Perhaps more than Christmas food, it’s the drinks that conjure the best Christmas memories. There was the wild year where a bunch of us each had to concoct a, mostly lethal, drink from a motley assortment of spirits, juice and mixes, then give it an imaginative name. Please note: Nutritionchic does not endorse this sort of degenerative behaviour! Then there was the Christmas in Western Australia, complete with swarms of flies, where we blended pineapple juice with tropical fruit and a splash of Midori – yum.

“Don’t give me any dinner this week,” my husband said to me. “I’ll just have your fruit drink.” What delightful words for any busy mum to hear: No cooking real meals for a week! Well actually I did still cook a little something extra for myself and my son. But fruit drink every night was a great way to start off November – the month set aside in New Zealand to promote eating ‘Five-a-day’. Five-a-day means eating five serves of fruit and vegetables each day. It’s not that much. A serve is one average sized piece of fruit, half a cup of vegetables or a cup of salad. For children, a serve is the amount they can hold in one cupped hand.

I’ve worked out that my fruit drink has about 11 or 12 serves and 22-24 grams of fibre. Split between three of us, we just about hit our daily 5-a-day with one large glass! And no wonder my husband doesn’t feel like dinner:

The Auckland Food Show is on this weekend. I went with a friend today. Here’s my take on it.

Earth Gems are multi-coloured, bite-sized vegetables that ‘are the jewel of the South American Incas’. They grow like a potato but are from the beetroot family and have an earthy taste. You sure know you are eating something straight from the ground. I think they are an acquired taste! With all those colours they are bound to have plenty of antioxidants.

Most native Kiwi drink: Kawakawa Fire Tea

A caffeine free tea made from kawakawa, lemongrass and ginger by T leaf T. It’s packaged beautifully with a simple Maori design. A lovely present and it tastes great.

Food I bought today and have already used: Australian semi-dried tomatoes and Monin vanilla syrup

I used the tomatoes on pizza but should have kept them for a salad. They were too delicious to waste on pizza. I mixed the vanilla syrup with low fat milk for a delicious instant vanilla milkshake. I also bought Monin’s Chai Green Tea Extract to make Chai Latte – a sweet, milky alternative to coffee.

What I’ll use tomorrow: New Zealand Breakfast Tea

A black tea blended with manuka. It smells like honey but tastes like tea. It should taste great with grainy toast and honey for breakfast.

Best buy: Dutch Maasdam cheese

It was half-price – about $20 per kilo. I bought a huge chunk!

Most interesting food: Cherry juice that helps you sleep

This tart cherry juice is made from Montmorency cherries from Canada. According to the promotional leaflet these cherries have significant levels of melatonin which promotes sleep. It’s 100% juice with no added sugar or preservatives which is good. It comes in a concentrate which must be kept in the fridge or freezer to maintain its nutritional value.

Food that brought back the best childhood memories: Fresh walnuts

There was always a tray of walnuts drying in the sun at my grandparents. We would spend ages helping my Nana to crack them open. My grand-dad liked them dipped in icing. Walnuts contain alpha-linolenic acid (a type of omega-3 fat) so make a healthy snack, preferably without the icing!

Biggest trend this year: Anything with omega-3 in it.

There was flax seed oil, biscuits, pills for kids that taste like jelly lollies, and even smoothies made with flax seed oil. Parents seemed most enthusiastic about these foods. I just hope they don’t mega-dose their kids. Omega-3 fats are good and most of us could do with a bit more but as with all nutrition too much of one nutrient is likely to upset the balance of others. Also flaxseed, like walnuts, contains alpha-linolenic acid which converts to EPA (the omega-3 fat in oily fish) in the body. The conversion rate is about 8% so you need to eat quite a bit of flaxseed to get the same effect as a from a meal of salmon.

Most organised person

The woman who had a suitcase on wheels filled with all her purchases. She had already made one trip back to the car to unload and was on her second round.

Most popular stand

Anything with chocolate!

My favourite coffee is a bowl of trim latte from Zarbos – a popular deli in Auckland. A bowl? Yes it really is a bowl with no handle. Double shot coffee and lots of reduced fat milk served with a tiny morsel of chocolate brownie on the side – yum! All that milk gives me about a third of my daily calcium needs and at least 200mg caffeine to keep me hyped for the rest of the day. A teaspoon of instant coffee has about 80mg caffeine and tea has less.  Health experts recommend we drink no more than 3 or 4 cups of coffee a day. One bowl of latte would almost meet the daily limit!

People vary in their sensitivity to coffee and caffeine – the stimulant in coffee, tea and cocoa. For some people, even one cup of coffee will set their heart racing and their hands trembling. And caffeine isn’t the only substance in coffee that people can be sensitive to.

I am currently on a self-imposed coffee restriction to alleviate arthritis in my hand. Cut the coffee and the arthritis goes. I’ve limited myself to one a week – although I don’t always stick to it! When I first worked out this coffee – arthritis link I could find no research proving it. But in the past 10 years a number of studies have found a link between excessive coffee intake and an increase in arthritic factor – a precursor to arthritis – in people who are genetically pre-disposed. Without any genetic tests I could guess that I have the coffee sensitive gene. I don’t think researchers have yet found the exact substance in coffee that causes this problem.

So now I am drinking mostly tea – black tea for breakfast, earl grey tea in the morning, green tea in the afternoon and chamomile at night. Nothing like a bit of variety! It’s likely doing wonders for my health – all those antioxidants. But I do miss meeting friends for coffee – the smell, the milky froth swirled into the shape of a leaf and the sublime flavour when it’s made properly. It just doesn’t seem right to pay $3 for a lonely tea bag floating in a pot of boiling water. I may as well stay home and write on my blog!

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How do you like your coffee?