Cookies, candy, cakes, and pies seem to be everywhere during the busy holiday season, so I decided to bring you a recipe that you don’t have to count as a holiday food splurge. The holidays are a time to spend with family and friends and relax before the start of a new year, but for some Americans it can be the season of gaining rather than giving. In fact, most Americans gain one to 10 pounds during the time between Thanksgiving and New Years – while this might not seem significant, it can add up.

This may seem scary, but you can still enjoy your favorite holiday treats without gaining a pound.  Here’s my holiday survival guide ultimate tip: selectively splurge.  When sweet and savory unhealthy foods are thrown at you from every direction, taking second and third helpings of them all will obviously lead to weight gain overtime; however, trying just one of everything and saving seconds and thirds for those few really tasty treats you dream about all year will leave you in the same shape you started the holidays with.

My recipe this month, tomato and egg brunch bake, won’t break your holiday calorie bank.  And more importantly, it is actually healthy and starting your day with a brunch like this will fill you up, give you the nutrients you need to get through the stress of the holiday season.  And even more importantly it tastes great.

This brunch dish is simple and would be a great dish to pass for family gatherings.  For me, Christmas morning breakfast is my favorite meal of the holidays.  My family gathers at my grandparents house for homemade quiche, coffee cake, and sweet rolls on Christmas morning and it has always been my favorite part of the day.  This baked egg and tomato dish would be the perfect healthy addition, and it’s even red and green.

What are you favorite holiday meals? Comment and share with TBG! Happy Holidays and good luck with finals!

-Katie

Ingredients:

4 ripe vine tomatoes

Olive Oil

4 organic eggs

parsley/basil/chives/ oregano

optional: veggies of your choice. (I added bell pepper and mushrooms)

parmesan cheese 

Steps:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2) Chop tomatoes into wedges. Chop additional vegetable add ons and herbs.

3) Spread out vegetables in a fairly shallow oven-safe casserole dish.

4) Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

5) Place in oven and bake for 40 minutes.

6) Remove from oven, sprinkle herbs and once cool enough create four spaces in the vegetables to crack eggs into.

7)  Cover with tin foil and place back into oven for about 6 to 9 minutes or until eggs are cooked to your liking.

Remove from oven and serve on warm toast, bagels, or ciabatta bread with a green side salad.

recipe adapted from BBC Good Food

Hot and Healthy – November from Katie Dalebout on Vimeo.

Welcome to the November Hot & Healthy! This month I wanted to use my current favorite local seasonal vegetable: the spaghetti squash. The spaghetti squash may be the most versatile vegetable at the farmer’s market right now-the possibilities for it are endless. Once halved, seeded and baked for about forty minutes, the spaghetti squash is great plain or with any seasoning from salt and pepper to sweet cinnamon-sugar.  And the seeds make a great snack for later — just rinse them, let them dry overnight and bake them for 15 minutes.

The spaghetti-like strands of the squash give it its name and make it the perfect substitution for pasta. It’s a low-carb, gluten-free and raw alternative for pasta in any dish and to me it’s just better tasting!

So when deciding what recipe I wanted to share this month, I thought why not pair my favorite versatile vegetable with my favorite versatile sauce.  Therefore, I’m sharing my favorite version of mac and cheese with spaghetti squash starring in my video as the mac and an interesting combination of savory ingredients that come together to become a vegan cheese.

While I admit this ingredient list is extensive, it’s worth it. The vegan cheese sauce is so tasty and healthy that herbivores and carnivores alike can enjoy it. The best part of the sauce is that it does not have to be purely used for this recipe.  It would work over any type of pasta noodle, as a sauce for a pizza, or as the cheese for nachos.

Everybody loves mac and cheese right? While this recipe lacks the ease Kraft provides, it makes up for it in both taste and health benefits. It’s a great recipe to make over the weekend and stick in the fridge and eat during the busy week. It also is perfect as a side dish and would accent any meal.  (I plan to bring mine as a dish to pass at my family’s Thanksgiving later this month.) Give it a try and tell me what you think! How does my version measure up to Kraft?

Equipment needed: 

blender
sauce pan
wooded spoon
cookie sheet
large bowl

Ingredients:

1 spaghetti squash 

Olive oil (to cover squash before baking)

1/2 cup cashews
1 1/2 cups water (this makes your cashew milk, could be substituted for other 1 1/2 cups of non-dairy milk)
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 1/2 Tbs Arrowroot starch (just for thickening any starch will do)
1/2 lemon, juiced
pinch of dry mustard (I used lots)
pinch of turmeric
1/4 tsp paprika
1 Tbs sesame seeds or tahini
1 Tbs miso paste
1 large clove of garlic (minced) 
sea salt and pepper to taste

Cayenne pepper for topping 

Add ons: I added Broccoli and mushrooms, but you could add any vegetables you like.  Or even meat. (of course that would make the recipe no longer vegan)

Follow the instructions in my video, you can do it!

recipe adapted from: http://meghantelpnerblog.com

Hey TBG readers!

This month is our “green issue”, so what better way to celebrate it than to interview someone with a very “green” diet?

TBG’s Mandilyn Kerr sat down with Leah Kelley, a MSU freshman, to talk about her diet as a vegetarian. Kelley tells us why she became a vegetarian, the challenges she faces and what people should consider if they want to become a vegetarian.

Also, be sure to look at the end of the article for a healthy recipe that Kelley shares with us and try it sometime!

Don’t forget: this Sunday is TBG’s annual print issue launch party! Stop by Schuler Books in Okemos between 4-6 p.m. to enjoy free food and entertainment, along with a free copy of our 2010-2011 print issue.

Sex & Health stories in the print issue include an article about the implementation of the tanning and a collection of my Hot & Healthy recipes.

See you next month for our final issue of the year!

Hey TBG readers,

Admittedly, this month’s recipe didn’t go as planned. Instead of eating delicious fudge brownies, I ended up scraping baked-on brownie out of the pan.

The main reason that the recipe didn’t work is probably because I didn’t have the right pan; a round casserole dish was recommended. So, that’s a good guess as to why the brownies/pudding ended up looking like a swamp instead of dessert.

And to top it all off, it didn’t even taste right. Sure, the initial taste test wasn’t that bad, but eating an actual serving size after filming the video wasn’t much fun.

I also totally admit that this isn’t the healthiest recipe; however I wanted to try out a dessert and this one is a bit healthier than most. According to the recipe, one serving is 330 calories. Eh, not bad.

This recipe may have ruined my dessert optimism temporarily, but there may be a way to fix it. Here is my challenge: try out this recipe and send us the video. It won’t be too hard to do better than I did!

Thanks and see you next month!

Hey TBG readers!

Welcome back to another edition of Hot & Healthy! This month’s recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup (much like the kind you would find at McAlister’s Deli) is from Food.com. It’s one of those recipes that calls for a lot of ingredients, but once you throw them all together, just heat and serve.

Again, there are a lot of ingredients and I even had trouble remembering all of them (as you will see in the video), but the effort is well worth it. My batch of soup ended up tasting a lot like McAlister’s!

So, hopefully this soup can spice up a dinner with your friends or your significant other sometime during the month of February. And for a fun song about soup, check out this clip from one of my favorite TV shows, BBC’s The Mighty Boosh.

Thanks and see you next month!

Hey TBG readers,

Welcome to the holiday edition of the Sex & Health section! This month’s recipe is both good for you and really easy to make. It’s the perfect dish to bring to a company party or a family gathering, and since it’s all about the veggies you can serve it to vegetarian or vegan guests alike.

The recipe, from the Food Network’s Giada De Laurentis, is available here. I made a few minor changes to the recipe while I was making the video to accommodate the portion I needed.

This month, the Sex & Health section features an article that focuses on the 10 percent tanning tax and it’s effect on both tanning salons and customer usage. Don’t miss it!

As always, thanks for reading. Have a happy holiday season and we will see you in 2011.

A couple walks on MSU's campus

Michigan State University received a big honor this fall…and no, I’m not talking about the football team’s great season. Back in October, MSU was ranked second in the nation in terms of sexual health, which is obviously an important issue to students.

Trojan Sexual Health Report card study, which was conducted by Trojan brand condoms, Sperling’s BestPlaces and Rock the Vote, calculated the results from two studies, according to a press release.

This is great news for MSU and the student community. It is so important to be sexually healthy and responsible, so it’s good to see MSU’s efforts recognized.

Another good thing: the return of Hot & Healthy! Next month, our favorite food video series will return with more recipes, which are delicious and good for you. If there is a recipe you want to see featured, be sure to comment below.

Thanks again for reading, see you in December with a new Hot & Healthy video!

For this month’s edition of Hot & Healthy, Marker has spiced things up with a full, 2-course meal with entrée and dessert! Delicious, right? And since it’s summer, below these not one, but two video recipes, you can check out some great sex moves that involve things like pools, beaches and hot tubs!

Summer sex moves from those classy people over at Cosmopolitan:

• Stairway to Heaven
• Ladder Lovin’
• Breakin’ the Waves
• Hot Tub Hug
• Deep Water Dare
• The Randy Raft

Yeah, they’re probably all painfully uncomfortable, but hey, you only live once, right?

For this month’s Hot & Healthy, keep things light, lemony and lovely with Marker’s pasta salad just in time for spring!

And once you try out that salad, get ready to toss her salad with this month’s scandalous sex act. Just please the perineum with your tongue, let things heat up and then indulge in some more pasta salad!

For this month, sauce things up with Marker’s “BOOM Roasted BBQ Sauce.” Check out this Bar-B-Cutie!

To keep things saucy once you’re done indulging with some BBQ pulled pork, check out this sex move from Cosmopolitan, the saucy spoons!  Both partners lie on their side facing the same direction, and the giver enters the receiver from behind.  This position allows the giver’s hands extra access to pleasure the receiver with touching them in all the places that count.