Column Reprint: Prepared Foods Can Streamline Your Holidays

Remember the holidays of your childhood? Mom would festoon the house with evergreen roping and ornaments, lights would twinkle from each tree, the air would be filled with the scent of baking, and every party table would be groaning with lovingly-concocted canapes and other tempting treats?

Makes you want to go bury your head under a pillow, doesn’t it?

I’m here to tell you that quite a lot of our holiday stress comes from trying to live up to the images in our heads of the Holidays Of Yore. I know I could never, ever live up to the extravaganza my mother conjured up every December –– complete with hand-knitted Christmas stockings, homemade centerpieces, loaves upon loaves of homemade bread, and enough home-baked cookies to bury the Keebler elves. You know why? My mom didn’t have a job outside the house.

Okay, so I don’t have a job outside the house either –– but I do write this column, not to mention a pile of books. The point is that most of us –– even many stay-at-home-moms –– don’t have anything like the time to devote to the holidays that our mothers and grandmothers did. If we try to duplicate all the effort they put into holiday preparation, we’ll end up weeping under the mistletoe.

Too, a whole lot of the effort our foremothers put into the holidays was focused on stuff that quite frankly –– not to run down Mom or anything –– wasn’t so great for us. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t need little pastries of white flour and hydrogenated shortening, filled with heaven-knows-what. They’re hard on the waistline and the blood work, both.

I encourage you to streamline where you can, which may mean using prepared foods. You know I’m not going to encourage you to eat cookies, candy, white flour crackers, canned biscuits, frozen puff pastry, and other junk. But your grocery store deli can be your very good friend when you’ve got a party coming up and no time to prepare. Consider the virtues of the:

* Relish tray. It’s a rare deli indeed that can’t provide a tray of celery sticks, baby carrots, pepper strips, broccoli and cauliflower florets, cherry tomatoes, and olives. Add an easy dip, and you’re done.

* Hot wings. Be careful here –– many brands of hot wings are breaded and fried; neither the breading nor the hydrogenated frying oil are nutritionally acceptable. But if you can get a platter of unbreaded hot wings, they’re a great and popular choice. Steer clear of chicken “tenders” –– they’re virtually always breaded and fried.

* Cold-cut platter. Sliced turkey, ham, and roast beef, plus an assortment of cheeses, are great for the low carbers and the “normal” folks alike. Set out some mayo and good-quality mustard and provide bread for those who want it. Lettuce leaves and/or low carb tortillas for making low carb, low cal wraps would be nice, too.

* Gourmet cheese tray. Want something a little more posh? My grocery store advertises a gourmet cheese tray, garnished prettily with grapes. They also offer assorted sliced fruit plus cubes of cheese. Very nice!

* Seafood platter –– Imagine your friends' faces when they spot a tray of snow crab legs or cold shrimp! Cocktail sauce is sugary, so stir up some of your own; it’s a snap. Just mix 1/2 cup of no-sugar ketchup with 2 teaspoons of prepared horseradish, a 1/4 teaspoon or so of Tabasco, and 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and you’re done. (Delis also offer stuff like “sea legs” –– fake seafood. That stuff is full of junk carbs. Avoid it.) My grocery will also make up a platter of smoked salmon with lemon wedges, capers, and fresh dill. Yowza!

If you really feel you must make something, try these –– they’re quite simple, and sure to delight your guests. Feel free to use either the regular or the light garlic & herb cheese –– they have about the same carb count, though the light version is thirty percent lower in calories. The analysis is for the regular version.

Cheese-Pecan Nibbles

2 cups pecan halves
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 ounces garlic & herb spreadable cheese (Boursin or Allouette)

Preheat your oven to 350. Spread 2 cups of unbroken pecan halves in a shallow baking pan. Stir in the oil -- it will take a fair amount of stirring to get that little oil to coat this many nuts, so keep stirring! Sprinkle with salt, and roast for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven, and let them cool before the next step

Spread a dollop -- between 1/4 and 1/2 a teaspoon -- of garlic & herb spreadable cheese on the flat side of a pecan half, and press the flat side of another pecan half against it to make a pecan and cheese sandwich! Place on a serving plate, and continue with the rest of the cheese, and the rest of the pecans.

Enough for about 6 people, each of whom will get: 300 Calories; 30g Fat; 4g Protein; 7g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 4 grams usable carb.

(Reprinted with permission from 500 More Low-Carb Recipes, 2004, Fair Winds Press)

FYI: Of all my books, 500 More Low-Carb Recipes is the one with the most dessert recipes, and particularly cookie recipes.