Our Winter Festivity Cookbook is here…

A time to eat well – but not unhealthy

Winter holidays in different cultures around the globe bring a mix of emotions. From joy and excitement to anxiety and depression. Regardless of our age or preferences, we get to eat festive food for Christmas, New Year or any other winter holiday. Isn’t this a reason enough to assemble a winter festivity cookbook for low-carbers and Ketonians?

Sometimes we get overwhelmed, and sometimes we get the infamous feeling of guilt. Yes, unhealthy but attractive options are in particular abundant during these periods. But if we investigate the history of winter holiday culture, we will find so many interesting facts. For example, how did the ancient people in our Mediterranean zone celebrate winter? 

Around the 21st of December, ancient Greeks celebrated Heliogena, the birth of the sun or winter solstice. It was the biggest festival celebrating the birth and arrival of the light-bringer. Even though Helios is often associated with Apollon, on this day, the ancients celebrated the birth of Dionysus and Hercules. 

This legend can be connected to both the western and the eastern celebration of ancient Greek Kronia, the festival of King Cronus. For the Romans, this was Saturnalia! The tradition can be closely connected to the celebrations of the 12th night (also known as Christmastide) in western European countries. 

You might wonder what inspired our wish to create a winter festivity cookbook. People all around Europe, long before the actual Christmas, celebrated the winter solstice with some sort of cookies or cakes. They would bake them from the best ingredients they could have to invite the Sun back on Earth. It was considered that the personification of his majesty the Sun (Helios in Greek) would just travel away during the winter.

From the Mediterranean point of view

We know how much sunlight and warm days mean to us. It’s not just vitamin D, it’s a wonderful feeling that fills your body and soul once the sun touches your skin! So, to evoke that feeling, humans are baking different comfort foods and celebrating the day when the sun will gradually start coming back: The days will be longer and warmer and everything will be vivid and energised.

The Vasilopita story

In conventional story-telling, Vasilopita is linked with the myth of Saint Basil. According to a legend, St. Basil asked the residents of Caesarea to gather payment to stop the siege and constant attacks on their city. Each citizen contributed with whatever they had in gold and jewellery. When the payoff was raised, the attacker was so ashamed by the act of collective offerings that they called off the siege and refused to take the payment at all. St. Basil was given the task to return the gold and jewellery to the citizens.

According to the legend, he did not know which valuable items belonged to which family. So he decided to hide all the jewellery and gold in loaves of bread. Then he distributed the bread to the citizens, and by a miracle, each citizen received their exact piece. Some stories connect Saint Mercurius with This leads us to the ancient myth of Hermes and his connection with wealth and money. Naturally, we ketonised the traditional recipe in this winter festivity cookbook.

Modern food problem

In today’s world, festive food became available every day! And it lost its charm this way. Cheap and unhealthy ingredients that are usually present in industrial-ready food make it even worst. Good old-fashioned cooking and baking are rarely practised. People rush and order ready food from bakeries, supermarkets or specialised catering services. But where’s the fun in that? How can we make our winter festivities romantic again? We believe that this winter festivity cookbook can help.

First, we need to take care of the fact that unhealthy food and pure pleasure of flavour and texture cannot be our way. We can make just about everything at home using old-fashioned ingredients and methods. Now, even if you are not very skilful with baking, some of the recipes from this book will surprise you. The simplicity of cooking is in the patience and quality of the ingredients. 

Tradition is important

Regardless of our origin, our cultural background or the goals we have, healthy food needs to become our imperative. Nothing shows love to your families like homemade cooking and baking. In most cases, old-fashioned methods are much healthier. And when it comes to ingredients, there’s a simple rule. Always search for organic, raw or unprocessed ingredients. It’s on us to process them and make some artwork with them. This is the leitmotif of our Winter Festivity Cookbook.

Carnivore recipes

Some say the carnivore diet is restrictive. It might be so, but for some people, it’s so therapeutic that this doesn’t matter. Despite that, in this book, we bring a few gourmet recipes that are made with only carnivore-friendly ingredients. This way, people who follow the carnivore diet can have a festive table that misses nothing! When it comes to Keto and Low-Carb recipes, we can proudly say that most of these recipes are adored by all our guests who don’t even follow any of these diets.

How to get the Winter Festivity Cookbook?

If you follow this link, you’ll be able to purchase a digital version of our book that you can read on any digital device. You can also print out this book an unlimited number of times. However, we kindly ask you not to distribute the digital file because all publishing rights belong to Greek Goes Keto. If you would like to purchase a physical book, send us an email and we’ll get back to you with all the details right away. Finally, if you follow us on our social media, we’ll be doing some interesting giveaways, so make sure you look for Greek Goes Keto on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.