I think now would be a good time for us to start thinking about the upcoming holidays and inevitable parties that we will be attending. Let's come up with some healthy alternatives for traditional dishes and share them here with the rest of the Fat Smashers! (Phase 2-friendly would be best, or as close as possible.)

At least then if we have to attend a holiday potluck, we'll be bringing something we KNOW we can eat without guilt!

Whaddya think??

(I'm going to go flip through some recipes now!)

Hey,

Great Idea! I have been trying to get an idea of what we are gonna have. We are going to have turkey breast. So far.. that is all I know. I will post some recipes later.

Sherry

Actually, it's not as difficult as it might seem (esp. if you're cooking everything). I bring one or two items and have to deal with what everyone else makes. The good thing is that I've been going to son & dil's the last couple of Thanksgivings & they're not the biggest cooks. Before that, I'd go to my husband's family & they're all gourmet cooks & there was so much great food.

Turkey is great, any good sweet potato recipe using fruit or sugar substitutes, any kind of simply prepared veggie, maybe a brown rice dish to substitute stuffing for those of you who don't want to cheat at all. How about a cranberry dish using sugar subs. I'm going to post a "pumpkin pie" recipe sometime today.

I'm going to allow Thanksgiving dinner to be a planned off meal for me. I'm not going to hit any appetizers. I'm also not going to gorge myself and I don't think I can handle a lot of food at one sitting anymore so that's good. That week will be an extra exercise week for me!

Yeah it would be impossible to eat the entire day being OP... but if we can come up with a few good healthy recipes to mostly fill up on and then just take small "tastes" of the bad foods, I think we'll all be doing ourselves a favor!

One dish I usually made for thanksgiving was that old standard green bean-cream of mushroom-fried onion ring dish that I always had growing up. Tons of calories. Last year I decided instead to par-boil the beans in some chicken stock (I may try low-sodium or veggie stock instead this year), then rinse with cold water, dry, and then quickly saute them in a bit of olive oil and garlic. I added salt and pepper but I'll go lighter on the salt this year. A much healthier alternative!

Last year we inadvertantly had a veggie T-Day -- the "meal" we bought was supposed to come with a fresh turkey and instead we got a FROZEN one. This was the day before.

We got our money back but had no turkey.

I hate dark meat so this seems to be the plan for the day thus far:

turkey breast for me, dark meat for the wife
mashed sweet potatoes (FF milk, maybe 10 sprays of ICBINB) for me, real taters for her
corn, green beans, spinach, all with ICBINB
stuffing -- and yes, I may even have a tablespoon or two (I don't LOVE stuffing so this is doable for me)
some type of gravy for the turkey (fat free)

And for dessert, since Nick doesn't like pie, apple crisp!