Winter is Awesome, by Mollie

Yeah. Enough said. Lots of people complain about winter - the cold, dark, and transportation difficulties... But it's really a great time. Just think about: you get to enjoy so much good food and not feel guilty at all! Besides, since winter is so cold, our bodies need more food anyway - so we get to eat more - and eating helps us warm up. The largest reason for all this good food, it seems, is that there are LOTS of holidays in the winter months! As I've discovered through a bit of research, it seems that all cultures have some sort of celebration around this time. It makes sense - winter would have been a really hard time to get through without heaters, lighting, ovens, TVs, etc, so people would have needed something they could count on. Holidays come around every year, so they're a perfect time for bringing people together and helping them to forget the harsh circumstances they're faced with.

However, as your stomach is probably still recovering from, most holiday food - nowadays - is not so healthy. Okay, not at all healthy. My parents were a little ambivalent about having a month focusing on holiday food, seeing as we're trying to eat healthier. I continually assured them that the point of having a holiday food month was to discover healthier versions of the foods we're used to. And I think we did a very fine job.

Some things we've discovered:

Chocolate is absolutely necessary. (I read recently that eating a square of dark chocolate in the morning provides you with just enough caffeine to get a kick-start but not too much to cause a crash later, along with antioxidants. I am definitely taking advantage of that. I also discovered that some chocolate (and coffee) really helps my ailing shoulder. Oh yeah.) Okay, that was really just my discovery.

Baked potato latkes can be better than fried ones, because they get cooked all the way through and, if left in the oven long enough, get crispy around the edges. Greek yogurt is also a perfect replacement for sour cream to have with the latkes.

Candle wax is fun to play with. (I know, not food related. Shush.)

An alternative to our usual cinnamon roll Christmas breakfast is a mango, pineapple, and banana fruit salad with mango cream dressing (made with Greek yogurt!) with shredded pineapple and raisins on top. (The recipe can be found in the cookbook The Green Way to Healthy Living, and a picture of it can be seen in my last post, "Happy Bean Day! and Some Pictures.")

If you like peppermint, adding some to a drink or some brownies is a great way to really holiday-ize your food and make it a little more exciting without adding a ton of whipped cream or ice cream to it.

I came away from the break feeling full but healthily so, and with lots of excitement for what next year's holiday season can bring in the way of food!

Happy Bean Day! and Some Pictures, by Mollie

Two years ago from tomorrow, black beans exploded from our pressure cooker acr
oss the entire kitchen. Thus, Bean Day was brought into being (pun intended). For a full account of the occurrence, see the new "Tasty Anecdotes" page.

Here are some pictures from November (low-glycemic load month) and December (Holiday foods month).

The ingredients for our vegan, oil-free Thanksgiving pumpkin pie all ready in the food processor. ---->

Stuffed pumpkins from a local farm.

Our well-balanced Thanksgiving plate. (Colorful, isn't it?)

Christmas breakfast! Fresh bananas, pineapple, and mango topped with mango cream (mango, agave nectar, and Greek yogurt), roasted coconut and cashews, and dried cranberries.

Hope everyone's having a yummy, healthy holiday break!

Indian Food and Creativity, by Mollie

One of my favorite things about Indian food is how warm and comforting it is. I think it shows vegetable-doubters how good a vegetarian diet can taste. And the miraculous thing is that just a change of a few spices can completely alter a meal.

I experimented with a couple of recipes from our beloved cookbook, The Green Way to Healthy Living - chapattis (pictured to the right) and naan. I tried using some chickpea flour in the chapattis, which really just made them taste like they had parts of mashed up chickpeas. And the dough for the naan didn't even rise. But the amazing thing? Both tasted so good (especially the naan). The naan ended up like thick, spicy crackers almost - which, while not at all the intention, fit perfectly with the rest of our meal and was, undoubtedly, Indian.

The last experiment I did - which was actually in this last week of November - was to try a puffed rice snack mix sort of thing which I had found online. Here's warning to my future self: don't try unfamiliar recipes when you're home alone and don't want to commit to making them correctly. By the time my father walked in the house, he became subject to the aromatic spices that filled the air and joined me in his coughing fits. Hastily opened jars of random spices covered the counter, and in the pan on the stove sat something that looked like pieces of carrot and onion surrounded by a substance that appeared burnt but was not. Which, when it comes down to it, I suppose that's really what it was. But you know what? Later in the day, when the mixture had completely cooled down and the only hotness that remained was that of the spices, it tasted pretty good. Not even just okay, but actually quite good.

I think the main thing that I've discovered over the month of October is how wonderfully flexible Indian food is. And it's quick, too - we discovered several new dishes that are more exciting because of their Indian flavor and more easily made than others we may have fallen for in our late afternoon after school stupor. I think that Indian food provides a great amount of creativity that will always - even if it doesn't rise or makes you cough in the process - turn out warm and comforting in the end.