Notes On Our Low-Carb Thanksgiving Dinner

Enough holiday-weekending! Time to blog. Here are some notes on our low-carb Thanksgiving dinner:

* The Steviva company had kindly sent me samples of their sweeteners to try, so I used their Steviva Blend, a combination of erythritol and stevia, to sweeten my cranberry sauce. The results were quite good; I would be happy to do the same again. Keep in mind that Steviva is twice as sweet as table sugar or granular Splenda; I used 1/2 cup to 12 ounces of fresh cranberries, 1 cup of water, and a teaspoon of plain gelatin. Good stuff.

* I used erythritol in my pumpkin pie, both the crust and the filling, instead of my usual granular Splenda. (Full disclosure: I actually use whatever generic knockoff of granular Splenda is in the grocery store. Cheaper, and I haven't noticed a difference. And more and more, I use liquid sucralose in anything where it will easily blend in and be evenly distributed, because it's carb-free.) I was not as happy with the results here as I was with the cranberry sauce. Perhaps the Steviva Blend would have performed better. As it was, I found my pie filling quite tasty, but not quite firm enough for my taste, and the crust was soggy and stuck to the pan. Still tasted fine.

* Like so many people these days, our budget is tighter than blue jeans on January 2nd, so I bought a President's Choice brand turkey that was on sale for 57c/pound, the best deal I saw on turkey. I found it tough. I would not buy President's Choice again.

* I've decided fauxtatoes are a lot better with cream cheese pureed into the cauliflower, about 1 ounce per half-head of cauliflower. Improves flavor and texture both.

* I do love green beans almandine. I don't know why green bean casserole, with canned beans, canned soup and canned onions, is so popular, when people could have tender-crisp, still-green beans, with lots of butter and almonds.

* Speaking of almonds, our Thanksgiving dinner turned out to have three kinds of nuts in it: Almonds in the green beans, walnuts in the grain-free apple-walnut dressing, and pecans in the crust for the pie. Hard to beat that, though I suppose I could have thrown in a hazelnut somewhere.

* That Apple-Walnut Dressing recipe really is good, if I do say so myself. I never missed the bread.

* I broke with tradition this year, and instead of mashing the rutabaga, I cut them in 1/2" cubes and cooked them overnight in the slow cooker, in lots of butter. The smell was so good it woke me up halfway through the night. So good! The next night I chopped an onion, sauteed it in butter, and added the leftover rutabaga. Chopped it up further with the edge of the spatula, and fried it brown, making rutabaga hash browns. YUM!

* Lest you let yourself be sucked in by the whole "You just need to eat good carbs" hype, and figure that vegetable carbs don't count, be aware: I did, indeed, put on a couple of pounds over the course of a couple of days, and that was with NO grain and NO sugar, but considerably more veggie carbs than I would normally eat -- and, of course, just plain more food than I normally eat. I'm now doing all-meat (okay, all leftover turkey with a teeny bit of cranberry, plus some eggs) to get rid of the extra poundage right away. No way I'm going to let it stack up as Christmas approaches. Uh-uh. No way.