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!

I gots a new dog! He is a puggy, and his name is Dexter. He's almost three, and was being rehomed because he lived in the city, and loves to run. His family had already had one pug hit by a car, and were scared for him.

I still miss Nick something awful, but Dexter is a sweet, cuddly, licky, charming boy.

That Nice Boy I Married got up today to discover that Nick the Pug had died overnight. He had been doing so well since his last surgery, full of energy, just tearing around the place. Yesterday he asked to go out and run around the yard at least a dozen times.

About the new book, and about Dr. Rob's book: Dr. Rob doesn't use the decimal point in glycemic indices, so his glycemic loads come out 100 times the ones I'm used to. So don't freak out when you read his book, and my book with him, 'kay?

My author copies of The Glycemic Load Diet Cookbook are here! And they look great. They'll be in the bookstores and at Amazon at the end of the month.

So having explained the difference between the glycemic index and the glycemic load recently, let me explain The Glycemic Load Diet.

Of all my recipes, the one I've published the most times is Dana's No-Sugar Ketchup, which appeared in... oh, goodness, 500 Low-Carb Recipes, 500 More Low-Carb Recipes, 15 Minute Low-Carb Recipes,The Low-Carb Barbecue Book, 200 Low-Carb Slow-Cooker Recipes, and quite possibly another I'm not thinking of.

Which makes it a tad embarrassing to admit that I've improved it. I mean, I've put the old version in all those books, and now with one simple change I've really made the recipe noticeably better. It's a d'oh! moment, that's for sure.

The original goes like this...