puff pastries or verrines. Josianne Marcoux advises adapting the accompaniments, replacing products of animal origin with vegan ingredients, now easily found in grocery stores.

In Caroline Huard’s family too, we focus on inclusive support. “There’s always going to be a vegan option and then a meat option, but the sides are always going to be something I can eat, like vegetables in oil or creamy pasta with vegan cream. Nobody sees the difference. »

Even if her family is not keen on traditions, she recommends that those who are attached to them not deviate from them. “If we want to serve a turkey with mashed potatoes, we’re not going to prepare a little Asian-style stir-fry for our vegan guests! » She suggests rather than mashed potatoes and gravy style gravy are vegan and that alongside the turkey, we place a block of roasted tofu or its famous well-grilled magic tofu.

As for dessert, the project, already intimidating for some, can seem eminently complex when it must be cooked without eggs or dairy products. “People often ask me what I replace eggs with,” says Éline Bonnin. I am not replacing them. I create recipes that are plant-based. I would advise people to follow a recipe that is already plant-based. » Or to leave it to the professionals. Nowadays, you can even find vegan logs in supermarkets.

^⁠1. In June 2023, according to a survey conducted by Dalhousie University among 5,525 Canadians (margin of error of plus or minus 1.2%, 19 times out of 20).