Thursday, November 22, 2012

Thanksgiving! Week 2 Day 4

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving today!  Our dinner guest cancelled, so it was just the four of us.  Pajamas, cooking, eating, watching football, playing, running, cooking, eating, cooking, playing, watching football, cooking, eating, movie watching, falling asleep, cooking, eating, Godfather Part II on TV.  What a wonderfully relaxing time we had.  Very thankful for our little family and our many blessings.  

First things first, I got to sleep until 8.  It was lovely.  When I woke up, we got started in the kitchen.  We all made pumpkin muffins together.  I know...not diet friendly, but Little Guy has been asking for them for awhile and I didn't eat a one.  Right after we pulled the muffins out of the oven, we put the turkey in.  We tried the Pioneer Woman's method of cooking the turkey, which meant that it went into the oven on a low temperature for 3 hours, so I had time to get my run in.  My running buddy had gotten sick and couldn't make it.  I was nervous about going out running by myself and even thought for a minute of trying to make this my rest day...but ultimately, I got ready and left.  I found a track that was open and was so glad that it wasn't raining. 

I started right where I left off last time, alternating between 2 minute runs and 1 minute 30 second walks.  About 10 minutes in I decided to try 2 minute 30 second runs and kept my walk the same.  It was a little tougher and got my heart rate up a bit more...but it also helped me burn more calories and I wanted to get back home, so I kept it up.  I was listening to the radio and keeping my own time and I wasn't bored or dying, and before I knew it 45 minutes had passed and 600 calories were burned.  Awesome.  On my drive home, I was thinking about what I was thankful for and I truly am grateful that I jumped into this whole heartedly.  I am really shocked at how much change has taken place in less than two weeks.  I am also thankful for everyone at Fit Systems and everyone that has been so incredibly supportive of me.  I am very grateful.

Onto the food!  I got home and got cookin!  We made some yummy appetizers.  Crab Stuffed Mushrooms and Prosciutto Wrapped Pears.  They were delicious!  Here are the mushrooms...




And here is Darab enjoying them...




And here are the Prosciutto Wrapped Pears and you can find the recipe here.  She also has a Crab Stuffed Mushroom Recipe, but just kind of winged ours.




Onto dinner!  Now that we had a few goodies in our tummy, we started making all the fixins to accompany our turkey.  Here is what we came up with...

The star of the meal were these Maple Sweet Potatoes.  I usually make a sweet potato dish with a cup of butter and over a cup of sugar, and they are always a favorite...but these were better!  I cut the butter in half and used maple syrup to sweeten the potatoes.  I left the brown sugar and flour out of the yummy pecan topping and used almond meal and maple sugar instead.  They were still not a low calorie food, but they were so worth the cheat!  My goodness.




No green bean casserole for us.  We opted for green beans wrapped in bacon.



Carrots with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted.  




Stuffing with no bread crumbs, WHAT?  It was darn tasty.  All the normal stuff I usually put in my stuffing- onions, celery, apples, sausage, poultry seasoning and fresh herbs.  But since I didn't add the bread crumbs, I threw in a bunch of quartered mushrooms and a few handfuls of chopped walnuts.  It turned out to be really flavorful and satisfying.  




And of course, the turkey!!!  We got a big turkey, so we could have a lot of leftovers.  The lean protein is something that I can eat guilt-free all weekend.




And on the plate...




Here is what my plate looked like...




I didn't take a separate photo of the cranberry sauce, but you can see it on the plate.  I made it last night with fresh squeezed orange juice instead of water and 3 tablespoons of honey.  We thought it needed a little more sweetness so we added a tablespoon of agave.  I thought it still tasted a bit tart, but it must have settled overnight, because we all loved it.  Both kids wanted more.

There were a few non paleo items at our Thanksgiving table.  One was the gravy.  I haven't looked into making a roux without flour yet, so I just went ahead and used a few tablespoons of flour.  And we did buy some dinner rolls.  I usually make them and love everything about fresh rolls, but not this year.  They had some classic pull apart rolls at Trader Joe's for 2 bucks.  And for a cheat of a hundred calories, that gooey white roll was worth every calorie.




And now dessert.  I am the only one who really likes pumpkin pie so I decided to skip it this year.  I might make pumpkin smoothie later this weekend to get my pumpkin fix.  Instead I made an Apple Crumble loosely based on my favorite Apple Crisp recipe.  I used almond meal instead of flour and maple sugar instead of brown sugar.  I didn't think it was sweet enough, but it was still really good.  Darab doesn't like super sweet desserts so he thought it was perfect.  Even though we cooked with butter for this meal, we didn't use any other dairy.  So for dessert, we whipped up some coconut cream to go with our crumble.  It was super easy and tasty.  Even though it does have a pretty strong coconut flavor, we both liked it and didn't find it too overpowering.




And that was how we ate this Thanksgiving!  It was delicious and didn't seem like we were missing out on anything.  And it felt great to eat so well and not feel guilty and heavy afterwards.  I did go over my calorie goal by several hundred, but this is my cheat day for the week.  And it was well worth it. 
Happy Thanksgiving!!!




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