Just to catch up

Sometimes I post comments on forum related to beading, another love that allows me to express myself.  I dared to respond recently to someone's post about starting a blog by offering "my insights" and realized that I hadn't actually done any blogging in quite a while.  Here is it Christmas time again, and I never even had a chance to finish sharing the delights of last year's presents.  Time flies, and elder care can be fairly time consuming even when it doesn't seem that I am doing all that much.  For writing, it's the interruptions that take their toll.  Come to think of it, I haven't been able to do much beading either.  Interruptions, again.

All is quiet right now.  My Prince has arrived to spend a week with us and share our Christmas celebration.  Mama is resting--for now.  And I really ought to take this opportunity to catch up a little.  Who knows when there will be another chance to do this?

So.  The aforementioned Yoshi blade (ceramic knife) has actually been quite the boon this past year.  I have used it almost daily for cutting vegetables, meats (even semi-frozen), and tomatoes.  I have to say, tho, that the special tomato slicer (oddly serrated knife) that I picked up at a dollar store is even better for those tough old tomato hides.  Still, I love the ceramic blade so much that I have asked Santa to bring me another one (or more).

I never had a chance to blog about my favorite new toy from last year:  An immersion blender (Quisinart Smart Stick).  While I haven't had as many opportunities to use the stick blender as I have the ceramic knife, I have to say that it works a treat.  I feel all Top Chef-y when I use it, chortling like a mad woman as I turn those veggies into a puree.

This year, Christmas is a quite a bit tamer.  Even though I had already scaled things back in 2010, working hard to be "smarter" and more relaxed about it all, there was still too much activity for one person to do.  My Prince is indeed a prince, but he's more a watcher than a doer when it comes to Christmas.  Mama gave up doing a long time ago, but she is still the focus of all our celebrations.

This year I have pretty much called it quits on anything that involves anyone else besides Mama and My Prince.  We did have three friends over last week to sing carols and share a pot luck dinner, but this week has been (and will be, I hope) very quiet.  So far, Mama and I have driven around the neighborhood to look at the Christmas lights.  Tonight we had an old family favorite for dinner.  Saturday--if the turkey thaws out--I'll cook it.  We'll have a quiet Christmas Eve, a relaxed Christmas morning, and hope for some magic in the kitchen (I'm thinking elves here, not a sudden improvement in my cooking skills).  Whatever happens, we won't starve.

Tonight's treat was Corned Beef Stew.  This was something my late father cooked.  It was always a treat.  I have changed the recipe slightly to lower the carbs (a little).

• Corned beef (canned is "traditional" at our house) - the meatier the dish, the less need for carbs.  Tonight I only had one can of corned beef in the pantry, so we here heavier on the carbs.
• Potatoes - I used red potatoes to reduce the starch a little; Daddy used Irish potatoes.  Quantity depends on how far you need to stretch the soup and how many carbs your table-mates can handle.  
• Onions - I used white onions, halved and sliced.  Actually I load up the stew with onions; suit yourself.
• Salt and pepper - I favor coarse ground pepper.  I have to go lightly on both because of assorted dietary needs (and people-who-get-cranky-about-too-much-pepper), but the stew can handle a heavy hand on the pepper.

Throw it in a pot with some water (cover the vegetables, add more if you need to stretch the stew).  Cook the vegetables until tender.   Since I am lazy about chopping the potatoes (and never peel them anymore), just quartering the smaller ones and hacking up the bigger ones, I use a potato masher to smash the potatoes once they are cooked.  This releases a little starch into the broth, but that's pretty much in the nature of potatoes anyway, I reckon.

My father thickened the broth with a flour and water paste.  I stopped doing that long ago, wanting to cut down on carbs wherever I could.  I don't think he really liked my version of the stew without that extra dose of starch, so you might want to try it both ways.

Traditionally, we serve this with cornbread.  It's yummy to crumble your cornbread into the stew, soaking up most of the broth with the bread.  Since I have to worry more about carbs, I have started eating the stew without any bread at all.  It turns out that that broth is quite yummy, and I don't miss the cornbread at all.

Tomorrow, we'll have another Christmas favorite:  Tamales.  Those we will have to buy.  I think if you remove the corn husk tamales don't actually have any carbs.  Right?


Merry Christmas!  Happy Hannukah!  Safe and happy holidays!

Pumpkin fail 2

Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea.

Well, it might have been a good idea when I first had it, but all the traveling and time away from home, meant that my pumpkin might have been past its prime. Or that my initial enthusiasm for all things pumpkin might have waned. Or that I just never really felt like I had a good idea about how pumpkin can be used for a side dish rather than a dessert.

Nonetheless, I did try. Once I got the thing opened and more or less prepared for cooking, I tried a couple of things.

• Boiled some pumpkin meat with Splenda and water. Added cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, butter. Light mash. I didn't care for the taste. It was a bit earthy for me. My Prince had three helpings.
• Baked shards of pumpkin (peel on) at 375 degrees for an hour, wrapped in foil, dotted with butter. The buttered bits tasted better than the unbuttered bits. I ended up cutting off the peeling (which had finally softened enough to actually be a peeling), chopped the meat, and tossed it into a Mystery Stir Fry. Hidden among the other ingredients, the taste was fine. Tasted alone, still earthy.
• I saved the seeds. They've been spread out and drying for a couple of days, but I still don't know how to get all the strings off. Maybe they will just fall off when I try to roast the seeds.
  

The other half of the pumpkin went in the trash. I hate to waste food like that, but I really didn't like it. And it was hard to handle. I might try pumpkin soup with canned pumpkin, but I do believe that that is the last (more or less) fresh pumpkin that I will try.

Black-eyed peas

It's a southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas and cornbread on New Year's Day. The store sales flyers are full of ads for fresh (shelled), frozen, and canned black-eyed peas. We eat them rather frequently, so I have a fully black-eyed-pea-stocked pantry already.

The thing is, I don't really just love black eyed peas. I like 'em well enough, and I do eat 'em when they are served. I even serve 'em from time to time, especially when I have some with jalapenos.

What I really, really like is purple hull peas. These delicate little peas are small and green when fresh, turn a pale taupe color when cooked, and taste delicious with very little seasoning. Their shells are just what the name says: purple (and green).

Wasn't I just totally surprised when My Prince's Stepmother (AKA #2MIL) informed me that these were really young black-eyed peas? That would be why they are smaller than a regular black-eyed pea and why they have that tiny little eye. The purple and green hull is an immature stage of growth. #2MIL knew this, of course, because her #2Son is a truck farmer in New Mexico and raises, among other fine things, black-eyed peas. She brought me a nice bag full of purple hull peas a couple of seasons ago, and I sat on the couch in the den and shelled them all in one go. They made a perfect "mess o' peas" for dinner that night.

While we don't have any fresh purple hull peas at this time of the year, we sure do have some cans of Allen brand purple hull peas hauled in from Houston. I'm thinking that that will be close enough for the old tradition, and that's what I'll be serving on New Year's Day. With cornbread, ham, fresh tomatoes, and iced tea. Mmmm.

Rosemary Salt

Here's one of those homemade food gifts that ought to please just about anyone who eats: Kalyn's Rosemary Salt. I intend to make some for home use (it's good on tomatoes, grilled vegetables, and chicken), and I may as well bag some up for my foodie friends.

Finding this recipe will now spur me to invest in my first herb plant, a rosemary bush. Mmmm.

A good old-fashioned potlatch

I'm reading various articles about "how to green your Christmas," "living green," and coping with the declining economy this holiday season. Part of what I have been thinking about is the whole over-commercialization of Christmas that we have all been decrying, lo, these many years and the sense that now is the time to begin to dial back on some of the crazy consumerism that has been going on.

As it is, we over decorate, over eat, over spend at the end of every year and spend the next year trying to recover from it. Much of this excess is really that--unnecessary consumption of goods in order to impress others or feed our own need to feel "wealthy," "important," "with it."

After all, just how much do we need to decorate our homes--inside or out--to convey the spirit of the season?

Sometimes, when I think of Christmas in the USA, I think of potlatch. This a tradition among Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast. It varies among the various tribes and is nowadays depicted (and probably practiced) as a means of redistributing wealth while accumulating prestige. I first encountered the concept some years ago in a description of potlatch as practiced by the Kwakiutl. The Kwakiutl potlatch, thanks to the rich environment in which they lived, was a massive display of wealth which was then destroyed as a demonstration of, well, wealth.

The Peabody Museum has this to say about potlatch (among the Kwakiutl and others in the area):

It is commonly portrayed as extremely competitive, with hosts bankrupting themselves to outdo their rivals and aggressively destroying property.

That sounds about right for the situation in which many find themselves after any given Christmas in post-World War II America. Here's a bit more from one of the oldest (non-Native American) authorities on the Kwakiutl, Franz Boaz (from The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians ):

The rivalry between chiefs and clans finds its strongest expression in the destruction of property. A chief will burn blankets, a canoe, or break a copper, thus indicating his disregard of the amount of property destroyed and showing that his mind is stronger, his power greater, than that of his rival. If the latter is not able to destroy an equal amount of property without much delay his name is broken. He is vanquished by his rival and his influence with his tribe is lost, while the name of the other chief gains correspondingly in renown.

This, too, resonates in our contemporary practice of Christmas, if not, indeed, in our whole way of life in which we draw endlessly on the resources of our country and our planet to consume (almost literally) conspicuously and wastefully. If we are not competing directly with our neighbor or some other rival, we are competing against a goal set for us through advertising, movies, and other media that says we must (lavishly) decorate a tree, host (extravagant) parties, give (expensive) gifts, and otherwise display--and consume--our wealth--even if we have little wealth.

I'm still trying to come up with some better ideas for edible gifts this year, but, the more I think about it, the more I see a need to come up with those ideas--and act on them.

Green bean casserole

One of the staple dishes of Thanksgiving dinner seems to be green bean casserole. That would be the one made with cream of mushroom soup and canned fried onions. I don't remember this dish from my childhood, so I'm thinking it's something that has been popularized in recent years by one or the other food manufacturer. It has become so popular that grocery stores in this area regularly fill up one of the end caps of a food aisle with all of the ingredients in one convenient spot.

It's a tasty dish, to be sure, and a handy way to get kids to eat green beans. Unfortunately, it's overloaded with sodium and carbohydrates and is roughly the consistency of glue.

Happily, I found a recipe for green bean casserole that is none of these things. It appeared in the same place I found the Frog Eyes (My HEB Goodness, Holiday, 2007). I haven't actually made the recipe as of this writing, but I have all the ingredients at hand and hope to have prepared and tasted it by the time this post is published.

Here's the recipe:

___________________________________________________________

Splendid Green Bean Casserole

Prep Time: 10 minutes/ Cook Time: 15 minutes

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• 2 large shallots, peeled and sliced thin
• 2 cups fresh sliced mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons HEB Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 bags (12 oz. each) HEB Ready Fresh Go! Green Beans
• 1/4 cup HEB Texas Twist Ranch or Caesar Dressing

1. Heat oven to 500 [degrees] F. Line small baking pan with foil and spray with nonstick olive oil cooking spray. Spread the shallot rings evenly in the pan and bake for 5 minutes or until golden. Remove and cool.
2. Combine mushrooms and olive oil in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 2 1/2 minutes. Set mixture aside.
3. Prepare green beans according to package directions, drain, and place in large serving bowl.
4. Top green beans with mushrooms, dressing, and shallots. Serve warm. You can also cover the dish with plastic wrap, refrigerate, and microwave for 5 minutes on high before serving.

Makes 10 servings

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Nutrition Facts:

One serving = 3/4 cup
80 calories, 2 g protein, 5g total fat, 1 g saturated fat.
0 g trans fats, 7 g carbohydrates, 1 g dietary fiber, 2 g sugars,
0 mg cholesterol, 70 mg sodium

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I'm having to make some substitutions, especially in brands (sorry, HEB, all your stores are across town here in Houston). That's gonna make some difference in some of the nutrition numbers, but, since I'm watching carbs, I'll be sure that those are not adversely affected by the change. Your mileage may vary.

*crossing fingers*

UPDATE: Made it. Ate it. Loved it. The only seasoning, however, came from the salad dressing that we added before we served the dish. We used Newman's Own Ranch Style dressing. While the dish tasted good, I felt that it needed more flavor. Everyone else seemed to manage it without anything else, but I had to hit the salt shaker. In any case, I am now confident enough about the dish to start playing with the recipe. Mmmm.

Mock yams

One cup of diced sweet potato (raw) is 23.42 grams of carbohydrates. One cup of chopped carrots (raw) is 12.26 grams of carbohydrates. All orange veggies are not the same, but they look close enough for my purposes. We are substituting carrots for sweet potatoes this Thanksgiving.

My Prince loves sweet potatoes, preferably candied with sugar and smothered with marshmallows. Ditto for Mama. I have fooled My Prince with carrots before, so I'm going to try it with Mama. He liked it enough to ask for more. He even (pause to absorb the shock) liked the carrots so much that he asked to learn how to cook them for himself when I'm gone.

Here's what I do:

• Boil some peeled baby carrots until very tender. You can put a little sea salt in the water if you want to. The important thing to put in the water, however, is your sweetener. I use Splenda, but you may have other thoughts about what works best for you. Use maybe 1/2 to 1 cup. You want the carrots to taste really sweet.
• If the cooked carrots taste sweet enough, just drain, add some butter, and serve. If they need more sweetness, drain most of the liquid and add more Splenda until you think you've got the taste you want. Then butter and serve.
• To get a brown sugar taste, you can use Splenda's version of brown sugar or just splash in a bit of sugar free maple syrup. I use the maple syrup because it doesn't have as many carbs as the Splenda brown (I'm serious about the splash bit).

If you really want to fool everyone, mash the carrots. My Prince was happy to have the whole ones, but we may have to be a little more devious with Mama. Still, we tend to eat less when we are served an intact vegetable rather than a mushy mound (I think).

Thanksgiving dessert

We are trying to avoid the traditional pumpkin pie this year, although it is a struggle. It's one of Mama's favorites (at this time of year). It happens that I also like this pie, so I want to avoid having one within range of my (sadly lacking) willpower. Maybe I can buy her a pie before I leave, with instructions to eat it all before I return (like that will go over well).

Big Kid Cousin came up with a recipe for pumpkin cheese cake but decided against adding to the workload by trying a complicated new recipe. I volunteered my Dreamsicle Pie, and that is what we are going with.

Originally, I "invented" this pie to serve as a pumpkin pie alternative solely because it was orange. The main ingredient is: sugar free orange Jello (or whatever the house brand equivalent might be). The important thing for this occasion is orange color and sugar free. I also "invented" this as a pie, so I made a "crust" for it. This year, we will skip the crust because of food/teeth issues for the elders.

Here's the pie:

• Make the sugar free orange gelatin according to package instructions. I use one large or 2 small packages. Allow to set in refrigerator.
• Remove your now fully set orange gelatin from the refrigerator and dump it into a blender. Add a small amount of heavy whipping cream and blend it until you have a smooth mixture that is a pastel shade of orange. Keep adding cream (but not too much) as long as you think the mixture will not become runny and still needs a lighter color.
• Pour the mixture into a glass pie dish, with or without a crust. Cooking spray might be needed if you don't have a crust. (I guess I will find out on Thanksgiving.)

The crust:

• Mix chopped pecans and a small amount of melted butter or margarine (just enough to lightly coat the pecans).
  
• Place the pecans in the bottom of a glass pie dish and press into shape to form a thin crust on the bottom (and up the sides if you have enough nuts).

With or without the crust, cover the pie with plastic wrap and return to the refrigerator for some more setting time. Cut and serve as proudly as you would a homemade pumpkin pie.

The whole pie tastes like a dreamsicle ice cream and is delicious. It has zero carbohydrates without the crust and very few with the crust. The dreamsicle taste with nuts just goes to a whole new level of yummy.

You can make this pie with other flavors of gelatin. Try something red for Valentine's Day, even green for St. Patrick's Day.

I've not tended to worry about garnishes nor bothered with any topping. You might try try it with whipped topping of some sort (mind the carbs!) or sprinkle a few nuts in the middle of the top, but the pie is certainly tasty enough without anything extra.

Thanksgiving hors d'ouevres

For our shared Thanksgiving this year, we have all sorts of appetites coming to the table. A couple of these appetites are in danger of being too small, as in they don't eat enough unless we put something in front of them and get a little pushy about eating. A couple of these appetites are on their own timer, not necessarily related to "meal time," and, when they gotta eat, they gotta eat.

Not knowing exactly when we will be able to get it all on the table, Big Kid Cousin and I have decided that a small plate of appetizers would not be amiss. Indeed, since we've decided that we aren't going to have a salad, some raw and pickled vegetables might even take its place. At least we'll have something that our various "appetites" can nibble on if we take too long getting everything set out.

I'm thinking right now of three items that we "premiered" at the last birthday party. They are tasty and low carb and really made a hit.

Marinated mushrooms was the most popular of this trio. Monterey brand mushrooms has been available at Sam's Club for several years, and I've been buying them for years in Austin. They make a nice appetizer for My Prince. I notice that they are more expensive at my home club than here in Houston, so I might just buy here to take with me. Four of these mushrooms have 1 gram of carbs/1 gram of fiber. As far as I can tell, it's a free food. They were also a big hit at the birthday party; several people asked where to get them.

That's exactly what I'm doing with the marinated asparagus that I found here in Houston but couldn't (didn't) find in my Austin club. This the same asparagus that I used for my version of Frog Eyes the other day. They have a slightly sweet taste, which is not surprising once you discover that there is some sugar in the marinade. Still, 8 stalks has only 2 grams of carbs, so you will be sated by the taste (I am) before you hit your 2 carbs.

The relish plate will also include Mt. Olive Kosher Dill Petites. I will just use one of the PicklePaks, since that quantity will suffice for our purposes. I first picked these little packs out just prior to Hurrican Ike because they made for a convenient low-carb snack. During the hurricane aftermath, they were useful since they didn't need to be refrigerated. (You might be able to find out more about them at www.mtolivepickles.com, but I'm not gonna provide a link to the site. I went there to confirm the nutritional information, since I don't feel like climbing the step ladder to get to the pickles on the shelf right now, but the web site just annoys me--music, broken links, excessive decorative (as opposed to useful) graphics.) My recollection is that the pickles have 0 carbs per serving. In this case, one serving is the whole picklepak.

So, one relish tray/plate will have:

• marinated asparagus
• marinated mushrooms
• kosher dill petites

One serving would be 8 asparagus spears, 4 mushrooms, and all of the pickles on the plate for 3 total carbs minus 1 gram of fiber (if you count that way). Since I'm not climbing a ladder to find out if pickles have fiber (and Mt. Olive messed up on filling in the blank there), we'll have to leave it at 1 gram of fiber. Not too bad for an appetizer, especially when it sneaks in some more veggies for our picky eaters.

A shared Thanksgiving

Our thoughts are turned to Thanksgiving now as, along with the rest of America's foodies/moms/persons-with-appetites, we ponder what might be served and enjoyed on our overladen tables of autumn bounty. This year's turkey day will be very different from years past, and, I must say, I am quite looking forward to it.

For my nuclear family (i.e., My Prince and our real and fictive children), there has been little opportunity to have a Thanksgiving Dinner at our own home with just our own selves to please and serve. Instead we have had to divide ourselves among three households of our parents' generation and consume at least two massive turkey dinners within the typically four-day holiday period. These dinners have been prepared (his side of the family) by some wonderful cooks and served in mass quantities or consumed (my side of the family) at various buffets in hotels and restaurants. This was (a) expensive, (b) food coma inducing, and (c) occasionally stressful.

This year will be different in that we have removed My Prince from the struggle. He will stay--peacefully and happily--in Austin while we put together a version of Turkey Day here in Houston. Instead, for him and the grandkids still in Austin, we will share a meal on the Sunday after Thanksgiving (when I hope to be back there to prepare it). We still don't know what that meal may be, but we've all agreed that it can be as simple as Mystery Casserole just so long as we can be together and express our thankfulness for each other and the good things in our lives. I look forward to it.

Meanwhile, here in the Bayou City, Big Kid Cousin and I have collaborated to have a shared Thanksgiving Dinner, which we will prepare for our mothers and her aunt. The youngest person in the group will be >60; all of us have our own handicapped hang tags for the cars. Needless to say, BKC and I are concentrating on simple and easy fixings at the same time we are striving mightily to keep everyone from slipping into a food coma for one reason or another.

Our biggest concern in this meal is carbohydrates, of course. Three of the five participants in this feast need to avoid carbs like the plague. Getting the sugar out of the menu is pretty easy--we are opting for sugar-free on just about everything. Getting the starch out is an altogether different matter, so we are going to have to sacrifice some traditional items from the menu or seriously reinvent those items to get rid of the starch.

There are other challenges to be overcome, of course. We have picky eaters who like simple foods which would do well on the Children's Menu of a restaurant. We have menu restrictions related to gout and colitis and some concern about phosphorus levels. We also have traditionalists who can't quite see a Turkey Day without "the official Thanksgiving menu." It's gonna be fun to try to work our way through all these problems.

I look forward to it.

World Diabetes Day

Friday, November 14, was World Diabetes Day. Who knew? No one at our house anyway. It's my bad, I guess, for not paying more attention to the news stories on the home page for this account, but we might wonder how much coverage the day actually got in other news outlets (snark intended).

In the meantime, the good news was that we had a party on that day. With two diabetics in the group, menu planning was something of a challenge. Fortunately, Big Kid Cousin had a big (kid?) hand in making sure that most everyone involved had a clear understanding of the need to pay attention to the dietary issues that the diabetics (and others) faced.

And it was a success!

There were two birthday cakes (birthdays being the occasion for the party). One was an animated "cake" that had what looked like a Cabbage Patch granny popping in and out, singing "Happy Birthday." The other was a sugar free concoction, made with a Sweet-and-Low cake mix. Everyone got to enjoy some cake one way or another.

The rest of the table was delicious and (mostly) low carb. I made frog eyes (yes, they turned out fine). BKC assembled some impressive hors d'ouevres of cocktail sausages, cherry tomatoes, and cubed Colby Jack on a toothpick. Little Sister brought not only the cake, but some fried chicken sticks (they looked like french fries) with a beef and cheese dipping sauce for them. Family friends brought queso and chips. An aunt brought her special "pie" with hash browns for crust and assorted veggies for pie filling. We set out some cashews and a plate of pickled items (the pickled mushrooms were a big hit).

While there were some carbs on the table, it was possible to avoid them and still fill your plate. The funnest part was Mama, who opined that this was the "best ever" table of refreshments. If Mama's happy, we can all relax.

Let's hope that we are more aware of World Diabetes Day next year. It's a good opportunity to educate others about the issues. We did have a little discussion about some diabetes issues (especially hypoglycemia) at the party, but that was mostly because one of the diabetics started having problems because she didn't get to eat soon enough. We need to do better, and that starts with education.

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

This is a "transition year" for my family, so we won't be having a "traditional" Thanksgiving, whatever that is. Instead, while My Prince and the grandkids get through with all their stuff and I finally get back to Austin the Sunday after Thanksgiving Day (when we will have a meal for giving thanks), Mama and I will join Big Kid Cousin and her crew for the Big Day. It will be kinda fun, with an age range from 62 to 91.

The challenge of the day, however, is all of the food restrictions we have among us. The biggest one is the need to go low carb. Two diabetics and one quirky digestive tract pretty much dictate that we kill every carb we can find. Still, there will be an abundance of sweet tooths (teeth?!) at the table, so we are gonna have to be creative as well as careful.

I've found a nice little treasure trove of recipe and other ideas that HEB published for the 2007 holiday season (My HEB Goodness, Holiday 2007). I might just write about those if I can get a chance over the next few days. In the meantime, I'm quite interested in the page they devoted to "Tips for Diabetics During the Holidays." Here they are:

• You can control your diabetes by eating small portions.

This, I am told, is how to control a lot of things, including weight. Sadly, it's hard to turn away from something that tastes really good. That's why I find it easier to avoid the dark side of large portions by making something that needs a lot of chewing, that is filling, and has as few carbs as possible.

• Use smaller portions of bread, potatoes, and dressing (which contains starch). The vegetable dishes should be free of sauce and excessive butter. Always include fresh fruit and vegetable salads on your plate.

Or, like, don't serve bread, potatoes, and dressing--or anything else that contains high amounts of starch. Butter doesn't scare me, and (hello!) it contains no starch. Sauces are an important part of cooking and flavoring food, so why not think of sauces that contain no starch or (if you are really afraid that olive oil is going to bite you) fat. Why does everyone try to shove high carb fruits down a diabetic's throat? I eat them now and then, but fresh fruit is a serious argument for "small portions." Berries are different, of course, and I do love avocado and tomato, but I'm guessing that that's not what the HEB foodies were thinking about.

• Vegetables served with low-fat or salsa dips make good appetizers.
  

Or serve with salad dressings. I learning to make my own viniagrette (or what I call viniagrette). Tossing a bunch of carrot slices in a small bowl of that or using it for a dip is quite tasty and filling. It's harder to find things that I might like to dip into salsa.

• You can make a lot of healthy desserts by replacing sugar with products such a H-E-B's BetterSweet.

Duh! Just as big a problem, however, is getting rid of the other carbs in desserts--like flour or pre-sweetened fruit.

• Skip the crusts of pies and the icing on cakes to cut down on fat and carbohydrates.

Indeed. Or make your crusts of nuts (all nuts), and ice your cakes, if you have to have cake, with sweetened cream cheese.

• Take a long walk after a holiday meal. It will help control your blood sugar level and you'll feel better.

Word! I especially like the part of the walk that involves letting someone else do the dishes. ;)

Big Kid Cousin and I are already having great fun trying to figure out what we can cook that will satisfy the traditionalists among us and keep us all healthy.