Much Fun With Holidays & Vegetables in a Fuchsia Dress

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Happy New Year!

The last couple weeks of December flew by in such a whirlwind, I can hardly believe that it’s already January 4th!

I didn’t have the crunch of Christmas parties like many people, but did have fun attending the Biz Media holiday party with the lovely Jessie.
SANY4880It was a really fun night. I especially liked meeting a variety of Twitter friends and posing with the doughnut tree.
SANY4878And having way too much fun taking picturesSANY4879SANY4884SANY4889One year to the day of last year’s event, Nicole, Meghan and I had our annual holiday dinner. Despite living with Nicole and interacting with Meghan quite regularly, it is nearly impossible for the 3 of us to coordinate our schedules. I didn’t get a picture of the three of us, but I did manage to snap some of the food!

Nicole and I were a bit disorganized in planning the menu, but managed to whip something up. We started off with a delicious butternut squash soup that Nicole made. SANY4892Roast a butternut squash with 2 heads of garlic. Chop and sauté one onion. Add some ginger. Once the squash is roasted, puree with the garlic, onion, ginger and however much water you need in a Vitamix. Add water to achieve your desired consistency and voila! Nicole said that sometimes she adds roasted red pepper and it is also delicious. We topped the soup with some baked squash seeds.

For our mains, we asked Meghan to bring a salad and we decided to test out a lentil dish that we found online. After adding some more garam masala and tomato paste to the dish we ending up liking it more, but I’m not sure that it was something that we would make again. Meghan brought a raw pad thai inspired salad with zucchini noodles and a creamy sauce. SANY4890SANY4893It was a yummy combination of flavours with lots of variety! I think dessert was everyone’s favourite. I made Michelle & Lori’s apple pie parfaits. SANY4895Holy amazing!! To save on some time I used plain Coconut Bliss along with the delicious apple filling, but overall the flavour was incredible. It was so easy to make (less than 5 minutes) and easy to prep parfait style to serve to the ladies. Just awesome. I don’t think the Pure2Raw girls can go wrong!! Meghan brought Nicole and I glass straws (so perfect for those green smoothie days) and Nicole made us body butter and lip balm from Meghan’s Natural Body Care tutorial. I love my girls, so happy to have met them in Meghan’s cooking classes!

I went to Belleville for Christmas to visit my grandmother (and if you follow me on Twitter you probably caught a few tweets about my bus debacle) I brought some food with me and asked my grandmother to stock the fridge up with fruits and veggies. I ate leftover butternut squash soup, made hot cereal in the mornings, ate giant salads and snacked on fruit between meals. For Christmas dinner I made Meghan’s orange maple tempeh and used some apricot jam in place of some of the orange juice. My uncle made sure I had lots of veggies and made me a special stir fry too. So yummy!SANY4900I came back to Toronto feeling rested and rejuvenated after getting lots of sleep and relaxing. Caught up with lots of friends over the holidays and rang in the New Year with Melly. SANY4904Speaking of the New Year… post on goals still to come!! 

How were your holidays? Are you feeling recharged for January?

5 comments:

Meghan (Making Love In The Kitchen) said...

I always forget we met in my class. I LOVE that the work that I do lends itself to such amazing friendships and to building this good healthy sense of community!

Pure2raw twins said...

YAY! So glad you enjoyed the apple pie parfaits!! Love coconut bliss, what a great idea!
Looks like you had a wonderful holiday! Loved all the pictures!
We had a great holiday, felt a little recharged, but now life is crazy again!!

Happy (belated) New Years!

GF Gidget said...

Rock that dress!

Christine said...

I really love that fuchsia dress:)
Christine
greatoakcircle.com

Zahra Brown said...

You look really nice! The food looks great too, especially the parfait. I haven't tried one before, so I'll keep an eye out.

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