This month, Victoria Kruse shares her tips on maintaining a new healthy diet and shares a Christmas treat recipe with us.
When you are following a specific diet, it is easy to fall off the wagon during the festive season. However, you don’t have to. Victoria brings some tips to keep you motivated to follow your chosen eating style, even when it seems too hard.
- -When possible, make the change in your diet together with a significant other. It will be easier to keep the focus when the difficult times come. Having someone in the same condition as you will keep you on your toes.
- Clear out your kitchen of anything you don’t want in your eating lifestyle and try to remove any temptations from cabinets and fridge.
- Make sure you have the right food available. You might want to try a food box subscription service or visit a regular store that you know has the right food choices to satiate your appetite.
- Try to take some time each week to prepare basic food, particularly go-to ready meals or snacks and keep them in your fridge or freezer. So, if you get snowed under or distracted, you can grab things that still fulfil your hunger.
You can still enjoy the Christmas flavours if you follow a low carb diet. Learn with Victoria how to make an Italian staple in a revamped, lighter version during the holiday season.
Victoria Kruse is a sustainability and wellness mentor. She was born and raised in a small town in New Zealand, surrounded by nature and rich biodiversity, and has always eaten homegrown and seasonal food. She is a chameleon with many talents and much knowledge to share. She worked in numerous fields before reinventing herself through learning and experience to become a sustainability and wellness mentor in the Maldives resort industry. As the creator of the ‘Wellness Your Way’ initiative, Victoria has developed recipes and shared with guests her philosophy of eating well for health and a more sustainable Planet Earth.
Low Carb Panforte – Italian Christmas Cake
Ingredients:
4 pasture-raised eggs
100g butter melted
60g coconut milk
45g coconut treacle (or coconut syrup)
220g ground almond
40g tapioca starch
50g cassava flour
30g erythritol
64g dried cranberry
40g golden raisins
40g dark chocolate 85% buttons or cut into pieces
20g activated almond
20g activated pistachio
20g activated pecan nuts
40g activated walnut
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground nutmeg
zest of one orange
Method:
Step one – activate your nuts
Nuts and seeds contain phytic acid, a substance that they produce to stop predators from eating them. However, when humans consume phytic acid, it inhibits our ability to absorb essential minerals such as magnesium, potassium and calcium. Activating also removes the bitter flavour that nuts can have.
Place the nuts in a bowl, cover with water, and add one tsp of raw apple cider vinegar. Leave it for five to six hours and then drain and place them in the oven to dry for 12 hours at 60° Celsius then chop.
Step two – make the Panforte
Beat the eggs until they become fluffy; slowly add the melted butter, coconut milk and coconut treacle. Add the salt, cinnamon, ginger, ground nutmeg and orange zest. In a separate bowl, mix the ground almond, cassava flour, tapioca starch and erythritol. Combine the liquid ingredients to the dry mixture and add the dried cranberry, golden raisins, chopped chocolate and all chopped nuts.
Pour the mix into a 20cm cake ring and bake in the oven for approximately 40 minutes at 165° Celsius.
Enjoy!