Here at the Healthy Eating Clinic, we love food.
We are passionate about helping people to find the joy in food and learn to celebrate the social connection and the happiness that a delicious meal can bring. And with Christmas so close, the talk around the clinic has moved decidedly towards the foods that we are most fond of, with reflections on our own happy memories around the foods that make our Christmas day a bit more special.
So as our Christmas present to you, we bring you a collection of our favourite Christmas foods from the members of the Healthy Eating Clinic team. This is a sneak peak of the conversations around the clinic kitchen, with a few recipes and some family secrets we just can’t let go of!
Kate – Founder
Growing up my family always did a hot, traditional Christmas lunch. I am of British heritage, so a light, salad style lunch was never on the cards! We had lots of different roast meats (pork, turkey, lamb), roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese (gross! I am not a cauliflower fan), boiled green vegetables, gravy, apple sauce… Then there were chips and dips, dessert, slices, biscuits, after dinner mints, Christmas pudding, sparkling apple juice – so much food!
It’s been a tradition for about 5 years now, that I glaze a big leg of ham with an orange, mustard, and maple glaze, with cloves and other spices. We include this at the hot lunch along with all the other sides and then enjoy lovely salads and open sandwiches for Christmas dinner and on the days following. I have quite a collection of ham recipes because I always have heaps to use up. Let’s just say my family gets a little over ham for a good 6 months because the leg in the fridge seems never ending!
My favourite way to use leftover ham is with Ham, Goats Cheese and Peach Salad!
Michelle – Dietitian
The food I most look forward to at Christmas are my home-made fruit mince tarts. I bought a random pie book years ago that had the recipe in it, and the only modification that I’ve made is to make mini versions so that the pastry-to-fruit mince ratio is perfect. They are completely different to store bought fruit mince tarts (and so much better!) – so much so that I haven’t been able to eat a store bought one since first making them 15+ years ago.
They’re very labour intensive so I usually only make 1 batch every Christmas. It’s become a really lovely tradition with my kids – they help me make the pastry, get bored and step out of the kitchen for the fruit mince and construction phase, and then return to devour them as soon as they come out of the oven. The only problem is that I never make enough to share with others, so the rest of the Healthy Eating team only ever get to hear about them!
Stefanie – Dietitian
Growing up, we never had an abundance of gingerbread at Christmas time, and gingerbread houses were nowhere in sight. Why? “Nobody eats it,” said Mum. While she’s always had a fondness for the stuff, she maintained for years that out of an extended family of 20+ people, only one of my cousins would eat it, and so building a whole house out of this delicious biscuit would be ridiculous. So, I turned my hand at baking other Christmas biscuits, experimenting over the years with different flavours and shapes, staying up way too late on Christmas Eve decorating trees, stars and angels to add to the traditional Greek-Cypriot sweets on the table like kourambiedes (the ones dusted in icing sugar) and melomakarona (recipe here).
One year, my partner and I decided we would try the two-Christmas-meals-in-one-day thing and visit both families. This was my moment! His family love gingerbread! And so it began. We made it together and went all out that year – stained glass windows, a flagstone path to the entrance, flower boxes on the windowsills, a wreath on the door, smoke out the chimney, lighting… We had a blast making and sharing it. We took the leftovers to my family’s celebration and whaddya know – turns out they like my gingerbread too!
There are many, many delicious foods on offer at my family’s Christmas. But a gingerbread house is one of the few things that are exclusive to the festive season, and that makes it all the more special.
Tina – Dietitian
Christmas was never a big thing in my family growing up. Christmas meant that the restaurant was closed, and the phone became eerily quiet (it was a 7-days a week lunch and dinner type of restaurant). I don’t recall any specific foods we had around this time aside from cherries and candy canes, because for me, it was more about us being able to hang out and eat at ‘normal’ times rather than outside of restaurant times!
Fast forward to now, where I’ve had almost a decade of Christmas’s with my in-laws, I can see what all the fuss is about! My favourites would have to be my in-law’s gravlax with mustard and dill sauce, and my husband’s nan’s pecan pie.
Esther – Dietitian
Christmas has always been a special time for my family, as we celebrate the birth of our Saviour together. We’re not too traditional with Christmas foods, it varies each year but is always delicious! There will usually be various roast meats, salads, cooked veggies, bread, and sometimes prawns or homemade sausage/veggie rolls. One of my favourites is my sister-in-law’s prawn and mango salad. Dessert includes a big bowl of cherries (which I look forward to every year!), Christmas pudding with custard, sometimes a berry & meringue ice cream slice. There are sometimes either homemade fruit mince pies or melomakarona on offer.
The common theme for my favourite Christmas foods is the love with which they are prepared. These foods often require a lot of time and care, and that always comes through in the taste and in the joy of sharing the food!
Sian – Dietitian
This is a tough one! Between my Grandma’s lemon meringue pie with a secret ingredient, my brother’s amazingly marshmallowy pavlova, and my sister-in-law’s rich and creamy potato bake, Christmas with both my families is a feast to look forward to.
But my favourite would have to be my husband’s roast turkey. In his family, the turkey is a big deal and that’s what makes it really special. His Dad buys ahead and freezes it so we can have one just the right size, then after thawing it my husband does the stuffing and seasoning (including the big secret – LOTS of butter rubbed under the skin so it always comes out super tender and never dry) and then it’s delivered over to his sister’s house first thing Christmas morning for her husband to cook in the hooded BBQ ready for lunch. Each member of the family uses their strengths for the turkey, and with the beautiful cranberry, pistachio and bacon stuffing, homemade gravy and a big dollop of cranberry jelly, no roast dinner really compares.
Greta – Clinic Manager
My family keeps Christmas pretty low key – these days, my partner and I have a Christmas tradition of spending a few hours at the beach with a big bunch of grapes and some cold drinks, before heading home and having a picnic style meal. I love spending the day this way – it’s a great way to unwind at the end of the year. Growing up, Christmas was a bigger affair, usually spent with my mum’s side of the family. Being Croatian, the food we ate was often reflective of that background.
In particular, my grandma (Baka) would often make up a big batch of traditional Croatian crescent shaped biscuits – they are similar to shortbread but with the addition of ground nuts (recipes vary – it could be almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts) and icing sugar. There are similar recipes in many European cultures. I remember helping to roll and shape the biscuits and always having a great time. It makes a mess with lots of flour and icing sugar all over the place, but that’s part of the fun!
Caitlin – Customer Service
My favourite part of Christmas every year is cooking up a big lunch with my mum. As the ones who love to cook in our family, it has become a special tradition of ours to spend the day cooking together, making enough food to feed an army! And even when things don’t go according to plan (like the year we set an oven mitt on fire…) it is always worth the effort, as there is nothing like sitting around a table stacked high with Christmas food to enjoy with your loved ones.
When it comes to my favourite Christmas food, there is nothing that can beat a glazed Christmas ham, or crunchy roasted potatoes, or gingerbread… honestly there is too many to choose from! One of my other favourite dishes on the table though that I would recommend would have to be these Cranberry and Pancetta Stuffing Cups. Sometimes the side dishes can be what makes a Christmas feast!
Kellie – Customer Service
My favourite Christmas food is by far stuffing. When I was young, we used to have the family get together at my grandparents’ home in a small NSW country town. It would be a house full of relatives, including those of us staying in tents in the backyard. Every year my grandmother would bake two chickens that would be full of her beautiful stuffing. Pa would hand out the presents and we would each try to get to the stuffing before anyone else. We still laugh at the memory of ‘fighting’ for the stuffing.
My mum was taught the amazingly simple recipe and continues to use it to stuff a turkey buffet. I crave this stuffing and can’t wait to sit down to a large serving every year. I have tried to make it myself but can never get the consistency right (I always add too much butter).
The recipe for our family stuffing:
- 150gm butter melted
- 2 medium brown onions, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 loaf of bread, broken into small pieces or pulse in a food processor until very coarse crumbs
- Heaped tsp of mixed dry herbs
- 4 bacon rashers finely chopped
Melt the butter, keep approximately 1/3 aside. Cook the onions and bacon until cooked, then add the garlic and herbs and stir through. Add the bread and mix well. Add extra melted butter until you have the right consistency – the breadcrumbs should be just moist, so that ingredients just cling together. Some of the cooking juices from the turkey will be absorbed by the stuffing mixture so it does not been to be ‘wet’ before inserting it into the cavity.
Leila – Body Scan Analyst
Christmas is a time that brings my family together and being Croatian means there is LOTS of food at the centre of our gathering. Every year we have a Christmas lunch which includes a range of cooked meats and salads, followed by a variety of delicious Croatian cakes made by my grandma. When I think about Christmas, our family’s ‘Russian potato salad’ recipe comes straight to my mind. I honestly could eat this on its own and I’d be more than satisfied. We make two big bowls of this salad and without fail it gets demolished every time. The salad consists of boiled potatoes, boiled egg, carrot, corn, peas, pickles, and mayonnaise. Now the mayonnaise is what makes or breaks the salad – I’ll be keeping that one a secret…
A little note from us:
While Christmas is a joyful time for many, we recognise that for some people it can be a challenging time of year, especially if you struggle with food and eating for any reason. If you are struggling, feel free to check in with one of our dietitians for some support.
