Hi FitFeat friends!

It’s 1-1-11 today!  Can you believe how fast 2010 flew by?  I hope that you all had a lovely New Year’s Eve celebration!

Pics from last night’s meal:

Dairy-free Caprese Salad:

To make Tofu “Mozzarella”:  Drain firm (organic non-GMO) tofu and cut into desired shapes.   Soak in very salty water for 8 hours or overnight.  Then drain and pat off with a paper towel. (If it still feels too spongy, you can lightly press out some of the excess water by covering it with another paper towel and placing a heavy platter or pan on top).

I could not find fresh basil at any of the stores I had been to this week, so I decided to use spinach and arugula as my salad base and then make a basil dressing using this squeezable basil (2 Tbsp basil squeeze, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1.5 Tbsp balsamic, stir):

Top the salad with roma tomatoes and the tofu “cheese” and then add the dressing.

Fettuccine Alfredo Primavera:

For the Alfredo sauce I combined a dairy free nut sauce with a cauliflower puree:

  • 1/2 head fresh cauliflower, steamed for 20 minutes
  • 1/2 cup vegetable stock
  • 1 cup cashews (soaked all day, then drained and rinsed)
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 2 Tbsp + 2 tsp nutritional yeast
  • 2 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 Tbsp olive oil

Add all ingredients to a blender except for the olive oil.  Blend until creamy then with the blender on low slowly drizzle in the oil.  Pour into a saucepan and heat on low (covered) until it comes up to serving temperature.

(This yields a 3 cup batch of sauce, so in my case I pureed the cauliflower and stock separately and then mixed them all together once they were in the saucepan).

For a vegetarian version, I coated some brown rice fettuccine noodles first with some of the sauce, then topped that with some baked spaghetti squash, some sauteed mushrooms, chopped broccoli and sundried tomatoes, then drizzled some more of the sauce over the top.

For a meat-eating version I made a Chicken Broccoli Alfredo:

We found a Basil Pesto marinated free range chicken breast to use from a local Colorado company:

And of course there was a little of this:

It was a delicious New Year’s Eve and we were having such a good time we didn’t even break out the Wii!

***

OK, OK, I kept you in suspense long enough – it’s time to announce the winner of the drawing for the Eating for Health book and a free coaching session.

You all impressed me with your dedication throughout the month!  I hope that you enjoyed having a reason to stay accountable and get your body moving every day in a month that is filled with rich food and a lot of social outings.  I know it helped me to get moving even if some of those days were just going for a walk.

The four eligible participants were:

1 Cindy
2 Jen
3 Joan
4 Julie

And the winner selected by the Random Number Generator is:

JULIE!!!  Congrats!

I hope that you all feel like winners for having done such an AMAZING job this whole month!  Thank you so much for participating!

With that I’m off to enjoy not only the New Year holiday but also my 9th wedding anniversary… here’s a link to last year’s anniversary post.

Happy 2011 everyone!

– Shari B. =)

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