New Year's eve food

Today was a fun day. Our 4 and 8-year old friends, accompanied by their father, spent the afternoon and evening with us. And I got to prepare a lot of fun foods. We started with Dr. Fuhrman's almond chocolate dip, available at the recipe center (for members only, sorry), or p. 283 in the new edition of Eat to Live. It's like chocolate frosting! I thought it was too rich at first, but of course it's a dip meant to be eaten with fruit and it was very good that way. We had it with strawberries (frozen, but partially thawed), apple slices, fresh pineapple and bananas. The adults enjoyed it, but the kids preferred m&ms and hershey's chocolate candies. That was partly because the m&ms came from a machine that you had to stick pennies into.

Later on we had nachos, and chips and salsa and guacamole. I used a recipe from Isa Chandra Moskowitz' new cookbook, "Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes." called guacomame, made with avocado and edamame. I think I prefer just plain guacamole. I searched my blog and don't seem to have a recipe for classic guacamole, but it's similar to this one, only without the beans. I fed everyone else the unhealthy salted oily chips they like, and toasted my own chips from unsalted corn tortillas (about 5 minutes in the oven at 350 F). Then we had ice cream for dessert. I had some dates and cashews to use up so added them in. It made it a little too gooey for my tastes. My favorite is still the simplest banana walnut, or banana-berry-walnut.

I like cooking for several people because I can enjoy tastes of several things without eating too much of each one. It was a good New Year's Eve splurge without being excessive.

Regarding my pre-New Year's temptations, this morning I got a few things at the grocery store and once again was tempted by all the vegan bakery treats. They even have vegan donuts now, made from a popular local bakery! Wo. And my favorite "nothing muffins" looked attractive too. So of course the devil (over my right shoulder) was saying, "want to splurge before New Year's?" Finally the angel (left shoulder) asserted herself and said, "Look, you know you can splurge anytime--you can splurge on Jan. 2 if you want. And isn't it nice to know those donuts will always be there? So you don't need them today." That seemed pretty reasonable, but I did decide at that moment to make some chocolate almond dip as my splurge (Dr. Fuhrman's version).

I was going to take pictures of the food today but there was too much activity with the children to bother with photography. Here were the results at the end of the day: