Family BBQ – Guilt-Free Edition

After two cloudy and depressing days, the sun finally came out on Sunday, just in time for a family BBQ at my sister’s house to celebrate her pregnancy.

When Italian families get together, there  is always lots of delicious food to be eaten, most of it not so healthy. You also get yelled at if you don’t eat everything in sight. Knowing this, I tried to make healthy decisions the rest of the weekend so I could indulge on Sunday guilt-free. That meant passing up Marble Slab on Saturday night and choosing relatively healthy options when dining out. I also got in a boot camp workout on Sunday morning to pre-emptively burn off some of those excess calories. It was totally worth it.

The feast began with some appetizers - bruschetta that my sister made and these deep-fried Italian rice and cheese balls that my mom’s aunt made from scratch:

Indescribably good. I wish I’d taken a picture of the inside but I was too focused on eating this bad boy to stop and take a picture.

As a first course, my sister made penne a la vodka using an adapted recipe from Rachel Ray. Everyone loved it and those old Italians are a tough crowd when it comes to judging pasta.

Next up — sausages and grilled vegetables, courtesy of the brother-in-law.

Finally, there was champagne and cake. My mom’s aunt brought a hazelnut cakelet from Dufflet, a gourmet dessert cafe in Toronto (I didn’t get any pics so I found these off the web):  

Yes, it really was as moist as it looks. No food airbrushing here!

I know I ate way too much for one meal but I’m okay with it. In fact, I’m happy I forgot all about calories and refined carbs and sugar for a few hours to just kick back and relax with loved ones.

Healthy living is great and all but it should never interfere with your ability to enjoy life. If you can’t celebrate a special event or good news with your friends or family without feeling guilty or anxious about eating too much, then you should probably take a step back and ask yourself if it’s really worth it. You can always balance out a day of unhealthy food choices with physical activity and future food choices, but you’ll never get to re-live those moments that you either missed out on or were too busy counting calories to really appreciate.