It's holiday veggie protein loaf time!

For Thanksgiving, I gave you a full menu from The Vegetable Protein and Vegetarian Cookbook (Jeanne Larson and Ruth McLin, 1977). Now I've got a follow-up stocking stuffer: the book's holiday menu from the winter chapter.

I really want to know about the Holiday Loaf with Potato Icing. The savory "icing" makes it almost sound like this concoction could be a cousin of those cream-cheese-iced sandwich loaves I love so much!

As I've researched this book, I've found a shocking number of weird old canned veggie "meats" are still available, but we're almost out of luck on the Holiday Loaf as far as I can tell. Proteena now seems to be a kind of cattle feed, and Nuteena is definitely gone, at least if Wikipedia is correct. (Loma Linda still listed a "Nutolene" (Doesn't that sound delicious? Like nuts preserved in gasoline.) on their site when I was doing research, but it didn't seem to be available to actually order as far as I could tell.) For those who feel super-ambitious, I did post a recipe for homemade Nuttose, so that might do the trick, based on the fact that it's also an old-timey vegetarian meat substitute with "nut" in its name. In any case, we've basically got a block of protein-bread-based dressing coated in mashed potatoes, as if two side dishes mashed together magically make a main dish. Maybe the gravy will make it feel more substantial.

Well-- like the Celery Gravy for Thanksgiving was based on cream of celery soup, this Mushroom Gravy is mostly cream of mushroom soup, though the cook can add extra mushrooms to make it mushroomier.

The German Red Cabbage seems Christmassy to me, if only because it makes me think of my favorite cut in A Christmas Story, when Randy's lifting of the toilet lid transforms into his mom's lifting the lid on the bubbling pot of cabbage.

Don't worry. Ralph and Randy's mom assures us that we love red cabbage (even if I'm already iffy on cabbage and definitely backing away when it also involves an apple, brown sugar, and an onion).

I was hoping there would be some crazy recipe for a cottage cheese bowl-- hopefully involving lime gelatin, olives, canned crushed pineapple, and/or slices of canned veggie links along with the cottage cheese, but no such luck. I guess it just literally means a bowl of cottage cheese. So festive!

The Green Goddess Salad adds a festive green to the table, though I was surprised that this version uses green food coloring to brighten up the dressing.

I'd expect a health food cookbook to call for avocado, but maybe Larson and McLin are practical enough to worry about the dressing turning brown when there's so much to prep and the food might end up sitting out for a while.

The Easy Fruitcake is easy because it doesn't take a month or more to make it, I guess. 

It even allows for the addition of actual candied fruit, not just calling for raisins, nuts, dates, and maybe prunes, the way more hardcore health food cookbooks might. (This does use margarine instead of butter, though, so you know it's health food.)

And if there is any doubt this is a health food cookbook, the Chilled Berry Delight should put it to rest.

It's just strawberries topped with raspberries puréed with a hint of lemon juice. The whipped cream or whipped topping is supposed to make it festive. I suspect it would just have made my childhood self sadder that there wasn't a "real" dessert.

Like most of the menus in the book, this meal is just for four, so it implies very limited family presence! If you're lucky, it will just be mom and dad fighting-- not mom fighting with Aunt Carol, dad arguing with grandpa, sister Jennifer fighting with cousin Karen, and everybody arguing with Uncle George.

Happy Holidays from me and the random picture of pumpkins and beets at the end of this menu! May your holiday tables be full of food and free of conflict.