When I think of Christmas in New Zealand, I always think of berry picking. It’s perfect entertainment for kids – running wild through the vines, gobbling berries and if you’re lucky, picking a few to take home. It’s healthy too – eating fruit, exercise and having fun. My favourite Christmas dessert would have to be meringue topped with loads of strawberries or mixed berries and a dollop of cream or Greek yoghurt. It looks so pretty. A dish full of fresh berries looks great as a centrepiece for the table. Isn’t it good to know that something so delicious and so pretty is also incredibly healthy. Not too many of the other traditional Christmas foods can claim this. So go berry picking and make it one of your Christmas traditions.

Is ham on the menu this Christmas? It is at our place and I’ve got my order in for one that’s been happily trotting around green New Zealand paddocks. I know…it’s a rather idealistic image, blissfully divorced from the reality of how it gets from the paddock to my plate. I prefer to keep it that way so I can enjoy a few slices of free range ham this Christmas.

When I was the nutritionist for Woolworths supermarkets in Queensland, Australia the meat manager insisted I visit their freezing works. Have you ever heard the saying ‘Bleeding like a stuck pig’?

End of year school reports can make for very entertaining reading. The teachers have to say positive things and, in some cases, this can take quite a bit of lateral thinking! Like the time our 5-year-old son ‘won’ the ‘player of the day’ award at rugby – for ‘enthusiastic orange eating’!

It’s the same with healthy eating messages. Nutritionists try to give people ideas about what they can eat, rather than what they can’t. The cardinal rule for words: avoid ‘avoid’ and don’t use ‘don’t’! It’s great when you find a website or blog that does this. There are plenty out there but I just have to tell you about Little Stomaks – a website that gives parents of toddlers lots of good ideas. I was flattered when they asked me to write a story for them and totally excited when I saw it appear on-line yesterday! Take a look if you have time…click their logo!

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.