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

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?

So, it may be just a little after the holidays, but everyone still enjoys some eggnog every now and then, right?  Of course!  So in honor of the season, here’s Nick Lippard’s delectable eggnog french toast.

And to burn off those calories, along with any other calories you inevitably gathered throughout the holiday season, let’s go with a sex move that includes a bit of a French twist!  That’s right, it’s the Eiffel Tower.

So, go ahead and grab those two dear friends of yours and give this thing a go. Simply have one girl in between two guys.  She will be on her hands and knees giving oral sex to the one guy while the other will be satisfying her from behind. The two guys put their hands together into a triangle formation, and voila! French architecture in a sex move.