The holidays are over and the new year is in full swing.  Are you longing for the holiday comfort food you indulged in a month ago, like turkey, and stuffing, and mashed potatoes? Or are you trying to forget those caloric mishaps that you’re working off at the gym now?

Either way this recipe is perfect for you! It looks and tastes just like mashed potatoes, but it is made with the healthier, less starchy vegetable cauliflower. It skips all the extra fat and dairy and is completely raw and vegan, but flavor is not compromised I promise!

Ingredients:

-head of cauliflower

-1/4 pine nuts (I used half pine nuts and half hemp seeds, optional could use either or both)

-1 TBS olive oil

-1 TBS water

-3/4 TSP sea salt (or dulse flakes)

-half of a small clove of garlic (chopped)

-fresh ground black pepper, for topping

1) Chop the garlic and the cauliflower on a cutting board.

2) Add all ingredients to the food processor or blender. Blend until smooth.

3) Spoon into blow, make them look fluffy like mash potatoes to trick the people your serve. Eat cold or lightly heat on stove or in microwave just before serving. (But I swear they don’t even need to be heated, they are delicious cold)

Enjoy! They are the best recipe I have ever made I wish I was eating them right now!

I adapted the recipe from my favorite author and celebrity nutritionist  Kimberly Snyder. Here’s a link to the recipe on her blog: http://www.kimberlysnyder.net/blog/2010/02/21/raw-cauliflower-mashed-potatoes/

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

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!

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.

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?

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!

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.

Tweaking the holiday menu to be both healthy and appetizing is challenging and adding a vegetarian or a gluten-free relative to the mix complicates the menu even more.

“We eat for a lot of different reasons, and many of those reasons are strongly linked to health. It’s the main reason why all animals eat. But we are also social beings so it is important that we enjoy the wonderful foods and tastes and smells that are around during the holidays,” MSU food science and human nutrition professor Patricia Thurston said.

For supply chain management junior Julia Parks, gluten-free meal items are as common as Christmas cookies at her holiday family gatherings.

“It’s actually easier eating gluten-free during the holidays than it is when I’m at school,” Parks said.  “Whenever I’m at home it’s easy because for my entire life my mom has cooked this way with everything gluten free.  And even if we go to other family members they usually know, too.”

Parks has Celiac Sprue disease, an intolerance to gluten where ingesting gluten deteriorates her intestines so nutrients cannot be absorbed.

“My grandma had the same disease, so I was tested for it in kindergarten because I couldn’t build muscle. I was really skinny with a stomach that stuck out really far and I was getting sick all the time,” she said.

The genetic disease leads to muscle wasting and forces Parks and others with the disease to follow a strict diet completely abstaining from gluten, an ingredient in everything, from soy sauce to Starbursts.

“More people are being diagnosed with Celiac in recent years and even more people are being found to have a sensitivity to gluten,” Thurston said.

Fortunately many of Parks’ holiday traditions do not involve gluten.

“The main dishes are usually gluten-free, but the desserts are not, but my mom or other family members who are cooking will usually make one special dessert for me,” she said.

While her family makes their holiday food as accommodating as possible for Parks, the holidays also become a showcase of some of the unhealthy foods Parks avoids because they contain gluten.

“It is really hard for certain things like basic sugar cookies with frosting and white cupcakes that I see around a lot during the holidays,” Parks said.

While Parks does miss out on certain menu items there are many that can be substituted to replace what she misses in the ones that contain gluten.  Most of the main dishes at Park’s holiday gatherings are gluten-free salads, potatoes, meat and vegetables.  Parks says it is easy to eat those things at home because she is assured gluten is not an ingredient while elsewhere it could be incorporated as a binding agent.

“My mom is a great cook she makes elaborate things.  At Christmas time she makes tons of batches of cookies—she would make like five or six and two of them would be gluten-free macaroons, but when I was little I would always want to eat the other ones, but I understand how sick it would make me,” Parks said.

According to Thurston, even when a person with Celiac Spur disease feels like they are doing well, splurging could potentially ruin their progress and cause greater health problems.  With more people being diagnosed with disease in recent years people have been responding better.

“There is now a gluten-free bakery my family orders from during the holidays, and it’s not just holidays restaurants are developing gluten menus or additions to menus.  I was surprised when I went to PF Chang’s they had a gluten-free dessert I could eat and Chili’s had a gluten-free menu,” Parks said.

Maintaining usual eating habits throughout the holiday season is as difficult as it is important.  While turning down homemade treats from persistent family members can be difficult, declining the foods they offer is essential when maintaining usual non-holiday season diets.

James Madison junior Kristy Sparks, a vegetarian, similarly struggles remaining healthy and meat free throughout the holidays.

“I personally don’t like meat; I’ve never been a fan. I feel better physically and emotionally when I don’t eat it, but every year the holidays are really hard,” Sparks said.

Sparks’ family is accommodating to her vegetarian lifestyle.  With two family members also being vegetarians, she is not the only one around the table avoiding the turkey.

“The vegetarians in my family just mostly eat the sides because one year we had a tofu turkey but we didn’t like it,” Sparks said.

Sparks and her vegetarian relatives have no problem participating fully in the holiday feast, with the exception of specific unforeseen challenges.

“The stuffing is my favorite part of Thanksgiving and this year my cousin Jackie put bacon in it, so I was so bummed I couldn’t eat it.  She just married into the family so she didn’t know about us vegetarians,” Sparks said.

With numerous meat-oriented holidays, including Thanksgiving, vegetarians like Sparks learn to improvise while being careful to not make up for their lack of meat in sweets. Although plant based diets do offer multiple health benefits including a reduction in saturated fat intake, vegetarians have to be careful to not overeat other unhealthy foods instead, Thurston said.

Whether gluten-free or vegetarian, the holidays make sticking to pre-season diets a difficult task. However, taking the focus off of food allows you to enjoy the season regardless of what is on your plate.

“Instead of sitting down on the couch after a large meal we will go for a family walk, especially if it’s a sunny day, and remember the holidays are really all about family and friends, not just food,” Thurston said.

Check out one of Julie’s favorite gluten-free dishes:

Julia Parks’ Favorite Gluten-Free Macaroons

Ingredients:

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

4 egg whites

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

Directions:

1) Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2) Beat egg whites and salt until stiff.

3) Add sugar, a tablespoon at a time, until sugar is dissolved into egg whites.

4) Combine the coconut and vanilla extracts with the egg whites and sugar, but do not beat.

5) Cover cookie sheet with parchment paper and drop by teaspoonful onto paper.

6) Bake for approximately 20 minutes.

7) Allow cookies to cool before removing from sheet and enjoying.