We had a christmas party in our store the other night. That’s right! We have a store. It’s called ANTICK, and we have beautiful furniture and built-ins, and all kinds of wonderful other things as well, from hand-blown wine glasses to the nicest cutting boards you’ve ever seen, to stuffed felt owls. But this isn’t actually an advertisement for our store. No it’s not. It’s about vegetarian christmas party food made by pastry-dorks such as myself!

I had the brilliant idea to try to serve red and green food. So we had red and green cerignola olives, which are my favorite kind of olives. And I made bright green chermoula sauce, which I dusted with bright brick red spanish paprika. Very pretty! (chermoula is a mix of cilantro, parsley, olive oil, lemon, garlic, cumin and, um, paprika) I served it with small slices of baguette.

And I made pretty rosy little paprika cracker cups with membrillo and manchego. And spicy dark chocolate cookies.

And I made chard rolls in flaky pastry. A little bit like vegetarian sausage rolls, with red and green swiss chard (I know, I know, it’s not so red and green anymore once it’s all baked in pastry). These had olives, capers, hazelnuts and mozzarella. They’re nice because they’re small enough that people can have one or two as a snack, but they’re substantial enough that you can have a few and call it dinner. If, say, you’ve been making party snacks all day and don’t feel like making an actual meal.

Here’s Antick decked out in holiday regalia.

And here’s my current favorite holiday song…The Ethiopians’ Ding Dong Bell. It’s the best!