A Healthy(ish) Easter feast...

Just thought I'd share the healthy options I incorporated into our extended family Easter lunch on Sunday. We had both sets of parents (grandparents) over, as well as my step-mother's father. The three of us were the only representatives of the younger generations, due to various expeditions and commitments of others. So, a nice relaxed group of seven adults and one six-year-old.
We started with a beetroot dip and crudités (I ditched the cumin crisps, as I thought there'd be enough other carbs with salads etc.).

Very delicious. The only changes I made to the dip from the recipe (which you'll have to join up to 12WBT to get access to) is that I added toasted whole cumin seeds and some Moroccan seasoning before I blended it up. I really like beetroot as a vegetable, although those with any sort of stomach-acid irregularity (as I tend to have from time to time) need to be prepared for the dramatic colour effects on your ... a-hem ... outputs. Lots of carrot and celery sticks to accompany, very well received.

The BBQ king cooked a whole piece of scotch fillet (beef) on our spit roast. Although not exactly on the 12WBT plan, I limited my portion size, and if you're going to eat roasted meat, this is one of the lower-fat ways to prepare it.

Along with the meat, we had skin-on oven roasted potatoes which my step-mother brought (I had one small one only!), and a selection of four salads, including two made by me. Firstly a salad based around quinoa, which I also really like, but have never actually prepared myself before. Added to roasted pumpkin (I cooked mine in cubes, rather than slabs, for ease of serving), spinach leaves, mint and a tasty lemony dressing, also very popular. This image is actually of a similar salad from Google (I'm really going to have to get better at snapping photos).

The second salad was a roasted beetroot and spinach salad with toasted walnuts, crumbled feta and a pleasant dressing flavoured with citrus and mustard. It was supposed to have roasted zucchini too, but as ours were distinctly mushy when I got them out of the fridge, the worms got those instead, and I really don't think the salad suffered too much from the loss. Definitely another one we'll be doing again.

My step-mother also made a couple of salads, a mixed salad of lettuce, tomatoes, celery etc. to please the traditionalists and also a crunchy quinoa-based salad, apparently from George Colimbaris. Very good also.

We finished with two different cakes, one a Simnel Cake made by my mother in law (fruit cake with marzipan layers traditional at Easter) and some Apple tea cake my step-mother had cooked for the night before. Had small slices only, but inevitably there was also some chocolate consumed...

All in all, I was very pleased with how it all went, menu-wise. I certainly don't think anyone felt that they were being forced to eat "diet food". It's good reinforcement that all of these changes are completely sustainable and I'll probably happily incorporate many of the 12WBT recipes into our normal family repertoire.