It’s only one week till Christmas, and I’m definitely feeling the festive spirit already!  This year has been better than ever for getting into the Christmas spirit in Prague, largely thanks to Puro offering a spectacular festive brunch every weekend in December.  I’ve long been baffled by the traditional Czech Christmas dinner of fish and potato salad – who wants cold potato salad in the middle of a European winter?  So I was pleased to find that, veganised, it’s an absolute feast!

Czech people love an open sandwich, and this one was slathered with a fishy spread.  Any spread that’s full of nori is a winner for me, and this was packed with flavour.

For the main course, the “fish” was tofu wrapped in nori and battered to crispy perfection.  The potato salad had various vegetables and some mock meat chunks, and was much more exciting than I expected.  Maybe the Czechs haven’t got Christmas quite so wrong after all?

We rounded out the meal with a festive biscuit that didn’t have an English translation, but was kind of like a florentine.  And of course, we had one of Puro’s legendary hot chocolates that has to be eaten with a spoon.  Excellent Christmassing, Puro!  They also had some traditional Czech Christmas cookies, known as cukrovi – last year I got some there, but this year I branched out…

At the annual Christmas vegan fair, we picked up a huge box of cukrovi from Nebeské dortíčky, a lovely vegan baker who always does the rounds at vegan fairs.  We’ve had boxes of cukrovi from various sources over the last three years, but this was the best one.

All six varieties were delicious, and there were some very exciting shapes and decorations!  Some of the biscuits had a lovely hint of coconut, and the chocolate ones were really decadent.  They were all really uniform and adorable, and would definitely be my recommendation for anyone looking for vegan cukrovi in the future.

As usual, Dr HH has provided me with a special homemade advent calendar.  This year, as well as some exciting chocolates, I’ve been receiving some cardboard shapes that I will need to construct at some point.  What’s it going to be?!

Like last year, I managed to pick up a tub of chocolate Christmas tree decorations from the World Vegan shop.  These remain the only vegan tree chocolates I’ve ever seen – does anyone else have a source for them?

And as a rare non-edible festive treat, we picked up these exciting tree decorations from the Christmas market at Namesti Miru – we saw the crocodile one last year and instantly nicknamed it the crocodile grenade for it’s shape.  All year I regretted not buying it, so this year I had to snaffle it, and some friends as well. I do love that deep sea diver bearing a gift – what could be more festive than that?!

Of course I still think the UK does Christmas much better than the Czech Republic, so stay tuned for my UK Christmas round up next week!  I hope your holiday plans are coming together beautifully – any great treats thus far?  Let me know what I’m missing out on!