In My Kitchen: December 2025

December started with the full force of festive frenetic activities and ended with resting in the blissfully quiet period between Christmas and New Years Eve.  I am glad it is time to take down the tree and move on with a new year.  But it was a lovely albeit tiring month with lots of fun and good food and excitement.  I will soon post My Monthly Chronicles December 2025 and you can see a list of more festive posts at the end of this post.

Above are some of our 2026 calendars.  While I no longer write up our appointments and dates on the calendars I still love to hang them in the house.

One summer favourite meal is rice paper rolls.  This is a colourful layout of fillings to be stuffed in the rice paper, with the vermicelli noodles out of the photo.

The weather has been some hot days followed by cooler ones.  There were still days when a baked potato was most welcome.  This baked potato was topped by broccoli, vegan cashew tofu cheese sauce and tofu bacon.  A most excellent idea Sylvia picked up online.

This linguine with a creamy vegan ragu of sausage, tomato and kale were made by Sylvia and were delicious.  Flowers in the background from pruning the garden.

It is ice cream season - the plant based Golden Gaytimes were a hit but I was less enthused by the Weiss Original Fruits ice cream.  I really love the raspberry and coconut Weiss ice creams but could not find that one.  The Salted caramel pretzel choc bits were nice - I liked the crunch and that the pretzels made it less sweet but there wasn't lots of caramel.

We were given this striking tin of Marks and Spencer choc chip shortbreads by our friends in Brisbane.  They were really delicious with a touch of chocolate and buttery crumble.

It was exciting to hear that Marks and Spencer was selling food in Australia but the range is so limited (and expensive) that it does not quite have the joy of being in one of their stores in the UK.  These Colin Caterpillar lollies are fun and vegan.

Our old melamine ladle is faded and chipped so it was time for a new ladle, photographed on a new scarf from an op shop.

We brought home a couple of huge cookies from Oh My Crumbs at the Coburg Night Market.  They were quite sweet but very nice.  Sylvia had gingerbread and I had Dubai chocolate.

Sylvia's latest favourite chocolate is Otherly.  This block of oat milk chocolate was purchased to be chopped up and added to Vegan chocolate mince pies.  So delicious!

This smashed potato, confit garlic and saltbush and pickle, chive and dill scone from Better Now Bakes at the Coburg Farmers Market were amazing.  So soft and full of favour.

Sylvia was gifted this vegan Farmer Jo Pistachio Spread (from Aldi).  It was pretty sweet by itself but I hope it might find its way into some interesting baking.

Sylvia did some experimenting with recipes before making Christmas day lunch.  She tried a few variations of Pigs in Blankets and decided she love the vegan version of sausages wrapped in bacon with a maple cranberry glaze.  They were easy to cook in the air fryer.

Another Christmas meal Sylvia experimented with before Christmas is a vegan Mac and Cheese which she made with a roux, a cashew cream, vegan (Sheesh) shredded cheese and nooch, inspired by this mac and cheese.  We added peas because ... why not!  It was very good but she went for a really good cashew and tofu cheese sauce on the day which was even better.

I love Nupur's recipes at One Hot Stove because they are flexible and easy.  We made her vegetable dumpling soup but with our own spin: onion, carrot, cabbage, garlic, ginger, firm tofu, kale, rice vinegar (1-2 tsp), stock, salt soy sauce, 1-2 tbsp white miso, dried shitake mushrooms, dried arame seaweed, and dumplings.  It reminded me a little of the way that I like to make miso soup with lots of veg.  We had leftovers and the leftover dumplings were a bit soggy.

We took lots of nice seasonal fruit to an evening picnic in front of Carols: cherries, grapes and peaches.  It was exciting to have these because they are all fruits that we only have fresh during the warmer months when they are in season in Australia.

When we went to see the Christmas lights in the city, we missed our train and had wait 25 minutes for the next.  To kill time, we browsed in an Asian grocer near the station.  This is why I brought home this bag of soy flavoured corn twists (like Twisties).  They had so much artificial flavours that they were too moreish.

After Christmas we had a great Christmas leftovers pizza.  Mine had tomato sauce, a bit of gravy, cauliflower cheese, peas, roast potatoes, roast pumpkin and sausages (because by then we had finished the nut roast).  It was so good.  Sylvia had a similar one with some Damona brie and vegan deli meats from her Christmas morning charcuterie platter.

This Christmas it did not seem right that we only had one ceramic Christmas plate and a couple of plastic ones.  As Sylvia is no longer a little kid, it seemed about time to replace the plastic ones with more ceramics.  We bought these plates at Bed, Bath and Table at their post-Christmas sale.

On New Year's Eve we had haggis nachos with the corn chips baked with a vegan (Sheesh) grated cheese.  It was not as good as dairy cheese but perhaps a vegan cheese sauce might work better here.  However with the haggis, salsa, guacamole and yoghurt, it was wonderful.  We invited E over to share dinner so he could have some pudding.

The (vegan) Gingerbread pudding with caramel sauce had been bought from Smith and Deli for Sylvia and E to have after their Christmas dinner.  They were so full from their dinner and lacking in time that it was left in the fridge looking classy in a black cloth tied with pink ribbon.  So I heated it (in the microwave) on New Year's Eve for a special dessert.  It was served with Alpro vanilla soy custard.

I leave you with more cherries, which are already becoming unavailable in the shops as their short season dwindles.  How I love to eat them fresh for snacks and desserts.  They are one of the joys of an Australian Christmas.

More Christmas posts in December 2025:

Christmas day, food and presents 2025

Christmas sights and lights in Melbourne 2025

Festive Art on Windows, Sydney Road Brunswick 2025

Coburg Night Market 2025

 

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event. If you would like to join in, send your post's url to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.  Happy New Year to Sherry and the IMK crew as this event brings together some wonderful bloggers who share glimpses into their kitchens.  And Happy New Year to all my readers.