Two Colorful, Healthy, Festive and Easy Holiday Menus
A fancy and a casual version, both made from the same nutrient-dense, blood sugar friendly ingredients!
Colorful chefs - new and old, welcome! This is where we cook easy, delicious, saucy, colorful meals made from whole, unprocessed foods, and we make it fun, easy, and learn important stuff about metabolic health while doing it.
Today’s newsletter is a special edition all about making your holiday cooking easier and more nutritious, and I’m doing it with a friend of mine who is a professional healthy retreat chef, Ali Rose!
Collaborating with like-minded friends is one of my favorite things! I met Ali in 2022 when I first went to an event at Commune (a global wellness community with incredible courses, and a retreat center in Topanga, CA) where she was cooking. I had one of her stunning, colorful, flavorful, nutrient dense meals and immediately went into the kitchen because I had to meet whoever made it. It was not only insanely healthy and flavorful, but it was made with a real love and appreciation for the food, and that showed.
Since that first night, I’ve been fortunate to eat Ali’s food many times, and to cook alongside her and learn many of her tips and tricks. Ali is a pro at creating colorful, healthy meals at scale for large groups and wellness retreats. Since I’m a home chef used to cooking for 2-6 people, I knew she was the perfect person to help teach me how to make holiday cooking for a crowd less stressful, while sticking to my Cooking in Color principles: colorful, blood sugar balanced, no bad stuff, quality ingredients, a little zhuzh.
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So without further preamble, let’s get into our 2024 holiday menu:
I did a poll and asked if you all wanted a healthy but fancy holiday menu or a healthy but casual holiday menu. Of course the results were split… but then as I was chatting with Ali, we realized we could do two BOTH with the SAME ingredients.
Let’s say you are hosting people two days in a row; you could double the ingredients and easily get two gorgeous meals out of one set of ingredients. On day 1 you have lamb shank with the roasted brussels and mashed parmesan potatoes with sneaky cauliflower, and on day 2 you turn the leftover lamb shank into sliders and quickly pull together a brussel salad and cauliflower and potato salad (which could all be prepped the day before, or even earlier in the week).
The 5 reasons why we picked these menus and these foods:
Easy but elevated: You will get an elevated result that has some zhuzh (one of the core Cooking in Color principles), but the recipes themselves are quite simple!
Very hard to overcook: It’s hard to over cook or mess up any of these dishes. This is important because as a host or just around the holidays, sometimes it’s easy to get distracted (🙋🏼♀️this is me).
Centered around one thing: It’s easy if you pick one thing to center the meal around and build from there. For this meal it’s a braised lamb shank, but you could do braised short ribs, brisket, pork shoulder etc.
Prep friendly: You can prep and even cook a ton of this in advance, so on the day of you are not stressed and not spending half the party in the kitchen!
Nutrient dense: Last but of course not least, both menus are packed with nutrient dense, real, whole food ingredients and thoughtfully blood sugar balanced. I tested both menus on my CGM and had stable blood sugar.
In the spirit of the holidays, I’m making these 8 recipes available to not just Color Club members, but everyone via the PDF guide below. I love you all dearly and so appreciate your support, and you reading and engaging every week. Per usual, all of these recipes are also up in the Color Club with tons of notes on tips and swaps!
My humble ask is that if you enjoy them, or if you’ve enjoyed any of my recipes in the last few months, please share with at least ONE friend and encourage them to subscribe! Even better, share with a friend and then cook them together!
PSA: The price of the Color Club will be going up for new members in 2025, so join now while I still have my founding prices ($5/month or $50/year). If you are already a member, don’t worry you are locked in at that price!
Gifting the Color Club: A few of you have asked about how to share a Color Club subscription with a friend or family member for the holidays 🥹 and unfortunately there is no way to gift a subscription to my website (yet). Here is what I can do: I can create you a cute little designed gift card graphic that makes it feel more like a gift, so you could Venmo them $50 and email them or text them this “gift card” with instructions for how to join so it feels more like a gift! Just shoot me a note and let me know if you’d like one of these!
HERE IS THE GUIDE - 8 HOLIDAY RECIPES 👇🏼🎉🙌🏼
We turned on the camera as we made these to share some tips and tricks along the way - it’s certainly not my best video but it captures the realness of preparing a holiday meal, and per usual it’s got a few Alfie cameos. I’ve been getting feedback that you like these videos, but I know I can continue to optimize them, so please keep feedback coming!
If you make any of these holiday recipes (or ANY of my recipes!), I’d LOVE to hear how it turned out and any feedback you have! Give me your notes - big and small, and if you are on IG, tag me @sonjakmanning and if it’s one of these holiday dishes, tag Ali too!
Chefs kisses,
Sonja
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