It was warm enough to walk about in shirt sleeves yesterday. I love the variable weather where there's always a surprise warm day even after the first days of harsh cold.

I made the mistake of eating a bunch of corn chips with lunch and found two pounds of water weight on the scale this morning. I'm glad they don't make salt licks for humans since I'd just cozy up and lick away, LOL.

bill We too are swinging back and forth from "parka" weather to "windbreaker". Today is definitely parka - it dropped from +11 to -5 in one evening.

And I'd be right beside you at the salt lick.

I took everyone's advice and left DH alone re his food/booze intake. I think he is finally starting to seriously consider doing something and persevering. He has lost an entire weekend to being hung over and feeling and he no longer likes being like that. And, although he doesn't have a red line, his weight is now officially at an alarming number.

I have to keep my big mouth shut. If I say anything he'll go right back to the bad habits. It's just that I have so much and so long an experience (40+ years) with the dieting and now several years of maintenance. I want to share, share SHARE!

Everyone wants to be an expert yes?

Good Monday all!

Dagmar

So I decided to be really good and forego alcohol in hopes that my weight will go down without those unnecessary calories. It hasn't helped. I've actually gained 2 pounds. I'm not sure what's wrong here. My eating has been pretty much the same, the only difference is eating leftovers for lunch instead of the Medifast type meals. I really can't imagine that an extra 100-200 calories per day of food together with a deficit of 500-800 alcohol calories would cause me to gain weight. In any case, I'm not going to quit this scenario as I've been sleeping better without the alcohol (although it is much harder to get to sleep).

Today marks day one of family arriving for the holiday. My Dad gets in tonight. I'm pretty much set on everything for the big event, but I haven't a clue what to serve for dinner tonight. DS and I will have to stop at the store on the way home tonight to pick up a few last minute items. I might pick something up there or come home and make soup. Tomorrow I'll be making the ham and bean soup! Dad loves that so I'm hoping it's as good as it was last year when I made it. He claims he has no sense of taste any longer, however whenever he eats a meal that is not cooked by himself, he says it tastes great. To me that means he can't cook or he is so slow in preparing it that by the time he sits down to eat it is cold and therefore not as tasty. He's lost an alarming amount of weight in the past year, so I'm hoping to fatten him up a bit on this trip.

I had my family dinner yesterday, my refrigerator is bulging with leftovers and I have the turkey carcass in the freezer until I have time to make soup.
I have two dinner rolls left over from yesterday. For lunch I think I will make a hot turkey sandwich using the rolls instead of bread . I am not going to allow myself to think how many calories are in that kind of lunch.

Today is the end of our Open Enrollment deadline for my company's medical insurance plan. I'm online, trying to remember about four different passwords and user names, using modeling tools, comparing plans, and realizing no matter which one I pick, I'll end up spending more for medical costs than I did two years ago, and that its cost almost effectively negates any recent cost-of-living raise on my salary.

Oh, and the morning began with my wearing fingerless gloves to drive to the gym. Now it's brilliantly sunny but I am not liking letting in the cat from outside near my desk because he brings in a cold draft.

The holiday is all right. It meant more when I didn't live here and when it was a homecoming & a time of reunion. I'm just left with a big formal weekday dinner. I'm looking forward to running in the village's famous Turkey Trot, which has been going on for 30 years now. They say 2,000 runners will show up for it. I just hope it's a decent day. I am not so into running that I'm willing to do it through sleet or rain.

I learned an important cooking lesson today. Take the skin off chicken thighs before putting them in the slow cooker. I bailed about an inch of grease off the top of our dinner. I imagine it had about a gazillion cals but I was tired and it was ready and I really didn't feel like throwing it out and starting over.

And it was pretty darn tasty.

Good evening all!

Dagmar

NOTHING tastes better than chicken fat.

Just ask any buffalo wing fanatic.

Angie made her chicken stew last night...

said that was the one and only time she will ever make it with skinless chicken breasts...

no where near the flavor we are used to.

Regarding Chicken fat....I saw a recipe for roasting vegetables using duck fat--it said it gave the vegetables an extra something in regard to flavor. Williams Sonoma sells duck fat, so I stopped to get some. They were out, so I tried a local specialty grocer--they didn't carry it, but they did have chicken fat. So I tried it. Okay, it is exactly like the stuff you scrape off your homemade chicken soup and throw away. And maybe this chicken fat was cooked without any kind of seasoning, I don't know. Basically you melt it and use it in place of olive oil and then season as you normally would. Flavor? Nothing different. No discernible difference. I was sadly disappointed as I was hoping to use it for Thanksgiving but I'm doing a different recipe instead as this was just boring and I'm certain far less healthy for you than olive oil. I will probably throw out the rest of the chicken fat (if I haven't already--can't remember). But I'm thinking that a little pork fat would lend a beautiful flavor.......

Ummm, any of you guys ever heard of schmaltz?

I'm not Jewish, but I have lived in and near NY for a long time.

In some delis and restaurants, it's a condiment on the table during your meal. It's basically Jewish bacon grease.

Here I am, online in the dark on a frosty morning when I ought to be headed out for the gym. Okay, I'm going, I'm going, but I had to mention the schmaltz thing, in a case it rings a bell with any of you.

It's odd how fat has become such an "evil" food. Used in moderation it does improve a lot of meals. I found, after switching to everything low fat, that I was craving "real" fat. So now I sautee things in a pat of sweet butter (salted butter surprisingly, given my addiction to chips and all salty snacks, to me is ) and occasionally I'll eat a plain pat of butter as a snack.

I wonder if this is a family handed-down thing? One of my dad's favourite snacks still is a slice of rye bread, fried in bacon or chicken fat, and topped with a bit of salt.

But last night's meal was too much. After bailing the inch of liquid chicken grease off the food I refrigerated the leftovers. This morning there is another 1/2 inch of fat on the top.

No wonder all low cal recipes tell you to remove the skin when eating chicken.

Gary I find chicken breasts to be rather tasteless at the best of times. I use thighs for stews as the skin and any fat underneath is easily removed from them. I leave the bones in to add more flavour too.

Allison I'll bet that butcher skinned some chicken he was selling and, instead of throwing out the fat, decided to sell it as a "specialty" item. What a weird idea!

saef I bought a brisket sandwich from a jewish deli last time I was in NYC - yummy! No schmaltz on the side though.

Dagmar

Saef, schmaltz is generally chicken fat that's been rendered with onions, so it has a stronger flavor than just plain chicken fat. That said, I don't know that I've ever had it, but I do know what it is!

Speaking of duck fat (which is much more strongly flavored than chicken fat), I bought a whole frozen duckling as an impulse buy at Whole Foods a couple weeks ago. I hear the thing to do is roast it, but prep it such that all the fat will melt off into the roasting pan, and then you're supposed to save the fat to do all sorts of other things. I've never done it before so I don't know how it will turn out when I get around to cooking it. There's a restaurant near us that makes their french fries in duck fat and they're delicious. Although I've never made it myself, one of my favorite uses of duck fat has to be duck confit (typically duck leg salt cured and poached in duck fat). Whenever I go somewhere fancy and they have it I order it. So bad, but so good.

Okay, enough of that. DH signed up for a 4.5 mile race Thanksgiving morning -- they are expecting a crowd of 15,000 runners! I signed up to do the 2.3 mile walk course so I won't get too bored waiting for him. Although when I think about it, he may be done running 4.5 before I finish walking 2.3, but oh well. He never notices me cheering for him at the finish line anyway!

Plan for tomorrow for me is to work from home so I can get a head start on Thanksgiving cooking, since I'll be at the race in the morning and MIL wants to serve "dinner" at 2pm. I still can't wrap my head around having Thanksgiving dinner at lunchtime. It's just weird. But hey, when in Rome...

I am not Jewish but I am certain you will not find bacon in any form in a Jewish Deli.

I think saef meant "bacon grease" as an analogy...

Jay

Sorry, Bargoo, I wasn't clear. Jay is right. I was making an analogy. To elaborate: Schmaltz is used in some Eastern European Jewish cooking as bacon grease is used in traditional Southern regional cooking.

Jessica, thanks for clarifying what schmaltz is, that it's had onions added. I only tried a tiny taste of the stuff at Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse. (A much-recommended NYC restaurant.) It was GOOD.