Thanksgiving Challenge...

Even I thought I was a little nuts to start a diet just a week before the holidays. In my sleep there were little dancing pies and potatoes, warm bread, stuffing and congo bars danced in my head. Yet I still dove in head first and never looked back. Now, Dianne Kress, the author of ’The Metabolism Miracle’, warns that the first 3 days will be really tough, as your body goes through a little withdrawal from carbs. There may be some irritability, but who’s to say that wasn’t just my normal bitchiness that seems to come and go at will… but ahhh, I persevered through those days with no ill effects. In fact, I had no cravings, no bitchiness (that’s my story and I’m stickin to it; I still haven’t asked Dan what his story is; he probably blocked it out of his mind, so my story should be safe;) But really, Thanksgiving was a great day and the crazy ‘carb monster’ (cravings) didn’t rear its’ head once. I planned on having stuffing, because, well, it’s stuffing, do I need another reason? That was my carb indulgence for the whole day and it was well worth it. Lee and Gregg outdid themselves.

As you may know, I am the ‘pie maker’ at our Thanksgiving gatherings (for better or worse). This year was no different, well there were some differences. I made the usual pumpkin and apple pies, but one of the pumpkin pies was made for the two ‘special people’ at the table. Ma has her special needs and I have mine. So I split the pumpkin pie in half, literally. I made gluten-free crust on one side and low-carb on the other. Have you ever worked with gluten-free dough? It is disgusting! You can’t knead it, it sticks to everything and it looks weird~ So you plop it in the pie plate, put plastic wrap over it and gently nudge it into the shape of the pie plate and in this case it was half of a pie plate. When that mess is done, it’s over to the other special needs dough. But first, you must put up a barrier so that none of the low-carb will touch the gluten-free. (honestly can’t we all just get along!!? It’s like, “Ma she touched me”, “No I didn’t”, as she punches her :) So I put a strip of tinfoil down the middle of the pie, rolled my dough out (not nearly as disgusting or hard to knead) and then they could play nice. I carefully poured a gluten-free, low-carb pumpkin filling, a little at a time, into each side, so neither side would overflow my barrier. Ma was safe from the ‘gluten-monster’ and I could indulge without overloading on carbs. We both had our ‘cake’ and ate it too…oh yah, we had gobs of whipped cream on top of that!! Even the gluten-free crust looked and tasted like crust :() That indulgence was well within my diet, so it’s all good. So ended my first challenge of the holidays, and I can honestly say that it went by without a hitch.