The Thanksgiving Menu

A Facebook friend asked what we'd be having for Thanksgiving dinner, so I thought I'd let you know:

* Roast turkey, of course, with giblet gravy

* Sugar-free cranberry sauce, which is so easy it's silly. Just read the recipe on the back of the bag of fresh cranberries, and substitute Splenda, erythritol or xylitol for the sugar. Takes maybe ten minutes.

* Stuffing of some low carb variety. I'm thinking I'll go with the Apple Walnut Dressing, which is grain-free, though I have plenty of low carb bread in the freezer. I'm just suspicious of wheat anymore.

* Fauxtatoes. For a holiday meal, I'll probably break into my stash of Ketatoes and add a little to the cauliflower, to lend a convincingly potato-y flavor. You could use Dixie Diners Instant Mashers the same way, if you like. I've also been known to cook and mash about 6 ounces of potato with each big half-head of cauliflower.

* Green Beans Almandine (known around here as Green Almond Beans).

* Rutabaga, though I haven't decided yet how to cook it. My mom always mashed it for holidays, but the cubes of rutabaga I "roasted" in butter in my slow cooker recently were very good.

* A simple jacket-baked sweet potato for That Nice Boy I Married, who is fond of them, and can tolerate the carbs.

* Pumpkin Pie, with a Pecan-Praline crust, topped with really-truly whipped cream.

If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I might also make some corn bread sticks from the recipe in -- oh, I have to look, hold on... aha, it's in The Every Calorie Counts Cookbook. (The recipe is in that stuffing article I linked to above.) But I probably won't bother.

My mom always put out celery and olives in a cut-glass dish, so I'll probably do that, too.

This menu is, indeed, strongly influenced by the Thanksgiving dinners of my youth. Mom always served beans almandine and rutabaga, and cutting up the giblets and making the gravy was my job by the time I was, what, maybe six or seven? Mom made her own cranberry sauce, too. She served some things I won't, even in de-carbed form, because they were never favorites of mine anyway -- creamed onions, glazed sweet potatoes, banana bread. This touches on an important Holiday Survival Tactic: Don't bother with anything carby unless it is an absolute favorite of yours. Never waste an Indulgence.

Mom also served apple pie instead of pumpkin, because we liked it better, and my Dad -- who had the eating habits of a picky five-year-old till the day he died -- wouldn't eat pumpkin on a bet, not having been exposed to it by his fifth birthday. Sadly, I have not yet worked out a decarbed apple pie. But my sugar-free pumpkin pie is wonderful, and I will not be feeling sorry for myself!

Will you be decarbing your menu? What will you be serving? Do you have any low carb holiday favorites you can share? We want to know!