Celebrate With Healthy Food This Christmas

Eating healthy food for the holiday season! Perhaps that does not sound like fun.

Healthy food can be fun and yummy too. Best of all it will help you be healthy and your immune system from crashing with a flu or cold. Every year flus and colds peak after the holiday season. Let’s not be one of those statistics. Bonus: you may lose weight instead of gaining it.

What will keep you healthy and strong during the holiday season?

1. Eat Real Food! Our bodies were designed to digest real food.

Real Food is whole food in its most natural state. It is unprocessed or with very little processing. Real food does not need a label or fancy packaging. A lemon is a lemon. An onion is an onion. Real Food is a whole food that is life sustaining and nourishing. “My passion is to help everyone, get real food into their bodies!”

A healthy salad is often ruined by drenching it with a highly processed salad dressing from the super market that is filled with artificial flavorings, colourings, preservatives and sugar. Here is an easy healthy alternative.

Avocado Lemon Salad Dressing

This is so delicious on a salad and leftover dressing will last refrigerated for a few days.

Ingredients:

1 ¼ cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup Avocado
1 large tomato
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp stevia

Directions:

Blend oil, stevia and salt.
Add lemon juice gradually blending till smooth.
Add water and blend till smooth.
Chop avocado and tomato and mix in with olive oil/lemon juice mixture.

NOTE: If there is a link on any ingredient in a recipe – it takes you to the the many powerful health benefits of that particular food. Some foods are so healthy we call them Powerfoods. Follow the link to that Powerfood to discover many little know benefits and facts.

2. Replace refined sugars with healthy sugars

I love sweets. As a child I was addicted to white sugar causing many health problems. Lots of refined sugar weakens the immune system making you vulnerable to developing chronic conditions. All that store bought cranberry sauce is full of sugar. It is simple to make your own and so much healthier.

Refined Sugar free Healthy Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients:

1 Package whole, organic cranberries (fresh, not frozen)
1 Organic Apple, cored and chopped
1 Cup Apple juice
1/4 Cup Organic, Brown Rice Syrup
1 tsp liquid Stevia
Pinch of salt

Directions:

Put all ingredients into a sauce pan and let simmer for a few minutes.
Remove and let cool.
Taste and add more Stevia or Brown Rice Syrup if you like it sweeter.

3. Drink Healthy Beverages!

Drink 6 – 8 cups of clean water daily. It is energy draining to be dehydrated and causes you to eat more than you should. Alcohol is dehydrating and taxing on the immune system.

Would you like drink a health giving and tasty drink at the party? Try this alcohol free punch. When I first served it, people at my parties would start acting like they had drunk some alcohol because from experience party punches always had had alcohol in it.

Festive Fruit Punch

Enjoy this tasty non-alcoholic energy giving drink for your good health.

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen organic raspberries or strawberries
2 cups fresh squeezed orange juice
2 Tbs fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 mint tea bags
1 hibiscus tea bag
1 liter sparkling spring water
1/4 tsp – 1/2 tsp Liquid Stevia to taste

For Garnish
1 orange, sliced
1 lemon, sliced
1 cup frozen organic raspberries
Handful fresh mint leaves

Directions:

Make 2 cups of tea with mint and hibiscus tea bags (let steep for 10 minutes).
Blend strawberries, orange juice and lemon juice on liquefy speed (high speed) for approximately 1-2 minutes or until all ingredients are well-blended.
Add tea and blend.
Pour juice into punch bowl or a pitcher.
Mix in sparkling water and stevia to taste.
Add orange slices, lemon slices, frozen raspberries and mint leaves.
Enjoy.