Eat Out Eat Well

holidays

It’s The Holiday Nibbling That Will Get You!

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Most of those waistline hugging, thigh bulging holiday calories don’t come from the “day of” huge holiday meals but from unrelenting nibbling over the holiday season.

It’s way too easy to add on an extra 500 calories a day over and above your average daily calorie needs.  An additional 500 calories a day translates into packing on about a pound in a week (7 x 500 = 3500 calories, or 1 pound).

Some common holiday indulgences that clock in at approximately 500 calories:

  • 12 ounces of eggnog
  • 1 piece of pecan pie
  • 3 ounces of mixed nuts
  • 1 large soft pretzel
  • Dunkin’ Donuts extra large hot chocolate
  • 22.5 Hershey’s Kisses
  • Starbucks’ Venti Peppermint Mocha with whipped cream
  • 4 (5oz.) glasses of wine
  • 5-7 Pigs-N-Blankets
  • 5 ounces of Brie cheese
  • 10 regular size candy canes
  • 2-3 large Christmas cookies
  • 2.5 potato latkes
  • 4 fun-sized Snickers and 20 pieces of candy corn
  • 4 ounces of chocolate fudge (without nuts)
  • 1 Dunkin’ Donuts blueberry crumb donut
  • 1 cup of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate ice cream

How many of these do you pop into your mouth during the holiday season when you’re out shopping or at a party?

For more hints and tips about holiday eating get my book,  The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide: How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.

Let’s Talk Turkey – How Long Can It Safely Stay On The Table And In The Fridge?

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Turkey, the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving meals, is a low in fat and high in protein nutritonal star. A 3 and 1/2 ounce serving is about the size and thickness of a new deck of cards. The fat and calorie content varies because white meat has less fat and fewer calories than the dark meat and skin.

Calories in a 3 and 1/2 ounce serving (from a whole roasted turkey):

  • Breast with skin: 194 calories; 8g fat; 29g protein
  • Breast without skin:  161 calories; 4g fat; 30g protein
  • Wing with skin: 238 calories; 13g fat; 27g protein
  • Leg with skin:  213 calories; 11g fat; 28g protein
  • Dark meat with skin:  232 calories; 13g fat; 27g protein
  • Dark meat without skin:  192 calories; 8g fat; 28g protein
  • Skin only:  482 calories; 44g fat; 19g protein

Once The Turkey Is Cooked, Does It Matter How Long It Stays Unrefrigerated?

Yes, yes, yes! According to the Centers for Disease Control the number of reported cases of food borne illness (food poisoning) increases during the holiday season. Food shouldn’t be left out for more than two hours.

If you’re saving turkey leftovers, remove all of the stuffing from inside the turkey, cut the turkey meat off the bone, and refrigerate or freeze all of the leftovers.

The Basic Rules For Leftovers

According to the March 2010 edition of the Nutrition Action Healthletter (Center for Science in the Public Interest) the mantra is: 

2 Hours–2 Inches–4 Days

  • 2 Hours from oven to refrigerator: Refrigerate or freeze your leftovers within 2 hours of cooking. Throw them away if they are out longer than that.
  • 2 Inches thick to cool it quick: Store your food at a shallow depth–about 2 inches–to speed chilling.
  • 4 Days in the refrigerator–otherwise freeze it: Use your leftovers that are stored in the fridge within 4 days. The exceptions are stuffing and gravy.They should be used within 2 days. Reheat solid leftovers to 165 degrees F and liquid leftovers to a rolling boil. Toss what you don’t finish.

How Long Can Leftover Turkey Stay In The Freezer?

Frozen leftover turkey, stuffing, and gravy should be used within one month. To freeze leftovers, package them properly using freezer wrap or freezer containers. Use heavy duty aluminum foil, freezer paper, or freezer bags for best results and don’t leave any air space. Squeeze the excess air from the freezer bags and fill rigid freezer containers to the top with dry food. Without proper packaging, circulating air in the freezer can create freezer burn – those white dried-out patches on the surface of food that make it tough and tasteless. Leave a one-inch head space in containers with liquid and half an inch in containers filled with semi-solids.

Is Food The Main Focus Of Your Holiday?

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Is your holiday mindset:  lots of food = good time; not so much food = bad time? Can you possibly revel in holiday spirit without accompanying gluttony?  You bet you can – but often the celebrations themselves become intertwined with the need or obligation to cook and/or eat not just because we’re hungry, but because of other reasons that are important to you.

The point of the holidays – any holiday – is not exclusively food.  Nonetheless, we wrap our holiday thoughts around food – after all, Thanksgiving originally was a harvest celebration and many cultures and religions have special foods to signify a special holiday.

Food Has Meaning

Food does have meaning–which may have different interpretations by people of varying religions, ethnicities, and cultures. Food acts like a cloak of comfort – something many of us look for and welcome around the holidays.

Nowhere is it written that food has to be eaten in tremendous quantity – or that a meal has to include stuffing, two types of potatoes, five desserts, or six types of candy.  That idea is self-imposed.

So is the opposite self-imposed idea: trying to diet during the holidays.  Restriction and overeating are both difficult – and often equally counterproductive. Winter holiday eating  comes during the cold and dark seasons in many parts of the world.  Warm comfort food just seems all the more appealing — whether you’re dieting or not — when it’s somewhat inhospitable outside.

Is Overeating Part Of Your Holiday Meal Plan?

Unconsciously, or perhaps habitually, a lot of us actually plan to overeat during the holidays.  Be honest:  do you know that you’re going to overeat?  Do you think it wouldn’t be normal or non-celebratory to overindulge and eat three desserts at Christmas or raid your kid’s Trick or Treat bag?

It’s all too easy to do that.  Food is absolutely everywhere.  It’s there for the taking — and most of the time, holiday food is free (and in your face) at parties, on receptionist’s desks, as sample tastes while you shop.  How can you pass it up?

On top of it all, it’s sugary, fatty, and pretty.  How can you not try it?  Of course, sugary and fatty (salty, too) means you just crave more and more.   Do you really need it?  Do you even really want it?  If you eat it, will you feel awful later on?

Eating And Tradition

Are you eating because of tradition – because you’ve been eating the same food at Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa since you were a kid?  Maybe you don’t even like the food anymore.  Maybe it disagrees with you or gives you acid reflux.  So why are you eating it?  Who’s forcing you to?

Do you think you won’t have a good time or you’ll be labeled Scrooge, Grinch, a party pooper, or offend your mother-in-law if you don’t eat everything in sight?  Get over it.  Do you really think you’re Scrooge?

You can still love the holidays and you can still love the food.  No problem.  In the grand scheme of things overeating on one day isn’t such a big deal.  Overeating for multiple days that turn into weeks and then months, is.

Do You Really Want To Overeat?

The question is:  do you really want to overeat?  If you do, fine.  Enjoy every morsel and then take a nap.  Tomorrow is another day.  Just know that you don’t have to.  You control the purse strings – and the decisions about what goes into your mouth.  Make thoughtful choices, the best choices for you, and enjoy them along with everything else the holiday represents.

Do You Swipe Candy From Your Kid’s Trick Or Treat Bag?

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If you do, you can start shedding your guilt because you’re certainly not alone.

Let’s put it another way:  Is it almost a foregone conclusion that there’s Halloween candy in your future?

The candy assault on your senses is pretty hard to escape.   It’s everywhere in glowing Technicolor on shelf after shelf in big box stores, supermarkets, and drug stores.  It’s on desks, in restaurants, and even on the receptionist’s desk in my veterinarian’s office in a nice purple bowl with a dog bone painted on the side.

How Much Candy?

Halloween and the week afterward accounts for about 5% of all candy consumed for the year. The most popular types, in order, are:  chocolate, chewy candies and hard candy.

What’s In Your Kid’s Trick or Treat Bag?

If you’ve ever swiped candy from your kid’s trick or treat bag, you’re certainly not alone. According to the National Confectioners Association, 90% of parents confess they occasionally dip into their kid’s stash. I know I sure did.

Parents don’t just sample; they invade their kids’ Trick or Treat bags.  Estimates are that they eat one candy bar out of every two a child brings home.  Their favorite targets are snack-sized chocolate bars (70%), candy-coated chocolate pieces (40%), caramels (37%) and gum (26%).

In Case You Want To Pick The Least Caloric Candy . . .

Here are the calories in some popular Halloween candy – just in case you might want to minimize the caloric damage (no, that’s not a joke, candy has a big calorie and fat gram range)

  • Hershey’s Milk Chocolate: snack size .49-ounce bar; 67 calories; 4g fat
  • Snickers: Fun size; 80 calories; 4g fat
  • Tootsie Rolls: 6 midgee pieces; 140 calories; 3g fat
  •  Skittles Original Bite Size Candies: Fun size bag; 60 calories; 0.7 g fat
  • M&Ms: Fun size bag; 73 calories; 3g fat
  • Butterfinger: Fun size; 85 calories; 3.5g fat
  • Tootsie Roll Pop
: 60 calories; 0g fat
  • Starburst Original Fruit Chews: 2 pieces; 40 calories: 40; 0.8g fat
  • Brach’s Candy Corn: 20 pieces; 150 calories; 0g fat
  •  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup:  Fun size; 80 calories, 4.5g fat
  • Peppermint Pattie:  Fun size; 47 calories; 1g fat
  •  Kit Kat:  Fun size; 73 calories; 3.7g fat

 

Why Is A Carved Pumpkin A Jack-o’-Lantern?

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Jack-O'-Lantern with carved eye
Jack-O’-Lantern

The Legend of The Jack-O’-Lantern 

As the story goes, there was a miserable old drunk named Stingy Jack.   He liked to play tricks on his family, friends — even the Devil —  and he tricked the Devil into climbing up an apple tree.   Once the Devil was up in the tree, Stingy put crosses around the apple tree’s trunk so the Devil couldn’t get down.  He then told the Devil that if he promised not to take Jack’s soul when he died he would remove the crosses and let the Devil down from the tree.

When Jack died, Saint Peter waiting for him at the pearly gates of Heaven, told him that he couldn’t enter Heaven because he was mean, cruel, and had led a miserable and worthless life. So, Stingy Jack then went down to Hell but the Devil wouldn’t take him in either because of what Jack had done to him.  Jack was scared and with nowhere to go he had no choice but to wander around in the darkness between Heaven and Hell.

Stingy Jack asked the Devil how he could stop wandering around without a light to see.  The Devil threw him an ember from the flames of Hell. One of Jack’s favorite foods, which he always had when he could steal one, had been a turnip.  So he put the ember into a hollowed out turnip and from that day on, Stingy Jack, without a resting place, roamed the earth lighting his way with his “Jack-O’-Lantern.”

And so goes the legend of the Jack-O’-Lantern that dates back hundreds of years in Irish history.

Halloween And The Jack-O’-Lantern

Halloween, or the Hallow E’en as it’s called in Ireland and Scotland, is short for All Hallows Eve, or the night before All Hallows.  On All Hallows Eve the Irish made Jack-O’-Lanterns by hollowing out turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes, and beets and then putting lights in them to keep away both the evil spirits and Stingy Jack.  In the 1800′s when Irish immigrants came to America, they discovered that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve, and the pumpkin became the Jack-o’-Lantern.

If You Want To Eat Your Pumpkin . . .

Jumping from legend to fact:  pumpkins are Cucurbitaceae, a family of vegetables that includes cucumbers and melons. They are fat free and can be baked, steamed, or canned.

One cup of pumpkin has about 30 calories and is high in vitamin C, potassium, dietary fiber, and has other nutrients such as folate, manganese, and omega 3′s.  Pumpkin is filled with the anti-oxidant beta-carotene, which gives it its rich orange hue. It’s versatile and can be added to baked goods and blended with many different kinds of food. When pureed pumpkin is used to replace some or all of the fat in baked goods, it significantly decreases the calories while keeping the cake, muffin, or other baked good moist.

Pumpkin seeds are delicious and are a good source of iron, copper, and zinc.  Although pumpkin flesh is low in calories, pumpkin seeds are not.   They have 126 calories in an ounce (about 85 seeds) and 285 calories in a cup.