A Toast to 2015 with Holiday Cocktails Good Enough to Eat

It’s New Year’s Eve — and we can’t think of a better way to ring in the new year than gathering friends and serving holiday cocktails that embrace the traditional flavors of the season. Heat things up by adding hints of warm cinnamon and spicy ginger along with your basic stash of spirits and mixers like bourbon, vodka, gin and bitters. Muddle in some fresh cranberries or twist in fragrant orange peel and you have yourself a refreshingly fruity holiday drink. We’re even blending up creamy, nut-based versions of eggnog and Irish cream to make this season even richer. Cheers and Happy New Year!

Gingerbread Sparkler

Makes: 1 drink

Ice

2 tablespoons (1 ounce) gin

2 tablespoons (1 ounce) Snap or ginger-infused vodka

3 dashes orange bitters

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pinch cloves, optional

1/4 cup cold sparkling wine or tonic water

1 maraschino cherry

Add an ice cube to a fluted glass. In a cocktail shaker, shake together the gin, Snap, bitters, cinnamon, cloves, if using, and some ice. Strain into the glass, and top with the sparkling wine and the cherry.

Maple-Bourbon Eggnog


Makes: 4 drinks

For the eggnog:

1 3/4 cups water

3/4 cup raw cashews, soaked for at least 3 hours or overnight and rinsed

2 organic large egg yolks

2 Medjool dates, pitted

1 teaspoon coconut oil, liquefied

1/2 vanilla bean, seeded, or 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

For the cocktail:

Ice

2 cups dairy-free eggnog (recipe above)

1 cup bourbon

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

4 cinnamon sticks, for serving

Make the eggnog: Place the water, cashews, egg yolks, dates, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a high-speed blender; process until smooth and refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours.

Make the cocktail: Add 2 ice cubes to a rocks glass. In a cocktail shaker, shake together 1/2 cup of the eggnog, 1/4 cup of the bourbon, 1 tablespoon of the maple syrup and some ice. Strain into the glass and add 1 of the cinnamon sticks. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.

Campari Cranberry Citrus Smash

Makes: 1 drink

Ice

10 fresh cranberries, chopped, plus more for topping

1 lime wedge

1/4 cup (2 ounces) gin

1 1/2 tablespoons (3/4 ounce) Campari

2 dashes orange bitters

1 lime wheel (peel)

Add 2 ice cubes to a rocks glass. In a cocktail shaker and using a wooden spoon, muddle the cranberries with the lime wedge. Add the gin, Campari, bitters and some ice, and shake well. Strain into the glass, and add the lime wheel and cranberries.

Pumpkin Pie White Russian

Makes: 4 drinks

For the Irish cream:

1 cup coconut cream

1/2 cup Irish whiskey, or to taste

1 tablespoon coconut oil, liquefied

1 tablespoon raw cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoons brewed espresso

1 1/2 teaspoons honey

1/2 vanilla bean, seeded, or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

For the cocktail:

Ice

1 cup dairy-free Irish cream (recipe above)

12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) pure pumpkin puree

4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) coconut cream

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Make the Irish cream: Place the coconut cream, whiskey, cocoa, espresso, coconut oil, honey, vanilla and salt in a high-speed blender; process until smooth and refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours.

Make the cocktail: Add 2 ice cubes to a rocks glass. In a cocktail shaker, shake together 1/4 cup of the Irish cream, 3 tablespoons of the pumpkin puree, 1 tablespoon coconut cream, 1/4 teaspoon of the pumpkin spice and some ice. Strain into the glass. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.

Apple Pie Martini


Makes: 1 drink

Coconut sugar, for coating the rim

1/2 cup apple cider

2 tablespoons (1 ounce) apple brandy

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Vanilla coconut ice cream or sorbet, for topping, optional

Dip the rim of a martini glass in water and coat in coconut sugar. In a cocktail shaker, shake together the apple cider, apple brandy, vanilla, cinnamon and some ice. Strain into the glass and top with coconut ice cream, if using.

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5 Surprising Health Benefits of Avocados

It’s almost the New Year. If your resolutions have anything to do with eating better, you may want to start by loading your shopping cart with avocados. These super fruits are not only delicious, but they are also packed with nutritional and health benefits — to your heart, eyes and much more — that may surprise you.

#1: Heart Health

Avocados contain the plant chemical beta-sitosterol which helps maintain healthy cholesterol levels. They are packed with monounsaturated fat and according to the American Heart Association, when monounsaturated fats are eaten in moderation in place of saturated and trans fat, this can help reduce the bad (LDL) cholesterol.

#2: Healthy Eyes

The carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin are also found in these fruit. Both have been shown to keep the eyes healthy as we age and may help reduce the risk of macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss as we get older.

#3: Growth and Development

Avocados contain 3.5 grams of unsaturated fat per 1 ounce serving (about 1/5th an avocado). Studies have shown that unsaturated fat is important for proper growth and development of the central nervous system and the brain of youngsters.

#4: Blood Pressure

Avocados are free of sodium and are recommended while on the DASH Diet – which is the prescribed diet to help lower blood pressure. They also have a nice amount of potassium, which may also help lower blood pressure. Studies have found that when avocados are eaten in place of other fats (like butter and mayo), they can help control blood pressure.

#5: Weight Loss

These babies are brimming with healthy fat, which takes the body longer to digest and help keep you full and satisfied (so you’re less likely to snack!). Further, avocados are nutrient-packed with over 20 vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients which is especially beneficial if you’re trying to cut calories and keep up with all the nutrition your body needs.

Avocado Recipes To Try:

• Crunchy Avocado Salad


• Soy Glazed Salmon with Cucumber-Avocado Salad


• Avocado BLTs


• Snow Pea and Avocado Slaw


• Roasted Carrots with Avocado


• Steak with Avocado Sauce and Tomato Salad

Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN, is a registered dietitian and consultant who specializes in food safety and culinary nutrition. She is the author of The Greek Yogurt Kitchen: More Than 130 Delicious, Healthy Recipes for Every Meal of the Day.

from Healthy Eats – Food Network Healthy Living Blog http://blog.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/2014/12/30/5-surprising-health-benefits-of-avocados/

Legumes for Heart Health

Beans, beans are good for your heart—and so are peas and lentils! A new study concluded that beans, peas and lentils can help lower your risk of heart disease. Here are some delightful legume-filled dishes to include in your healthy eating plan. The Study

The report, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, reviewed 26 studies to determine the relationship between eating legumes (beans, peas, and lentils) and the risk of heart disease. The data revealed that eating about 1 serving of legumes per day helped significantly lower LDL “bad” cholesterol.

5 Ways to Love Legumes

Herbed Fava Beans with Pasta

Perfect for your spring barbecue, pair with hot dogs or hamburgers.

Warm Chicken and Butter Bean Salad

This quick and easy salad can be whipped up in 30 minutes for a light lunch or dinner.

Herbed Bulgur-Lentil Pilaf

Ellie packed this side with 11 grams of heart healthy fiber. Make it for dinner, and wrap leftovers in a whole wheat tortilla to take to work the next day.

Blackened Tilapia with Black-Eyed Pea Salad

Another quick 30 minute fix, the black-eyed peas compliment paprika and cumin-rubbed tilapia.

Turmeric Roasted Chickpea and Lentil Salad

This Mediterranean-flavored side contains a double dose of legumes for your healthy heart pleasure.



Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN, is a registered dietitian and consultant who specializes in food safety and culinary nutrition. She is the author of The Greek Yogurt Kitchen: More Than 130 Delicious, Healthy Recipes for Every Meal of the Day.

from Healthy Eats – Food Network Healthy Living Blog http://blog.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/2014/12/29/legumes-for-heart-health/

Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner — 5 Egg Dishes to Make Right Now!

From traditional breakfast fare to the quintessential holiday appetizer, eggs are known for their versatility. They’re also one of the most perfect proteins around, providing all the essential amino acids your body needs. Although some folks may hold back on eating the entire egg, the yolk is where all the good stuff is found! And according to the latest recommendations from The American Heart Association, one egg can be eaten daily in lieu of another protein choice. But instead of using your daily egg in the same old way, cook up these healthy, creative egg dishes instead.

Chicken Egg Drop Soup This bone warming soup is perfect for the cold weather. This 200-calorie version adds delicious watercress so you get in even more of your daily greens.

Shakshuka Also known as “Eggs in Purgatory”, this dish combines aromatic vegetables like onions and garlic with jarred bell peppers and tomatoes and a touch of spice from harissa. It’s then topped with eggs that are cooked to perfection.

Egg Stew Beans and eggs are two of the most budget-friendly foods, and they both provide a nutritional bang for your calorie buck. This quick vegetarian-friendly stew is ready in 35 minutes and is an easy fix for any night of the week.

Egg Fried Rice There are only 2 tablespoons of oil used in this Asian favorite. Flavored with fresh tomatoes, soy sauce, and scallions, it’s a simple dish that’s cooked in the wok and not fried as the misleading title indicates.

Cheddar, Ham and Egg Casserole (pictured at top of post) This one pot dish uses a combo of eggs and egg whites to bulk it up without going overboard on saturated fat and cholesterol. To keep calories in check, a small amount of deli ham and extra sharp Cheddar do the trick. Sun-dried tomatoes, Dijon mustard, and scallions round out the flavors.

Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN, is a registered dietitian and consultant who specializes in food safety and culinary nutrition. She is the author of The Greek Yogurt Kitchen: More Than 130 Delicious, Healthy Recipes for Every Meal of the Day.

from Healthy Eats – Food Network Healthy Living Blog http://blog.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/2014/12/28/5-egg-dishes/

Holiday Havoc? Calm Down with These Smart Tips

Like so many things in parenting, navigating holiday indulgences among a sea of candy canes, school celebrations loaded with Christmas-colored doughnuts, social events and sentimental meals is totally and completely … exhausting. This very morning I was having a minor panic attack (OK, I’m being a little overdramatic), about a weekend of gingerbread cookies, candy-cane hot chocolates and Nutella crepes. I shifted gears and got excited thinking of how “clean” (c’mon, this is what I do for a living) I was going to cook and we were all going to eat to help get us through the rest of this holiday week. As I pulled out my first carrot to chop for a big veggie soup, I was thinking I couldn’t wait to make the Hanukkah cookies with the kids that we make every year. Do you feel my pain here? Is it possible to indulge and feel empowered rather than victimized? I think the answer is a resounding YES, but it also means taking a look at your food culture and deciding how you plan to empoweringly indulge. I have some ideas:

Know you’re normal. Even though you may not like it, it is normal to feel a little conflicted about holiday food. Everything from the holiday lunch to the neighborhood potluck to the full-on feast can trigger negative feelings about your eating and the way your family eats. I’ve soothed many a mother who has publicly berated her kid for stealing a cookie from the dessert table when the meal hasn’t even started. Normal. I’ve listened to stories of kids telling their grandma, who worked tirelessly on a holiday meal, that their friend’s mom’s food is better. Normal. There are countless numbers of us out there who say “What the heck?” and just eat and eat and eat. Normal. All normal. You are not alone. Whatever you are dealing with when it comes to holiday eats, you’re in good company.

Make a food culture exception. Perhaps the kindest way you can navigate your way through the last couple of weeks of December is to consciously and deliberately make an exception to the food culture that you generally follow. If your family and personal food culture uses fruit for dessert nightly, but during the mistletoe season you are not home on most nights, then you may decide that one holiday treat will replace that fruit. Take a good look at your food culture and reassess it during the holidays. Whatever you decide, you do not “fail” and “all is not lost” if you are a little off your usual track.

Prioritize your partying. Even with the youngest kids, I always try to find something non-food-related to focus on through the holidays. I’m a huge believer in focusing on the company rather than the food at any celebratory event. Just as you remind the kids that they are there to spend time with cousins, not linger around the buffet, you can do some self-talk not to get too worked up over the artichoke dip. You give the kids a snack before they go to the party so they won’t be grumpy and overly hungry. You should give yourself one, too. You want the kids to eat the greens before they load up on sweet potato pie. You too can make good choices by going for the veggies and shrimp cocktail, not the triple-baked potatoes. If you’re at your in-laws’ for New Year’s, you and the kids can be the horn-blowing, countdown-keeping and favor-distributing guests of honor. Focusing on what you will be doing instead of what you will be eating will keep you positive and goal-oriented.

Blaze some memories. You don’t have to make a fruitcake, just because you grew up with one every holiday. You can choose what memories you want your kids to treasure and look forward to as they race to grow up way too fast. You can honor your own memories by telling the stories of them, or cooking that fruitcake on a random day in April, when you’re less surrounded by Santa’s cookies. Make a list of traditions that you want your family to honor, such as serving at a shelter, doing a holiday puzzle, taking a family hike and planning a secret sock exchange. Throw in a few healthy new traditions and your kids will grow up to plan their own healthy holidays.

Cook, bake and eat mindfully. You can definitely, absolutely, with all the permission under the sun, bake and cook and plan for kitchen love with your family. Do it your way! Make the cookies so that you’ll feel great eating them. Use the expensive, high-quality chocolate chips. Reduce the sugar and use the organic brand you bought at the health food store. Add the flax and replace the butter with prune puree. Choosing ingredients that you feel good about makes for a great teaching moment with those kiddos, and eating one satisfying cookie with a hot mug of tea will you help to indulge happily.

We all want to create wonderful family memories for our children and ourselves. Indulge. Go ahead. It is part of the enjoyment of the season. Use these tips and try my favorite No-Cook Cookie Balls to help you do just that!

Homemade No-Cook Cookie Balls

Time: 45 minutes

Serves: 4

1/2 cup almond butter

3 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup oats

1/4 cup ground flax seed

1/4 cup mini dark chocolate chips

Mix together all wet ingredients. Add in dry ingredients and mix well. Roll into 1-inch balls, place on wax or parchment paper and stick in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Keri Glassman is the founder and president of Keri Glassman, Nutritious Life and The Nutrition School. She is a contributing editor and advisory board member for Women’s Health Magazine, the Health and Wellness partner for JW Marriott, was Lead Nutritionist for Turner’s health and wellness entertainment brand, upwave and the Nutritionist and Judge on the healthy cooking competition show, “Cook Your Ass Off”. She has authored four books and is regularly featured on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Access Hollywood Live.

from Healthy Eats – Food Network Healthy Living Blog http://blog.foodnetwork.com/healthyeats/2014/12/27/holiday-havoc-calm-down-with-these-smart-tips/

This Week’s Nutrition News Feed

In this week’s news: Flavonoids found to be fab for women’s health; yoga may be your excuse to skip aerobics; and could you undo your holiday weight gain just by breathing?

Fabulous flavonoids

Feeling guilty about all that holiday dark chocolate you’ve been devouring? A new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition may help you feel a bit better. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who followed more than 13,800 women through a 15-year period, concluded that middle-aged women who eat a diet rich in flavonoids – found in dark chocolate, red wine, citrus fruits, berries, lentils, green and white teas, onions, apples and parsley – were more likely to age more healthily, both physically and mentally.

2015: Your year of yoga?

If you have resolved to exercise in the coming year but dread the idea of aerobics, cycling or walking, you may be happy to hear that yoga may be just as good for your heart. Researchers at Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, Netherlands, measured the benefits of yoga compared with exercise and with no physical activity and found that yoga not only reduced stress and increased flexibility and fitness levels, but also lowered the risk of cardiovascular disease, much like more-strenuous forms of exercise. What’s more, compared with no exercise, yoga lowered BMI, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. In fact, study participants who did yoga were about 6 pounds lighter, on average, than those who didn’t exercise at all.

An excellent reason to exhale

Breathe deep. Guess what – you’re losing weight. A new study exploring where the fat goes when we shed pounds shows that most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide. The rest of it is excreted as water in urine, feces, sweat, breath, tears or other bodily fluids. “Our calculations show that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for fat,” the study’s authors write in the BMJ. “Losing weight requires unlocking the carbon stored in fat cells, thus reinforcing that often heard refrain of ‘eat less, move more.'” Lovely to think that losing those holiday pounds could be as easy as exhaling.

Amy Reiter also contributes to FN Dish.

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The Chef’s Take: Erin Smith’s Carrot Pancakes from Main Kitchen

If you’ve ever thought, “How can I get my kids to eat more vegetables?” you might want to read on. Chef Erin Smith of Main Kitchen, a beautiful new restaurant in the JW Marriott Houston Downtown, turns fresh carrots into fluffy pancakes and serves them in a short stack for breakfast with maple syrup. Other than the pancakes’ slight orange hue, you’d never know carrots were the main ingredient. Smith uses carrots from local farms like Black Hill Ranch and Sustainable Harvesters, and makes her pancakes gluten-free by using chickpea flour from a local gristmill.

When the hotel, which has a state-of-the-art spa, opened in September, Smith says it was her mission to keep healthful, vegetarian and gluten-free items on the menu. “I didn’t want anyone to have to ask for something to be made. I wanted to have dishes already on the menu that were unique and special,” she said. She thought of carrots because of their natural sweetness. “I have been on a diet, like, once in my life and I used lots of carrot when I needed a filler or replacement,” she said. “They cook well and are high in natural sugar. They taste just like you’d expect from a pancake.” Maybe even better.

Carrot Pancakes

Yield: 16 pancakes

3 cups gluten-free flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 eggs, whisked

1 cup whole milk

2 tablespoons cilantro

1 cup carrot juice, freshly juiced

1 cup carrot pulp, from juicing carrots

In a large bowl mix together the gluten-free flour, baking powder, baking soda, kosher salt, whisked eggs and whole milk until smooth. Stir in the carrot juice, carrot pulp and cilantro.

Grease a hot griddle with your choice of cooking fat (olive oil spray, clarified butter, canola oil, etc.) and ladle the batter onto the hot griddle. Once you start to see bubbles forming (about 2 minutes), flip the pancakes using a flat spatula and cook for another 2 minutes.

Andrea Strong is a freelance writer whose work has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to Edible Brooklyn. She’s probably best known as the creator of The Strong Buzz, her food blog about New York City restaurants. She lives in Queens with her two kids, her husband and her big appetite.

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