I'm stuffed, but it was so worth it

I have just the greatest friends!

A few weeks ago, two of my closest friends and I decided to try to meet up once a month to cook new, interesting and relatively healthy recipes together. Tonight was the first night, and I'm pretty sure after this we won't have trouble making this a regular event.

Tonight's menu included curry carrot soup, ground turkey and cabbage stir fry with walnuts, reduced fat spinach and artichoke dip (that didn't taste low fat all) and angel food cake with blackberry sauce. All of it was homemade. All of it was delicious. I'm still so full I'm almost miserable, but I don't even care.

Look at all that orange goodness. Picture courtesy of Seanna Daise.

Listen, I'm realistic -- I know I definitely didn't eat healthy or save any calories tonight. We were so excited to try new foods that we just made and ate way too much. However, it was kind of eye-opening for me to see how easy it is to experiment with healthy food and still make it taste unhealthy (a.k.a. delicious).

The soup, for instance, was silky and spicy and decadent, but it only had five or six ingredients (all of which I already had in my pantry) and took about 30 minutes from start to finish. So simple an elementary school kid could probably do it. Plus, we were literally eating a bowl of vegetables. I bet it averaged three or four whole carrots per person.

All in all, tonight was really fun and I look forward to doing it again. Eventually, I think these cooking nights will turn into all three of us being accountable to each other and helping find wholesome meals that are easy to make even on busy nights. I hope so, anyway. If nothing else, at least it's fun to share a bottle of wine (or two, or five) while catching up with old friends. No matter how I look or feel about myself, it's great to know I'm surrounded by people who care. And at the end of the day, that's all I really need.