In addition to serving crudités as an option to the seductive Brie Torte, provide fresh fruit for guests who are watching calories or carbs, don’t eat refined sugar or are doing their best to avoid plunging into your brownies and butter cookies.

Fresh fruit pickings are slim in December, but a big bowl of strawberries is seasonal in color, festive in appearance and usually abundant, thanks to California’s strawberry growers. (It’s warm enough in the southern part of the state to harvest strawberries in December.)

Packed with antioxidants that are heart-healthy, anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory. Strawberries are just about perfect as a fruit. Just compare:

A bowl or basket of strawberries is a healthy
and low calorie holiday option. Photo courtesy WellPict.com.

The numbers to note are carbs and sugar: Strawberries have half as much sugar than most other fruit, including canteloupe.

Serve strawberries with a low-calorie, fat-free cinnamon-yogurt dip. Sweeten with a non-caloric sweetener or low calorie, low-glycemic agave nectar.

Nutrition information from CalorieCount.About.com.

 
A nice presentation is to place the strawberries in a napkin-lined basket with a bowl of dip in the center. If the caps on the berries are bright green and perky, leave them on—they add to the beauty. Just provide a small bowl for the discarded stems.

We loved the fresh butter we churned in our
kitchen. Photo by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.

Here’s a nice surprise: churning butter is quick and easy using only heavy cream. It can cost less than buying the same amount of butter. And fresh out of the churn, it tastes better!

A by-product of churning your own butter in this manually-operated device is a delicious half pint of half-and-half. (Amazingly, the instructions tell you to “throw out the liquid”—perhaps the French enjoy only heavy cream.)

Adults and kids alike will enjoy watching cream magically turn into butter.

The imported butter churn is $109.95 at BroadwayPanhandler.com, and worth it. (Or phone 1.866.266.5927, as quantities are limited.)

• See more of our favorite kitchen gifts for Holiday 2010.
• Check out all the different types of butter in our Butter Glossary.

Things haven’t changed much since last year. Locally sourced ingredients and sustainability top the restaurant trends projections for 2011, and the rest of the Top 20 trends have been around as well. Now, let’s hope they go from “around” to mainstream.

The Top 20 Restaurant Trends for 2011

1. Locally sourced meats and seafood
2. Locally grown produce
3. Sustainability
4. Nutritionally balanced children’s dishes

Trend: Avoid out-of-season foods that burn a
lot of fuel to get to you (and don’t taste
as good as in-season foods). Photo by Alaina Cherup | SXC.

Thirty percent of chefs said mobile food trucks and pop-up restaurants would be the hottest operational trend in 2011.

Bon appétit!

Egg nog French toast. Photo courtesy
The Blackberry Patch.

As long as there are bread, egg nog and eggs in the house, whip up a batch of seasonal French Toast. It’s an even richer version of one of our favorite breakfast and brunch foods.

Just substitute egg nog for the milk in your recipe. Here’s a variation of the recipe we published recently.

1. In a shallow bowl, beat 4 eggs with 1 cup of egg nog and optional spices: 1 teaspoon of cinnamon or nutmeg, or a combination of both. The egg nog should have a bit of rum extract flavor, but you can add another half teaspoon.

2. Soak slices of bread 30 seconds on each side in the mixture.

4. Serve immediately, garnished with berries, bananas or almonds.

Now, we’re promised a good-for-you solution: a cherry cocktail not only packed with antioxidants, but with anti-hangover properties.

According to nutritionist Dr. Christine Greene, tart cherry juice “contains a special class of antioxidants called anthocyanins, which happen to function in the body as an anti-inflammatory, similar to ibuprofen.” Thus, a cocktail made with cherry juice is “less likely to cause headaches associated with hangovers.”

• Find out more and get the recipe for a delicious Cherry Martini.
• Pump up your cherry knowledge with these cherry facts.
• What are antioxidants? Check out our Antioxidant Glossary.

An antioxidant-filled Cherrytini. Photo
courtesy Cheribundi tart cherry juice.