This Purim round-up includes lots of tips and recipes to help you prepare plastic-free, vegan, healthy-ish and sustainable mishloach manot (gift baskets). There’s a range of recipes including, of course, vegan hamantaschen.

As important as giving treats to friends and family is giving matanot la’evyonim (gifts for low-income people) and I offer some resources for local groups for you to support.

Adar2: Chocolate truffles

When you’re preparing your mishloach manot (gift baskets for Purim), there’s an opportunity to create gifts that are sustainable, healthy and delicious. Too often in our single-use, throwaway culture of convenience, mishloach manot can become equal parts unhealthy foods and heaping trash, adding more to the four pounds of trash Americans generate on average per day. Instead, however, we can bring intentionality to the preparation of our mishloach manot and be inspired by the teaching of bal tashchit (do not destroy or waste).

Click here for some ways to create mishloach manot that are safer for the environment and your (and your recipients’) body. Or click here for this tips sheet.

Click below for my recipe links:

Vegan Hamantaschen

Chocolate Truffles

Stuffed Dates

Vegan butter cookies

And, last, check out the resources page for ways you can get involved with local organizations to give appropriate matanot la’evyonim (gifts for low-income people) or to volunteer at a local food pantry or kitchen.

Purim Sameach!