What to eat before Thanksgiving (and other holidays)

Like most of us I tend to chow down a bit at Thanksgiving (and other holidays), sometimes more than a bit. This year we're hosting and will have fifteen family members coming to our house for dinner. We'll eat a fairly traditional meal: turkey and stuffing, gravy, yams and cranberries, pumpkin pie. So the question is what to do in the week beforehand.

I've been to the gym daily (burning about 650 calories on a recumbent bike) and really stayed on my diet. This morning I was actually below my current goal weight, but we had planned to eat dinner at our favorite local Thai restaurant. So this evening I picked a dish that my wife often eats, garlic pepper chicken. It has more veggies than almost anything else on the menu and I had eaten lightly earlier in the day. We skipped dessert and came home where my spouse made one of her wonderful concoctions, in this case a mixture of non-fat vanilla yogurt with one T. of pumpkin puree, a packet of Splenda and some cinnamon and cloves.  We felt virtuous, but also decided that tomorrow will be a vegetarian day. We need to use up some cabbage and carrots, but I'm sure I can find a recipe in Mark Bittman's wonderful book, "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian."

Then I can approach the holiday with a clean conscience and a very healthy appetite.

3 Responses to “What to eat before Thanksgiving (and other holidays)”

  1. Garretot says:

    Greatings, Interesting, did you plan to continue this article?
    Garretot

  2. Hi , it is Thanksgiving Day! I'm enjoying my extra day off, and I am planning to doing something fun that'll probably involve a car trip and seeing something new in Litchfield I haven't seen yet.
    You write new post at Thanksgiving?

  3. Peter Springberg says:

    Hi Garretot,

    The last of our Thanksgiving company (two adults and three kids age 11 to 15) just rolled out heading to a college football game and leaving behind lots of leftovers; I made turkey omelets with the kids this morning (clearly a first for them and for me) and munched on one last piece of apple pie. This afternoon we'll go back to our usual routine and spend several hours in the gym. I didn't weigh myself this morning, but assume I'm up several pounds. It was a great family event; one of the cousins did magic tricks for the five kids that were here then; everyone brought part of the feast and we all ate heartily. I don't mind doing that on the occasional holiday, especially with such good companions. What I won't do is take the weight gain overly seriously or use it as an excuse to not go back on my diet plan.

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