Happy Friday!  The holiday party season is in full swing.  It is that time of year when are tempted day in and day out by an endless array of delicious goodies.  So, as your approach this holiday season, I thought I would offer you some useful holiday eating tips.

Enjoy!

1. Avoid vegetable trays. Anyone who puts a vegetable tray on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit (or just can’t cook).   A vegetable tray might be acceptable if it is accompanied with high calorie, artery-clogging dip. Otherwise save the vegetable tray for January when that New Year’s Diet begins.

2.  Remember that this is the time of year when just about anything can be covered with gravy or chocolate sauce.  However, I would avoid using both on the same food item.

3.  If something comes with gravy, especially giblet gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Get more mashed potatoes and create a gravy moat surrounding your island of mashed potatoes.  Go ahead and play with your food, you know you want to.  (Sit a safe distance away from anyone who makes models of the “Devil’s Tower” out of mashed potatoes.)

4. Nutritionists tell us that a healthy diet includes color on the plate, especially reds, yellows and greens.  So, just to be safe, add a handful of M&M’s to each plate of food you have.

5. Fruit and nuts are an important part of your diet.  So do not skimp on the apple pie, cherry pie and pecan pie.

6.Forget the exercise routine until January when you have nothing else to do and you have started that diet. You will get plenty of exercise doing laps around the buffet table  while carrying a 10-pound plate of food in each hand..

7.The Magic of Christmas eliminates all of the calories from homemade cookies, fudge, peanut brittle, pies, cakes , dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls.  So enjoy to your heart’s desire but only if they are homemade.

8. We know oatmeal is good for you so do not skip it this holiday season.  I prefer my oatmeal in the form of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

9. Remember there are limits on how much you can eat.  So do not waste any of your calorie capacity on fruitcake or mincemeat pie.  (You would be better off with a vegetable tray.)

10. One final tip: If you can comfortably get up from the table, you’re not trying hard enough.  You have trained all year for this, don’t give up now!

Thought for the Week

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!” ~ Dr. Seuss