Thursday 26 December 2013

Christmas Wrap Up

So its Xmas eve & the turkey is getting fat... well actually thawing to be truthful.  Today is mostly a cooking day as all pressies are bought & wrapped, food shopping all done & drinks chilling.

I'll make a few sugar-free deserts for the kids & I, which I'm sure others will enjoy.  We have an abundance of bananas, so will make some ice-cream & some muffins for sure.

Having just returned from camping with friends & their children I'm so proud of my kids for sticking to  sugar-free & failsafe diet so well.  There were a handful of marshmallows toasted on the camp fire, but only white ones & just one shortbread each - so that was it for sugar.  I remained sugar-free & didn't cave to the group pressure or even chocolate left open on the bench.  I just don't feel tempted these days, I'm so happy to eat foods I know will be good for me.  Staying on a farm we got to eat farm bacon (without nitrates) & fresh picked veggies.  I was even shown how to make sourdough bread & have come home & started my own culture... so watch this space for further disastrous bread attempts!! Clearly not my forte but no one could call me a quitter.

We were on a subsequent Amines & new Nitrates challenge which from sons perspectives would be be a pass, but after getting home & reaching day 4 once again my daughter clearly failed - I would say Amines only at this stage.  Its the 3rd Amines challenge we have done & each time she has gotten defiant, stroppy & unable to control her bladder - wet bed & couple of accidents in day time.  I appear to be ok on Amines, as any symptoms I got were from the salicylates in wine or sulphates :( (I wasn't technically challenging myself this week)

... Well Xmas Day is over for another year & a lot of fun was had by all.  The kids were made up with all their gifts & my super happy little man was just amazed at the whole event & so grateful, not one tear or wrong doing all day.  Madam on the other hand was a tad testy but enjoyed things when they were going her way.  Before they went to bed Xmas eve they left food out for Santa & his reindeers & it was magical to see their faces in the morning when just crumbs & carrot tops were left.  Mr.5 did question why we were leaving sugar biscuits out & a mince pie - which I explained away with that you don't get a tummy like Santa's unless you eat sugar.  He said he didn't want to get a tummy like that (I hope Santa was listening).  But given Mrs.Claus actually did all the hard yakka this year it might have been fairer to leave some sugar-free treats instead!!

Sugar-free sweet treats that I made for the big day were some Banana-Choc Muffins, Cheesecake & a Christmas Fruit Cake/Loaf.  A tradition for my family has always been to have shortbread in the morning & as I'd gone for the convenience of shop bought sugar ones for camping the kids had 2 each of those & I sampled one. In the grand scheme of things I would say 1 commercial biscuit for the year was acceptable.  Had I bought enough butter I could have made some myself with dextrose.

The Christmas cake turned out pretty good flavour-wise & substituted pudding for the 3 of us. It didn't rise quite as well as I'd hoped but texture-wise was dense & pudding-like.  The others actually didn't even eat their commercial pudding that they were insistent on buying.  But I can imagine that will get devoured after the cricket & beers tonight.  We had ours with fresh cream & was tasty enough to go back for a second helping & will be polished off again today.  I will post the recipe on my facebook page later.  It was one I conjured up to be sugar-free & semi-failsafe by bastardising a Christmas cake recipe from Sweet Poison Cook Book & a banana loaf recipe of mine.  It omitted spices, so no salicylates, & alcohol, so the kids could eat it.  Most of the sweetness comes from the banana, pear & swede (YES swede) so just a little dextrose & RMS is required.  In hindsight I should have added baking powder to assist rise.


All in all I would say we have had success in remaining sugar-free & failsafe over the lead-up & festivities.  Had we not been dealing with challenges & strict failsafe during this time I would have been more stalwart on sugar too for the kids but somethings gotta give when time is precious.   Below I'll list a few things we have done to limit sugar & take focus away from food, to share & record for next year.
  1. Use an advent calendar in which you can put small novelties instead of chocolates.  I put in handmade hair ties, Trashies, erasers, costume jewellery & Christmas tree decorations.  Next year I might breakdown a Lego kit to be built each day for my son which I saw a friend had done & looked more exciting.
  2. Provide kinder teachers with a small bag of alternative treats (marshmallows & caramels for Failsafe) to swap for candy canes given with cards (that I wasn't able to get to myself first & remove!).  This was to limit additives (colours), but in future I would provide stickers, pencils, small toys in lieu of food to avoid sugar.  
  3. Provide/bake own Xmas party food.  This included Reindeer Gingerless Breads, Shortbread Stars/Trees & Carob cupcakes in green & red wrappers, with white dextrose icing. 
  4. Give craft activities to do at Xmas parties to limit eating time e.g. Making reindeer food (decorate boxes, fill with oats & glitter), decorate a card, wooden tree ornament or christmas hat
Mostly though I'm happy to say this Christmas I did not go with gluttony.  I tried to limit what we bought, however the other half insisted on some "normal" Christmas food for him & visitors, which meant there was more than we really needed.  I did not however go to bed with an aching belly & exercised restraint myself when it came to indulging.  I ate extra food a little later in the evening than a normal day as drinking but I would hope the scales don't show that when I do my next weigh in.  I had bought a new pair of summer shorts just last week to replace the ones I bought last year - they are fitting very comfortably - happy to say they are the exact same brand & style, but a size less!  I'm probably only a couple of kilos less, but there's definitely been no gain in weight over the year.  

Due to Failsafe & Amines in particular I was conscious I didn't want too much excess food to be left over & devoured in the week proceeding.  Even with the smallest Turkey there's loads left.  So I've frozen some of it to prevent build up & same with muffins I made a full batch of.  The excess bananas from a double-up purchase, I've sliced up & frozen for use as ice-cream/cooking.  I will however be limiting Miss.3's intake of all that given her reaction. 

Now as ever in the post-Christmas wind-up its how to get creative with turkey & ham!  This morning we had Egg & Ham pies for brekkie.  For lunch cold turkey, potato & ham salad (with homemade garlic mayo - yum!!)  Tonight we had Spring Rolls from the Friendly Food recipe, but with turkey instead of veal.  They were a big winner, will be making that recipe again, but try chicken or add other veggies. 

So wrapping up this post, I trust you have all had a happy christmas time & wish you all a very merry new year.  Meanwhile if you have any suggestions for creative turkey recipes please comment below to share. 


















1 comment:

  1. We too had the focus of gluten free and processed sugars free in our food. We had our dinner the night before with all the veggies harvested from the garden and it was delicious. We ate lunch at my mums but despite my dad being a gluten intolerant diabetic who needs to lose a "few" kilos the food was full of sugar and gluten and there was a gluttons worth of it. We moved all the snacks out of reach of Orik and the others were told "NO!" in no uncertain terms and told why. They were brilliant. When it came to plum pud I'd made up and bought with me our rapadura sweetened custard as requested to find mum had bought commercial stuff anyway *eye roll* so that came home with us. Mum also traditionally makes ice cream plum pudd with all the Christmas pudding fruits and spices mixed into a melted tub of ice cream and re-frozen. It's divinely delicious but choc full of sugar and other preservatives and stuff so I made my own. I made a coconut cream icecream and then mixed in all the fruits and spices (organic when I could) and froze it up. I have to say it was delicious and probab;y even a little better than Mums. :) Next time I made the ice cream I subsed the rapadura for date paste and made it healthier and less sickly sweet yet again. Yes, it's still fructose which for us is ok but the added fibre and iron in the dates makes it well worth it. :)

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