Reclaiming spicy peanut dip!

It’s been a big week, everyone keeps saying, and I think it’s because Christmas is getting so close you can almost taste the panic. Eeeiiii. So much to be done. BUT we must not forget to eat well, if only to ensure we have stamina to drink all the bottles of bubbly coming our way over the next little while.

Fresh produce is at its cheapest right now, before it takes a hike for Christmas and New Year, then settles down again during summer. So eat your fill of green goodness. There’s nothing easier, or healthier, than a platter of vegetables (call them crudités if you want to be fancy) with a dunkable kinda dip. This one has been in my family for yonks, in fact, harking back to the early eighties. Everyone loves it, and my sister Gaye has sort of commandeered it, but I’m striking back! Reclaiming Spicy Peanut Dip! Haha. Of course, my food processor would go and die on me, so my version is really chunky, though equally delicious as the original. Serve it with your choice of colour and crunch and feel good about it.

Next up, a bowl of fresh fruit. We tend to forget how delicious fresh seasonal fruit in syrup can be. Yes, there’s a tad of sugar (tsk tsk) .. although I’ve done a sneaky trick and used the syrup from a jar of stem ginger in syrup, which is a fab idea, giving the fruit gloss and a nice little peppy bite. Putting the sugar to one side, ginger is an anti-inflammatory (always look for the positives!).

The big hit of this week’s line-up is the sticky kumara chips. Just look at them. Don’t you want to eat them right now? Yep. They are good, and baked in the oven, and that saves faffing around. Sugar again, I realise, (brown this time as I like to be even handed), but a small amount considering all the goodness you’ll be getting in fibre from the kumara and loads of Vitamin C from lemons.

Also this week, I climbed to the top of my little hobby horse to see what I could see … mmm. Got to let off steam every so often.

Have a good week.

Julie