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‘Tis the season to send food! If it hadn’t occurred to me yet, my mailbox would remind me. Sheaves of catalogues arrive daily, selling everything from cheesecakes to petit fours to caramel corn. I love the age-old tradition of giving gifts of food. They’re always the right size and the right color. They don’t take up storage space, at least not for long. They require no dusting. And who ever has enough goodies, with all those holiday guests dropping in?

Everybody had enough turkey? Okay, onward to Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Festivus, or whatever the heck else you might celebrate to make this dreary time of year bearable! Time to think. Time to plan. Not our shopping (me, I've already done most of mine online; somuch easier than slogging through malls.) I'm talking about the food, of course!

Remember, come Thanksgiving Day, all the turkeys left at the grocery stores will be marked way down. I always buy at least a couple and stash them in the deep freeze to eat later in the year. If you don't want to roast a whole turkey for just your family -- an understandable feeling -- be aware that grocery store butchers will generally slice one up the middle for you at no additional charge. A half-turkey -- one breast, one wing, one thigh, one drumstick -- makes a nice family-sized roast for a Sunday dinner.

Only works with un-frozen turkeys, though.

If you're having Thanksgiving dinner at someone else's house, resist all offers to wrap up some leftover pie for you to take home. Remember, even if you're having an Indulgence Day, it only lasts for one day! No eating sugar-sweetened pie for breakfast on Friday!

You might ask if they'd let you have some leftover turkey or ham, instead. I love having leftover turkey in the house!

"But, Dana!" I hear you cry. "I'm not cooking Thanksgiving dinner! I'm going to my mother's/mother-in-law's/cousin's/sister's/brother's/grandmother's house! I'll have no control over the menu!"

Here are some more ideas for cutting the carb count of your Thanksgiving dinner -- which, I might add, just might make for a somewhat livelier Thanksgiving evening. Forget "It's the tryptophan in the turkey that makes you sleepy." It's far more likely to be wonky blood sugar from that massive carb overload.

There are few foods more all-American than cranberry sauce. Cranberries are native to the United States, and are one of only three Native American fruits that are commercially cultivated on a large scale. (The other two are blueberries and Concord grapes.) Their distinctive tart flavor has made them a huge national favorite.

Does the name Gary Taubes ring a bell?

Stuffing

Call it stuffing, or call it dressing, it’s just not a holiday turkey without it! For me, stuffing is an essential part of holiday dinners. Indeed, I used to have what I like to call an “Indulgence” (a term I prefer to “cheat”) on holidays largely so I could have stuffing! Since then, however, I’ve learned to cut back on the carb count of my turkey stuffing. Here are some ideas:

With Halloween behind us, we have officially entered the Holiday Season. Let's start thinking about how we're going to make it to January 2nd still fitting into our clothes, shall we?

Here are a few preliminary points to keep in mind:

Remember that ham I roasted for my birthday party? It didn't get completely eaten at the party. I mean, it was nearly seventeen pounds to start with, and there was a lot of other food. We ate leftover ham for a few days -- sliced, scrambled in eggs, whatever. Finally we were down to a meaty ham bone. So I did the traditional thing: I made soup.

Somebody brought a cold germ to my birthday party, so I've been honking and snorking for a week. Seemed time to talk about cold care!

Summer’s gone, autumn’s here, the leaves are changing. You know what that means. Right,
the cold and flu season is upon us. Indeed, as I write this I have a scratchy throat, a snorky nose,
and a tight chest. Ugh.

So I thought it would be timely to fill you in on low carb cold care. Low carb cold care? Yep.
There actually are a few potential pitfalls, let me help you skirt them.

Hey, I turned fifty last weekend! Conveniently, my birthday fell on a Saturday; a party was mandatory. So what did I serve at my birthday party?

* Ham. I had a ham in the garage fridge; I'd bought it on sale and stashed it against some future mob-feeding occasion. So I hauled it out and roasted it. I even glazed it, even though that added a few carbs to the outside -- I simmered some Sucanat with apple cider and cloves, and added a good whack of mustard.

YIKES! At my age the scariest thing about Halloween is how it sneaks up on me! It's just five days away!

So here's a slightly edited reprint of an article I wrote back in the early days of Lowcarbezine!.

Don't Look Now!

It's almost upon you! It's about to LEAP on you! Run! RUUUUUN!

It's Halloween!!!

Yep, in just five days, we celebrate the most primal, bone-deep
Sugar Festival known to Western Civilization. Is there any holiday that
is more totally, utterly associated with CANDY in the American mind?

When I was a kid, I ate a lot of noodles -- generally Butoni wagon-wheels -- with Ragu's original "Old World Style" jarred spaghetti sauce and the cheap grated Parmesan out of the green shaker. Loved it. Had it for lunch at least once a week!