What I ate in the holidays

It's a bit like those talks we used to give at school.
Since last posting we've had Christmas, New Year, a birthday for me, visiting family. Honestly I have been really pleased with how it is gone, gained no weight over Christmas and managed to lose a little since. I think the clarity about my food choices has been the most helpful thing.


We all have things we compromise on and I compromised on the oil - not that I went all out for greasy foods. There was some oil in the dressings and coconut oil in the cheesecake base, cheesecake also had some sugar in the filling.


For our family Christmas dinner I brought along 3 salads - the Indonesian Rice Salad (already posted here) and 2 from Get Waisted by Dr Mary Clifton - the spinach & strawberry salad (which looked as fabulous as I thought it would and was yummy, & the Aztec black bean salad - beans to punch up the protein, lots of colour and crunch and flavour. All 3 salads were a hit with the rest of the family.


We are keen on our garlic bread here in NZ, I provided some garlic bruschetta - simple roasted garlic spread on slices of French bread and slices of wholemeal rolls - this disappeared in short order and was also declared a hit. (roasted the garlic the day before so not too time consuming either).


For dessert I made a raw cashew cheese cheesecake (my eldest son is a huge cheesecake fan). I used one recipe for the base, one for the filling and made up my own topping. (pomegranate seeds & blackberries dredged with pomegranate molasses - yum). The cheesecake was also a resounding hit with the rest of the family. As there were 12 of us it was just a small slice each, topped up with fresh fruit salad it made for a wonderful dessert.


There was other food on the table but being committed to no animal products meant that I just wasn't tempted. (actually 1 small compromise here - it was my sisters 60th birthday so had a very small slice of her cake). It was all wholefoods anyway so the wholefood part wasn't even an issue. After dinner I didn't feel bloated and over full as has happened in previous years.


The food I ate was delicious, looked beautiful and left me feeling great not guilty - I LOVE eating this way.