Healthy Holiday Dishes With A Twist
Healthy New Twists on Holiday Cooking
Holiday meals are often traditional – but that doesn't mean you have to serve the same fat and calorie laden dishes over and over again. Introducing a new and healthy dish is the perfect way to breathe new life into an old turkey. Here are some ideas to help you re-energize your Christmas dinner.
Make a Traditional Dish in a Healthy Way
One thing you can try is to delve into your heritage. For example, a traditional meal for Polish holidays is fish, perogies, and sauerkraut. Think back to the kind of foods your grandparents would have enjoyed at the holidays, and if you can, ask them to describe them for you. Serving traditional foods can often help bring a family together, from old to new generations. Traditional foods are often made from scratch, and because they are not full of processed ingredients, can be very healthy. Make them the way Grandma made them 50 years ago. If the idea of preparing traditional ethnic food is concerning to you, remember that you don't have to prepare hunt all that hard to find great local ingredients. If you are living in an area where your particular ethnicity is very popular, you may be able to find your family's foods in the local store, or through some other means. For example, homemade perogies are often sold by church groups in the Pittsburgh area. The money goes towards funding the church's holiday events.
Old Fashion Christmas Recipes Made New
A second idea is to take an old dish and make it new. This is one of the easiest of the ideas, because you're working from a base you already know. If you already know how to make a ham, it's not that hard to try a low calorie glaze. With the internet at your fingertips, you should be able to pull up dozens of ideas of how to prepare the same dish more healthily.
Restaurants Serving Christmas Meals
Or, you may not want to deal with making your own meal – instead, go out for dinner, where you won’t be as tempted by an endless buffet of food. Many exclusive restaurants are still open on holidays. It will probably require a reservation and advance notice, but it will be well worth the money. These places often create special holiday menus for the occasion. Sometimes, such as in A Christmas Story, you may end up in an ethnic restaurant. Best of all, there isn't anything for you to clean up when you get home, and no leftovers that will have you eating pie every day of the week!
Christmas Potluck Recipes Make For a Good Twist
Another idea that helps involve your whole family in the diet is to have a potluck. If you are going to be having a big family gathering, it only makes sense that everyone contribute to the party. This lets you sample the dishes of your friends and family, and see what holiday food means to them. If you want, you can create a theme. For example, Hawaiian-inspired dishes are a sweet and interesting twist on what would be a rather ordinary casserole-and-turkey affair.
Non Traditional Christmas Meals
The final idea is to scrap the idea of the formal traditional dinner and simply make a non traditional Christmas meal. Instead of turkey or ham, try lamb, salmon, crab, or duck. Or, go completely crazy and try something like a Tofurkey. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean it has to be the same old thing – use this time as an opportunity scrap it all and create your own new tradition.
