In Search Of...... A Healthy Thanksgiving Menu

Growing up in a large family, Thanksgiving was a big holiday. It was one of the times that everyone would converge in someone's home and gorge themselves into turkey oblivion in the name of family togetherness. We would normally just head to my sister's for a day of over-eating, football and napping. And what a spread it was -- I can remember eating as many stuffed celery pieces as I could handle, and there would be leftovers for days on end.

This year, with things being a little wacky, we are doing an "orphan Thanksgiving" which basically just means that those of us who can't find their way to their families mega feasts and family drama (normally due to fur-kid or work obligations, or in my case - both) will get together and make a meal for ourselves.  Maybe misfit Thanksgiving would be a better description. Less people/ more leftovers.

In any event, since I have pretty much commandeered our corporate townhouse and filled it with things like big screen t.v's and a Wii, I figured this year I would take a stab at making dinner as well. This means I can also enjoy the tv, football and Wii. I mean, come on, how hard can it be? A little turkey in the oven, a few appetizers, lots of alcohol so no one notices if it doesn't come out quite the way I planned - win-win-win. Tryptofan is bound to kick in after a while anyway.

So now I have to figure out some sort of healthy menu. Turkey - check - that's a no brainer for healthy as long as you stick to the white breast meat and not eat the entire breast. Or try to deep fry it - which I am not about to do -- the Beaverton fire department will thank me later. The next healthy thing on my list will be the sweet potato - they're like the anti-potato and filled with all sorts of good for you nutrients. Who needs candy with the sweet potato lingers around? I'm thinking a sweet potato/ apple casserole type of dish. Looks rather yummy, doesn't it? Let's home mine turns out as well.

Then there's the stuffing. When I think of stuffing I immediately have flashbacks of last year, when my soon-to-be ex insisted that I help with the stuffing (an old family recipe handed down from generation to generation -- all two of them). Then as I was attempting to keep grandma's stuffing on par, the soon to be ex (we'll just refer to him as the 'idiot' if mentioned again) kept reprimanding me for doing it wrong, but would not offer any help in the "right way" to do it, nor did he want to do it himself. My hackles are raised just thinking about it. So, in light of the not-so-fond memory, I need to give stuffing a better name and am thinking of an mushroom herb stuffing that hopefully no one grandma's has tried to perfect just yet.

And who can neglect the cranberry? Dubbed a 'superfood' this is going to take a spot on the table as well. And not the canned kind that keep the shape of the can when you slide the cranberry tube out of it's metal container. No way. We're talking real cranberry sauce, ala Martha. Martha's cranberry recipe and super antioxidant - a triumphant combination for sure.

And of course, there will be stuffed celery. Lots of it.


But the one thing I can't figure out how to make healthy, no matter how hard I try. That thing is called dessert. I am not a fan of the traditional pumpkin pie - but that doesn't mean I should deny the orphans (or misfits, whatever you want to call them) the pleasure of having a nice slice with loads of whipped cream. The jury is still out on the rest of it. By the time dessert rolls around (giving the amounts of wine that are sure to be consumed) perhaps no one will care about the nutritional benefits of what's being plopped in front of them in the name of dessert.

Which brings me to last, but not least -- the bevvies. I'm thinking we start off the day with the perfect bloody mary and then work our way into wine - and lots of it. This, plus football, plus food coma will make for a very nice Thanksgiving -- well, in my book anyway. And if it all doesn't come out right, I am not below crashing someone else's feast. So beware.

Detox - Uber Fail

So... the detox was rolling merrily along. I was having headaches that were most certainly from the lack of caffeine in my system. Seriously, I don't think I've been that caffeine-less in about 15 years and my brain was doing everything it could by reminding me of this, not to mention protesting. By day three I had given up green tea (which wasn't cutting it) and worked my way up to Yerba Mate tea instead. It helped but wasn't the same a nice cup of strong coffee (filled with cream - another no no, and splenda - the big no no). Nothing artificial is supposed to touch these lips (insert whatever joke you want here).

Thursday evening I had a party to attend at a friend's house. She had a bottle of Alexander Valley Vineyards Sangiovese on the counter, begging to be opened.  I'm being tested in situations like this and not unlike all tests that involve me and wine from the homeland, I am sure to fail miserably.  To my credit, wine does not contain anything artificial. I should get some sort of point for keeping it real. I did manage to make it out of the party prior to the heavy drinking - which I heard lasted until 3 a.m. Yikes. And on a school night too.

As the weekend rapidly approached, my relationship with the detox just went further downhill, starting with brunch at the Urban Farmer on Saturday morning. Bloody marys were on the menu (again - nothing artificial there) along with real food. Yes, the real stuff - ham and eggs Benedict on a nice sourdough english muffin with a garlic infused vodka bloody mary to wash it down with -- who can blame me for falling off the detox wagon? Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself at the bloody mary bar at the Urban Farmer, apparently. And the homemade pickled vegetable smorgasbord that accompanies the bloody marys is enough to justify the slip up - we're talking pickled carrots, asparagus, some broccoli/cauliflower hybrid veggie, string beans and corn on the cob - yes, actual corn on the cob, pickled and ready to pretty up a drink. It's like a salad in a glass - that has to be on the detox menu. They didn't really specify how to intake the veggies.

Realizing my limitations, I've made a sort of pact with myself from here on out. Detoxing will be my theme of choice for weekdays - Monday - Thursday, and retoxing will be reserved for weekends - Friday through Sunday, hence my wine-free bout tonight with Monday Night football. Weird. And when football season is over (I shudder to think about that) then Sunday will move into the "detox" days as well. I have a Santa suit to fit into sooner rather than later.

The thing about depriving yourself of the things you enjoy is this: it just pisses you off after a while and makes you crave them even more. Like coffee. When I thought I couldn't have coffee, it's all I wanted. When I put finally had a cup in front of me - good old Stumptown coffee - I only drank half a cup of it. It's all a mental thing and right now - I am in no condition to have a battle of wits with myself.

We'll chalk this up to another one of those "it sounded like a good idea at the time" ideas.

Day 1 & 2 - The Detox

Day 1 -

Not sure if this is a detox or a diet.  I don't like the sound of either of those but since the first three letters of diet spell 'die' - I'm going with detox. Mentally prepared and well stocked for this - not to mention happy that this detox consists of actual food and not just lemon and syrup water, I get up and enthusiastically prepare my first breakfast shake.

I put the non-dairy 'milk,' soy protein, flax seed oil, ice and frozen berries into the blender in a hurry.  Hit the on switch and the machine made that high pitch sound of the blades spinning, but nothing is being mixed up. What the hell? Apparently the blender didn't quite like the frozen concoction and it took it a while to churn it into a drinkable mixture. After arguing with it, the final result was a bright purple color -- a color you would only find in the 64 crayola box with some strange name like grape vomit. It didn't taste half bad, however. Hello breakfast.

With a slight headache - probably due to the lack of caffeine and my body's shock, I spent most of the day obsessing about food. This is what you do when you can't have something. Of course, obsessing about food makes you hungry. I avoided anything that popped up on my computer screen that had to do with Epicurious or Williams Sonoma or even Martha Stewart for fear of spotting her making some perfect apple pie. I'd hate to send her non-deserving hate mail.

Lunch rolled around and it was brown rice and steamed vegetables. Very unexciting. Surprisingly enough - it filled me up. For a snack I ate an apple and by the time I got back to the townhouse - no hunger pangs and the food obsession subsided. Off to the gym I went. Worked out and came back to make fish, more rice and more veggies. So far/ so good. The thought of dinner without wine is something that never dawned on me could actually happen. I, shockingly, survived the absence of the nectar of the Gods.... Hopefully I have not angered Bacchus, as I really am looking forward to falling back into his good graces again very soon.

After Day 1 there has been nothing shocking to report. My skin hasn't miraculously become porcelain like and my hair hasn't become perfectly straight, shiny and/or the envy of every woman in Portland. No job offers for the ex in Siberia either. Nope - nothing really noticeable to report. Except the slight headache.

Day 2 -

Started out equally as uneventful as Day 1 - except for this morning breakfast shake, I used half a banana instead of the frozen berries. Much better. Not really missing coffee all that much, although at this point I haven't been around it. If I smell it I'm sure I will start foaming at the mouth. It's been replaced with Yerba Mate tea for the time being - which has a little of the caffeine in it but not nearly as much. I'm supposed to be drinking green tea but I figure tea is tea is tea - right?

Snack consisted of nuts -- you are what you eat -- and lunch was more brown rice and veggies. Today was a little different. When I got back to the townhouse later that afternoon, I could feel little pangs of hunger. Like my body is wondering where the good stuff has gone. I keep reminding my tummy that this is temporary. Patience, grasshopper.

Always looking to be well informed - and resisting the urge to download books into my Kindle, I moseyed my way to the library and picked up the books that inspired this newest detox called the Ultrasimple Diet and it's sidekick: Ultrametabolism. Put them squarely on the counter to be read at a later date (read: probably never).

Fighting off the hunger pangs and those little voices that try to talk me out of going back outside, I made it to the gym, followed by more fish and rice for dinner. Made a salad in lieu of the steamed veggies and had my first faux-paux in the form of balsamic vinegar. Didn't realize I wasn't supposed to have that since it is 'yeast producing.' Kicking myself that if I was going to screw up - why couldn't it be with a nice glass of Cabernet? Wasted mistake. I didn't get very far into the salad before I read that, luckily.

Still, I don't feel that different. My head still has a dull pain that I'm starting to think has always been there, but without the wine I'm just starting to notice. I'm not in a foul mood nor do I want to kick anyone's teeth in. I'm looking at this as a positive step in the right direction.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Detox Pretox

Today I am starting another detox in an attempt to clean out the wine induced layers of soot that must be clogging my arteries at this point to get them, and the rest of my internal organs, back to a clean, healthy state, and then attempt not to do it all over again. Having said that: You have to detox in order to retox.

This regimen isn't quite a rigid as the Lemon Juice/maple syrup detox that Rachel and I tried earlier in the year (everything I do seems like a good idea at the time).  I still can't use cayenne pepper in any foods and forget about maple syrup. Scarred.

Having done a detox before only to gain back the weight, and rather quickly I might add, I am hoping this one has positive, long lasting, even permanent effects - like shiny hair, a clear complexion, decreased ass size (by at least half), wine-gut be gone, and added perks such as my soon to be ex husband gets a job offer he can't refuse in Siberia, and has to leave the country immediately. These things can happen. I am hopeful.

This new one is called the "Ultra Simple Diet" and it sounds, well, ultra simple. The gist of the detox is the following for a week:

• No Sugar
• No Caffeine
• No Alcohol
• No Processed Foods
• No Grains
• No Men
  

Pretty much it's only lean meats or fish, veggies, brown rice and you make protein shakes for breakfast and snacks. Nuts can be on the menu, but no Double Doubles Animal Style. Thank goodness I got my fix of In & Out Burger out of the way when I was in California recently.

Preparation is key to a successful detox, so last night I raced to Trader Joe's to stock up on all the necessary items that I needed to get me going, including the things I cannot pronounce - like Borage oil. What the hell is that?  I could not find rice protein, so I substituted soy protein instead, and stocked up on flax seed oil, skipping the borage oil that obviously only exists in the rarest of health food stores or in a far off land. By the end of the shopping adventure, my cart was filled to the brim with veggies - ranging from bok-choy to carrots, celery to cauliflower - I was completely set. Look how healthy my cart was.

Back at my temporary ranch, I immediately got busy making a pot of brown rice and steaming a bunch of vegetables to pack for lunch. This seems like it is going to be healthy and I was wondering why I hadn't thought of this before. I have always been a good eater, it's normally the gallon of wine I insist on washing everything down with that seems to be my downfall. Note to self.

Reading labels is going to be the toughest part. Not because I can't read, mind you, but because I seriously just can't be bothered spending the time scouring the back of a carton for a hint trace of sugar or one of the fifty other names it can be disguised as. Multi-dextrose, high fructose, xyz chromosome - who knows.  I do have a work-around as I am avoiding most of everything that has something on the food label that 1/ I cannot pronounce or 2/ I don't know what it is - which usually goes hand in hand with the things I can't pronounce, although I could pronounce 'borage.' Things that are natural should be simple to comprehend.  Like the rice I purchased. On the back it simply reads: Ingredients - Brown Rice. The end. No guesswork.

We’ll see how it goes.

Race for the Cure - Portland

I admit - have been a serious slacker with the whole blogging thing. This is what happens when your personal life completely falls into disarray and you go a little nutty. Okay, a lot nutty.

Long story short - the only way to get your life back on track is to start to do the things you were doing before the mind took a sabbatical.  This time it was Sara's idea, perpetuated by Lisa's need for pink legwarmer and two open spots in the Race for the Cure 5k -- that happened bright and early one Sunday morning. Here we are, looking more spry than what I was actually feeling.

Our team: Team Fitness Together, Lisa's studio here in the 'berbs of Portland. My goal - to finish. Unlike the Shamrock Run, which was plagued with wildly miserable weather, this day was filled with sunshine and a bearable coolness (as opposed to a freezing downpour).

So - we, and about 40,000 other runners and walkers, took off in downtown Portland to run the 5k. The race will filled with 'survivors' - from all over, running in a swarm of pink. Having a sister and best friend who both battled breast cancer (and won), the race did have more of a special meaning so I was happy to be a part of it (don't get me wrong, the St. Patrick's Day and beer had special meaning, just of a different kind). We're all surviving in one form or another when it comes right down to it.

Armed with an arsenal of gadgets, I timed the race with my Nike+ gear and found that the course was not actually a 5k, but a little longer - 3.8 miles, which I completed in about 32 minutes. Not bad for someone who hasn't been able to muster up the energy to walk in a straight line recently, muchless partake in a 5k. Anyone who runs on a regular basis, stops and starts again knows how difficult (and shocking) the transition can be on the body. So in order to make sure mine did not collapse in post-5k shock, we set out immediately afterwards in search of the best bloody mary we could find - with success.

The Urban Farmer was gracious enough to provide us with not only Bloody Mary's, but also a Bloody Mary Bar - complete with every pickled vegetable imaginable. It was like a salad in a glass, only a little more spiked - just the way we like it.  And now Sara can say she's been there. Finally.

Going to New Lengths

When you physically see the signs of your bad behavior showing up in the form of a roll of fat around the mid-section (read: Dunlop tire, muffin top, Michelin man), it’s time to get a reality check. Here’s us at the Oregon Brewer’s Festival last weekend where yours truly is looking a bit thick – not unlike a nice stout. And what's up with me and bald guys? Wait, that's another blog.

So, as yet more motivation to combat the jelly rolls, there is another bet on the horizon. Tanya and I are going to put $150 into a pot. 12 week time frame. Person who wins (weight, body fat and body measurements) gets the pot. If we make our goals then we keep our dough, just the loser that will fork their share over.

Time to put our money where our mouths are – instead of Ben & Jerry’s, or in my case Bogle and Jordan - it's going to be all about fresh salads, lots of exercise and taking it up a notch or two. And I plan on using my winnings to buy new clothes that I will inevitably need when I drop the weight – or maybe towards my gadget addiction since I already have clothes that are packed away due to the added poundage over the past few years. It’s inevitable.

It still blows my mind that some people can eat and drink their way through the world and not gain a pound. All without exercising regularly mind you. While I won’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it (really, there’s nothing I can do but remain jealous about my lack of the skinny gene), I will spend time every day trying to think myself thin – then I’ll get out there and workout more so I can still enjoy things like wine on a regular basis. Glasses, not gallons.

In light of that, today I am going on a run at lunch – in an attempt to get back into the groove. Wish me luck and remind me not to stand sideways in pictures for a while.

4th of July 5k - La Pine Frontier Days

Saturday, July 4^th (after having a couple of glasses of wine the night before) started off at the La Pine Frontier Days Fun Run 5k.  About 30 people showed up – didn’t realize La Pine had that many ‘healthy’ people willing to get up and partake in the 3.17 mile run on that bright, sunny morning.

Here’s me, doing a little pre-run stretching with my new, cool iPhone in hand. There should be an app for stretching.

The race took off from the Frontier Days location, and looped down a road that ran right beside the La Pine Rodeo, which I missed this year but did spot the rodeo queen while we were en route. She was on her horse and I thought about asking for a lift. I should mention that I also spotted her in the beer store the day before, wearing her crown that looked a little Burger King-esque. She was still wearing it.

The race took a turn down a dirt fire road, complete with potholes and thousands of mosquitoes, where we (the runners) doubled as breakfast. I’m thinking this was just another obstacle put on the course as motivation to run faster. It worked. I can, however, confirm what doesn't work and that would be the iPod “anti-mosquito” app. Don't waste your dollar on that one. 

We ran further down the mosquito-infested path and then across more water, which the race coordinators put a makeshift “bridge” consisting of a couple 2 x 4’s, and warned us of ‘obvious beaver activity.’ I was sure the “gadgets” and me were going into the water at one point or I would be attacked by an angry beaver defending his log jam.

Popping out of the wetlands around the local high school, we looped through the parking lot where many horses and trailers, including Ms. Rodeo Queen, were gearing up for the annual 4^th of July parade (and lawn mower race). Had to be careful where you ran on that leg of the tour to avoid any road hazards left by the horses. I slowed down at one point to watch one parade participant spray paint her horses’ ass with red glitter paint – that was a new one for me. The horse did not seem to mind.

Turning the final corner, and to my horror, the parade, was getting ready to start. On the sidewalk, which also served as the last half mile of the 5k, and was lined with many parade spectators, lawn chairs, coolers, kids, strollers, family pets and all. The final few minutes were more of an obstacle course than a race.

Despite it all, I finished in 27 minutes and 36 seconds with no animal attacks (other than mosquitoes), soggy gadgets or horse pies to clean off of my shoes.  I will chalk it up as a success. The lady who won it for the over 30 crowd was in her 60’s and had a time of a little over 18 minutes. Her daughter, in her late 40’s came in second at 22 minutes. Apparently, I still have to work to do. Will take the gold next year for sure.