A Better Bag of Groceries

A Balanced Thanksgiving

Monday, November 23, 2009 at 07:05 AM

Poor Thanksgiving!  It has become our new forgotten holiday.  Now that Christmas starts on November 1st, it’s like Thanksgiving doesn’t even exist.  Try to find Thanksgiving decorations.  They are almost extinct.  Three radio stations in our area started playing round-the-clock Christmas music three weeks ago.  I was so proud of my kids.  Every time we heard a Christmas song while scanning the dial, they would shout, “No! It’s not Christmas yet!  Thanksgiving comes first.”  That is until they heard “Feliz Navidad,” one of their all-time favorites.  “Go back, Mom, go back!”  And so it begins!

Despite the short shrift that Thanksgiving gets these days, it is a big topic for foodie bloggers, health and fitness professionals and the Food Network.  Everyone, it seems, wants to weigh in on how to have a healthier holiday.  And so I must as well!

Annette Maggi, MS, RD, Senior Dietitian for NuVal, and my colleague, shares my sentiment about Thanksgiving and all the holidays.  She says, right there on the NuVal website, “But the holidays are an opportunity to enjoy the true indulgence of food.  To sit around a table with your loved ones and savor in the flavors that for many of us only come on this one day a year.”  So true!  My sister, Pilates Julie, after reading my post about Butternut Squash, texted me: Do u want me to make traditional B Squash recipe or the healthy 1 on ur blog?  My reply: Traditional pls! And I promise not to make fun of u on my blog!

You see, I could blame it on my family.  “They want all the traditional recipes,” I could moan to my other healthy friends.  But the truth is, I want them too.  Thanksgiving is the one day of the year that I eat stuffing, mashed potatoes and other winter vegetables with lots of butter, gravy, my grandmother’s creamed onions (I don’t even like those, but you know, it’s tradition), and my mom’s apple pie.  One Day.  One.  Not Four.  That is the key.  So how do I get from Thursday to Monday and still be at My Happy Weight:

1. Attend the Turkey Trot Workout at my gym on Thanksgiving Morning.  My Dear Husband is joining me for this 90 minute cardio and strength blast.  It’s a great time.  All the participants are organized into teams and we move from room to room for short bursts of Spin, Kettlebells, Boot Camp, etc.
2. Skip the appetizers.  I am cooking this year but my guests are coming rather late – 4:30 – since they are either working or visiting in-laws earlier in the day.  So I have no appetizers planned.  We’ll start with cranberry-seltzer spritzers or some Chardonnay and then get right down to business.
3. Keep Thanksgiving to One Day.  I bought a whole bunch of ziploc storage containers to send everyone away with all the leftovers.  Bye-bye turkey!  I’m not a big fan of Thanksgiving leftovers, so it is easy for me to do.
4. Keep the traditional favorites, but add a healthy dish (if you want to – it’s not a requirement!) 

On that last point, my family never ate the Green Bean Casserole with the crunchy onions on top.  You know the one.  I checked it out on the Campbell’s website.  I can tell you that is you make it with the regular Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, the soup NuVal score is a 24.  Using the 98% Fat Free Mushroom Soup doesn’t really help you out much – it gets a NuVal score of 26.  As for those French’s French Friend Onions on top?  Well, they’re famous to us at NuVal for being a canned vegetable that gets a score of 1.

I’ve added Cooking Light’s Roasted Green Beans to my menu.  It’s a dish I make often – especially when I have company for dinner – because it literally only takes 10 minutes in the oven.  You can prep it ahead and then just pop it in when everything else is ready to go.  There it is with one of my very few, pitiful Thanksgiving decorations – because, as I said earlier, you can’t find any Thanksgiving decorations!

Yum – although I admit – the kids complain that they’re too spicy.  So for them, I just open a can of no-salt added canned green beans.  I wonder if someday “traditional” for them will be a can of green beans?

In keeping with my plan to celebrate the holiday and thanks to our late-day dinner this year, the kids have a great plan.  They are headed out to the backyard at lunchtime with my husband to celebrate Thanksgiving Snoopy-style.  That’s right, they are having the meal made famous by the 1973 holiday special:  toast, popcorn, pretzel sticks and jelly beans.  I can’t wait to watch that from the kitchen window while I mash up turnip with lots of butter!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by: Melissa 6 comments

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Tags: Green Beans, roasted green beans, thanksgiving, Uncategorized