Sing: "I'm Eatin' Veggies...For Christmas..."

"I'm eatin' veggies for Christmas.

Too much of the rich stuff is bad

I'm eatin' veggies for Christmas

'Cause fibre makes one's colon feel glad."

 

I continue with my third installment about December's activities at my island.  As I stated in the last post, I did make a few healthy offerings this Christmas and former ones.  One might try to or wish to live by bread or chocolate alone but variety is a good thing, too!

 

 

Red-White-And-Green Veggie Tray

A new dish for this year was a red-white-and-green veggie tray inspired by one I saw on Pinterest. My pickings were:

  

• red = red pepper strips and should have included cherry or grape tomatoes (note to self: look closely at the Pinterest photo on my phone while AT the grocery store!)
• white = cauliflower, bottom end of green onions (a.k.a. scallions - an afterthought so not shown below!) and lo bok (a.k.a. daikon or Chinese turnip) sticks
• green = broccoli flowerettes, green pepper strips, celery sticks, top halves of the green onions, snow peas, and cucumber slices I prettied up by scoring the length of the cucumber's skin

The presentation I'd seen showed a martini glass filled with dip, the glass surrounded by the vegetables. I didn't have my favorite dip recipe for Dilly Dip from my parents' cookbook so I made up my own, trying to healthify it a bit.

• For the base, I used a third each of plain Greek yogurt, light mayo, and light sour cream, that being 2/3 cup each. If using the thick Greek yogurt (plus mine was very low fat), it will need overnight for the texture to smooth out.
• I chopped up a LOT of fresh dill - I just kept chopping and adding it...perhaps 3 tablespoons / 45 mL for the 2 cups / 500 mL of base.
• I also put in 1/2 to 1 tsp. / 2.5-5 mL dried minced onion.
• I think my original recipe might have had dried parsely flakes and a bit of seasoning salt but I didn't include these ingredients this time. You can do an internet search for Dilly Dip to find it; the one I found was on a message board for Plenty of Fish dating website so I'll leave it up to you if you'd like to go there for the recipe!

What do you think?

 

I figure that a similar arrangement with white and red vegetables might catch the eyes of the little ones on Valentine's Day.  Other foods of these colors which are more common and palatable to most are mushrooms and radish halves.  For St. Patrick's Day, one could keep the whites and greens and perhaps add said mushrooms, zucchini sticks or rounds, turnip sticks, and broccoflower, or choose a rainbow of colors.  Click here to visit my Lunch Love Part III: Veggie-licious entry to see the beauty of the latter!

 

Crunchy Christmas Tree

 

Another way we have displayed vegetables for Christmas was like a decorated tree. In case you are new to the blog and didn't see this earlier, here is my daughter's original creation from a few holidays back:

 

 

Cranberry Stuffed-Celery

 

At my school, the staff take turns supplying snacks for monthly meetings and PD activities.  I got the idea for this tasty celery snack from the Kraft website.  The recipe is called Creamy Cranberry-Stuffed Celery and is simply dried cranberries mixed into lower-fat Philadelphia cream cheese, then spread (read: jostled as neatly as possible) into celery ribs.  A helpful hint is to pick stalks with an opening at least as wide as your pinkie as the dried cranberries and cream cheese need more room than you'd think!  After spreading the mixture on the ribs, I cut them into snack-sized lengths.  The staff really enjoyed them.

 

On one occasion near Christmas when I was asked to bring a snack for a youth group, I toasted some sliced almonds, chopped them up a bit, and pressed them on top of half of the sticks.  Then I thought up a festive arrangement for them and this was the result:

 

 

 

The other healthy-ish creation I made this year was meant to be for Christmas 2011 but I'd run out of time. Stayed tuned for the story of "Jennifer Vs. The Grinch," coming very soon!


Thanks for crunching by my island and a very happy, healthy 2013 to you.

Jennifer