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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Canada
Posts: 312
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Hi All
Don't have much time to post right but I will try and get in after my exam tonight.
I just found another (and I think better) holiday article that I wanted to share.
Tobey
A New Approach to Holiday Food Traditions
by Sue Gilbert, M.S., Nutritionist
Traditions are our link with our past and a certainty in our lives of constant change. They help us know where we came from, and tell us who we are. There is value in holiday rituals. In a new home it can bring a sense of continuity to a transformed life. It can provide order and comfort when other things in your life are unpredictable or out of control. In hard times, traditions can console and reassure. Especially for children, this sense or order and predictability is important. And then, when kids grow up and leave home they can carry those traditions with them, keeping them always connected to you.
Now, before the holidays have you caught up, is a good time for your whole family to sit back, take stock of all those traditions you hold on to so tightly, and assess how they fit into your holidays and your holiday health. Enter the holidays with a plan, not just a tradition. Evaluate all those traditions you rely on year after year. Keep those that are fulfilling and right, perhaps alter those others you just can't jettison even though they may be sabotaging your health (physical or mental), and just plain get rid of those that you do out of duty and obligation, and not love and fun. Make room for some new traditions. Balance the old and the new. Enhance the celebration of the holiday with a reverence for health.
Healthy and active holiday traditions are the kind you want to enjoy with your family now and pass on to your children. The following ideas may help you evaluate your own traditions, and others are healthy food treats, nutritious tips, and activities that you may want to include. Thanks to all the ParentsPlace.com Community members who sent in their ideas for healthy ways to spend the holidays.
Evaluate your holiday food traditions. If it is overwhelmingly sweet and fatty, decide which you can forgo, and those you just have to keep. Replace some with healthy alternatives. For example, do you keep a plate of Holiday Cookies out on the counter? Try replacing it with a basket the special fruits of the season, like tangerines and pears. Put out a bowl of nuts with a cracker. Children old enough to eat nuts will have fun cracking the shells and digging out the nut meat. A few nuts instead of a cookie provides healthier monounsaturated fats, protein, and some important vitamins and mineral. Instead of two varieties of pie for dessert, switch one to a baked fruit dessert.
Evaluate your social obligations. Most tend to detract from your family, and put stress on everyone to meet particular schedules, get dressed up, overeat, or cook foods to bring. This year, make your family the priority. Choose only those most very special parties to attend, or visits to make. Instead, schedule quiet time at home in front of the fireplace with some hot chocolate or spiced cider and some favorite holiday theme books.
Be realistic (and nutritious) at parties. If you do go to parties, it may be challenging to keep it as nutritious as possible. Be realistic, you want to keep it nutritious, but you don't want to deprive yourself. Start by going for the non-alcoholic drinks. Alcohol is high in calories, low in nutrients, and contributes to poor food choices. Instead, have soda water with lime, or mineral water. Instead of avoiding foods, just go for a smaller portion. Eat like a gourmet, not a gourmand. Don't skip meals before a party, you'll show up famished, and may end up overeating on some unhealthy foods. Instead, eat lightly during the day, perhaps saving a few calories and fat grams to spend on some holiday treats.
Remember that sharing food is an important part of holiday celebrations. Enjoying a traditional meal with your friends and family need not destroy the healthy habits that make you feel so wonderful. Just remember to balance the meals you prepare and eat. If several high fat items are included, also include a selection of lower-calorie, lower-fat items. Balance is the key word.
Exercise. Make room for daily exercise. It reduces stress, takes you away from the hurry and rush and helps you to really tune into your body. It will help to control your appetite, and it will burn calories. Sign up with your spouse, friends or kids to run in the local 5K Reindeer Ramble or Jingle Bell Jog.
Entertain simply. Forget the dinner or cocktail party. Make the people and an activity the focus, not the food. For example, invite friends for skating or sledding, or an ornament making party. Spend time outdoors if possible, build a bonfire in the back yard or go caroling, or on a holiday scavenger hunt ( for example, assign a list of signs of the holiday they must find and bring back,or check off....such as hearing seasonal music wafting from someone's house, a pine needle, a wreath on a door or a menorah in a window, a holiday cookie, etc. etc.). Have everyone bring an assinged food item that can be shared. Be sure to assign plenty of fresh fruits, salads, soups and breads.
Be sensitive to your children's needs. Just because your time is now taken up with baking, and cooking over the hot stove, doesn't mean they need less attention. Be sure to maintian lots of one on one time.
Give nutritionally correct gifts. Instead of sharing your favorite fudge recipe, how about some whole grain muffins instead? Substitue a fruit basket for a cookie plate. Offer fresh baked yeast bread filled with nuts and raisins instead of the fruitcake. Make some healthy trail mix instead of candy to fill the tin.
Bake cookies for decoration, not to eat. Making cookies is an almost mandatory part of the holidays. Decorated cut-out cookies are loads of fun to make, and can bring out the creative genious in most anyone. But then they are all there, waiting to be eaten. This year, instead of making so many to eat, make some to bake and adorn the tree with. Just remember to poke a large hole in the top of the cookie before baking to sting the ribbon through.
Instead of making food treats for people, make them for the wild animals. For birds, fill pinecones with peanut butter and then dip in birdseed. Hang with a peice of yarn from a tree , or cut out holiday shapes from peices of stale bread. Brush egg white on the bread and sprinkle on some bird seed. Hang from a tree branch with yarn strung from a hole in the top.
Food treats. A couple of food treats you may want to add to your holiday recipe box: Cover a styrofoam cone in some green wrapping paper, or foil. Put out bowls full of healthy goods like low fat turkey, ham, cheese chuncks, pretzels, grapes, apple chunks,etc. The children can stick toothpicks in the food and put in the tree, and then eat it. Or, another food tree idea- cover a rectangular tray or pan with foil. Spread low fat or fat free Ranch dressing or low fat French onion dip (made with low fat or fat free sour cream plus some dry onion soup mix) over the foil in the shapr of a large triangle (the Christmas tree). Arrange cut up broccoli tops (flowerettes) over the dip in the shape of a tree. Add cherry tomatoes, cauliflower peices of "ornaments" on the tree. A cut mushroom makes a good trunk or base for the tree; a piece of cheese cut in the shape of a star makes a good tree topper. The broccoli "sits" in the dip so the appetizer is an all-in-one-de! al.
More relaxed meal. And that holiday dinner...do you spend all afternoon in the kitchen preparing the traditional meal when you'd really rather being sitting in front of the tree, relaxing, watching your kids enjoy their new treasures, and looking through your new book? How about this year, picking up some low-fat cold cuts from the deli, a loaf of sliced bread from the bakery, and putting dinner out on the coffee table for everyone to enjoy, without the fuss, the preparation, and best of all the cleanup of a fancy meal.
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Y'all go check her out. 
Dh has put our tree up but we have no decorations on it. Our cat loves it. She actually slept under it last night – guess she wanted to pretend she was in the wild again. 25 posts definitely works for me. So glad 2cute taught us how to change our view. Thanks for the sweet compliments. I won’t say much more as I am putting on my tough act and am not going to get all mushy. 
ooppss! 
