CrazyBusy Mama! (Dot Calm)

If you’ve read my post on the ExerciseTV blog about my hard-to-believe holiday plans, you know those plans include making healthy versions of the “usual” holiday dishes, starting with Thanksgiving. I’m talking about marshmallow-covered sweet potato casserole, peanut butter fudge, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. Each and every one will be getting a makeover.

Also, as you’ll see in the post I mentioned above, my daughter and I are following a health challenge to maintain our weight and gain not even one pound during the holiday season. Yikes, right? More on that in a later post!

Following is a list of each dish as it used to be (a torpedo of fat aimed straight for the hips), and what it will become (delicious and nutritious):

Sweet potato casserole, previously made with eggs, spices, brown sugar, and topped with marshmallows and canned pineapple, will now be sweetened with turbinado sugar (“sugar in the raw”), with a crispy streusel topping.

Mashed potatoes will no longer be made from baking potatoes (or, as was the case on some Thanksgivings, from a box). This year, my “mashed potatoes” will actually be made from red potatoes, cauliflower (that’s right), and roasted garlic.

As far as the gravy is concerned, I used to make it by whisking together turkey broth, water, and a couple of MSG-laden packets of turkey gravy. No monosodium glutamate on our turkey day table this year! We’ll have gravy, but it’ll be made in a more nutritious way.

The Best Life Diet Cookbook: More than 175 Delicious, Convenient, Family-Friendly Recipes I personally love this cookbook. It’s full of great recipes that can be used any time of year. (I plan to use quite a few of them myself during the upcoming holidays.) Click the link above to get it for less than half price.

Our usual homemade whole berry cranberry sauce will be sweetened with turbinado sugar this year instead of white sugar (hint: the addition of frozen blueberries makes it even sweeter).

Green bean casserole…now that will be a tough one. I’ll either use the low-fat version of cream of mushroom soup in it, or may just replace the casserole with a healthier veggie dish. I’ll let you know.

Peanut butter fudge is also stumping me, I’ll admit. I’ve made it for years from a stick or two of real butter, what seemed to be a ton of sugar, peanut butter (of course), and a jar of marshmallow cream. You know — and I know — that for someone who’s trying to get and/or stay healthy, that’s a dangerous thing to have sitting around. I’ll either make a healthier version (perhaps with turbinado sugar) or I’ll just make less, considering how my 17 year-old son begged me not to ditch the fudge this year.

And, last but never least: Pumpkin pie. I’m really pretty excited about this one. While shopping in the natural foods section of my favorite store last week, I found a can of organic pumpkin pie filling! Who’da thunk it? Organic pumpkin pie filling? I grinned from ear to ear when I held that can for the first time. It contains nothing but pumpkin, organic cane juice, and spices. I just have to add eggs and a crust. I bought a second can today because I’d love to try making some pumpkin pie biscotti with it.

The turkey, as usual, will be roasted inside a Reynolds Oven Bag. I’ve cooked it in one of those for the past 10 years (at least), and it’s been perfect every time.

I am really excited about the changes I’ll be making to our Thanksgiving menu! I plan on posting recipes all next week for you to try, so you can have a healthy (but tasty) Thanksgiving, too.

©2009 Sally Dinius
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