Er... who's "Nathan?" Never mind. Dec. 23
Breakfast (eaten at 7:00 before driving my daughter to school for a special packing day-- they are moving to their brand-new school building over the winter vacation!): Leftover spaghetti with a fried egg on top. Two Christmas cookies.
Lunch (eaten at 3:15, upon arriving home from work after a busy holiday-season wait shift): 1/2 grapefruit, 5 gingersnaps, Safeway wheat roll toasted with butter and jam, pistachios. One mint truffle Hershey's kiss afterwards, because they are there, sitting on the table.
Dinner: Burger patties made with ground beef, onions, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper, on Safeway Kaiser rolls, with tomato and red onion and sprouts, ketchup and mustard. Roasted potato slices, which is what I often do to stand in for French fries. Frozen peas.
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half. Couple of Hershey's kisses here and there.
Dec. 24
Breakfast: Leftover spaghetti with a leftover hamburger patty. 2 Christmas cookies.
Lunch: BLT on wheat bread from work, eaten as I walked home from the restaurant to meet my family. Quick shower, change, and regroup to drive to Virginia and spend Christmas eve at my sister-in-law's house.
Dinner: 1 slice ham, half a twice-baked potato, 4 green beans, 2 slices baguette with butter. There were not enough green beans to go around (8 of us) and we politely offered them to each other. I think there might have been one more component to supper, but I can't quite remember what it was.
Snacks: (at work) a piece of chocolate or two, a spoonful of milkshake or two. (At my sister-in-law's) they set out appetizers, as always. Unknown number of tiny pieces of French bread with spinach-artichoke dip. Two or three hefty chunks of German sausage with mustard sauce. Two or three crackers with cheese. Glass of red wine. (After dinner) two of my sister-in-law's Christmas cookies. I am not sure whether this was everything.
Dec. 25
Oh, stockings. They ruin all accounting.
Breakfast: Safeway jalapeno-cheddar bagel with Safeway house brand garlic-herb "cream cheese spread" (which turned out to be really weird), nova salmon, tomato, and red onion. Bagels eaten between opening Christmas stockings and presents under the tree.
Lunch: A Safeway Kaiser roll, toasted, with honey pecan cream cheese.
Dinner: my daughter made Christmas dinner! Pork tenderloin rubbed with lots of black pepper, homemade cranberry sauce, sauteed kale, mashed sweet potatoes. Everything was simple yet delicious. She did a great job. I did a bit of advising and I peeled the cooked sweet potatoes (because she was on the phone), but it was more or less her party. She also decided on the menu. She made pumpkin pie for dessert, which required a bit more advising, but was still her own pie. She learned the important life lesson that there is no use stressing out about perfect pie crust: just put that raggedy thing in the pan, fix it up a bit, and it will work out just fine. Plenty of whipped cream. Good job, honey. I'm so proud. She rarely cooks with me, but every time I complimented her skills she said that her knowledge came from watching me or cooking with me on past occasions. So when did this happen? What a mystery. I guess I consider that my dad taught me to cook, even though I only spent a minority of weekends at his house.
Snacks: Oh, man. I don't know. A Mary Jane candy. A Ferrero Rocher truffle or two. A Ghiradelli dark chocolate square. Part of an Equal Exchange lemon-ginger-black pepper chocolate bar. A Sugar Daddy pop. Two Christmas cookies. Tiny sliver of extra pie. 3.5 cups coffee with half and half, 2.5 regular, 1 decaf. 2 glasses of eggnog with brandy in it. (And yet there were supplies we didn't even get into. The red wine. The fancy hot cocoa. The candied nuts.)
Breakfast (eaten at 7:00 before driving my daughter to school for a special packing day-- they are moving to their brand-new school building over the winter vacation!): Leftover spaghetti with a fried egg on top. Two Christmas cookies.
Lunch (eaten at 3:15, upon arriving home from work after a busy holiday-season wait shift): 1/2 grapefruit, 5 gingersnaps, Safeway wheat roll toasted with butter and jam, pistachios. One mint truffle Hershey's kiss afterwards, because they are there, sitting on the table.
Dinner: Burger patties made with ground beef, onions, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper, on Safeway Kaiser rolls, with tomato and red onion and sprouts, ketchup and mustard. Roasted potato slices, which is what I often do to stand in for French fries. Frozen peas.
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half. Couple of Hershey's kisses here and there.
Dec. 24
Breakfast: Leftover spaghetti with a leftover hamburger patty. 2 Christmas cookies.
Lunch: BLT on wheat bread from work, eaten as I walked home from the restaurant to meet my family. Quick shower, change, and regroup to drive to Virginia and spend Christmas eve at my sister-in-law's house.
Dinner: 1 slice ham, half a twice-baked potato, 4 green beans, 2 slices baguette with butter. There were not enough green beans to go around (8 of us) and we politely offered them to each other. I think there might have been one more component to supper, but I can't quite remember what it was.
Snacks: (at work) a piece of chocolate or two, a spoonful of milkshake or two. (At my sister-in-law's) they set out appetizers, as always. Unknown number of tiny pieces of French bread with spinach-artichoke dip. Two or three hefty chunks of German sausage with mustard sauce. Two or three crackers with cheese. Glass of red wine. (After dinner) two of my sister-in-law's Christmas cookies. I am not sure whether this was everything.
Dec. 25
Oh, stockings. They ruin all accounting.
Breakfast: Safeway jalapeno-cheddar bagel with Safeway house brand garlic-herb "cream cheese spread" (which turned out to be really weird), nova salmon, tomato, and red onion. Bagels eaten between opening Christmas stockings and presents under the tree.
Lunch: A Safeway Kaiser roll, toasted, with honey pecan cream cheese.
Dinner: my daughter made Christmas dinner! Pork tenderloin rubbed with lots of black pepper, homemade cranberry sauce, sauteed kale, mashed sweet potatoes. Everything was simple yet delicious. She did a great job. I did a bit of advising and I peeled the cooked sweet potatoes (because she was on the phone), but it was more or less her party. She also decided on the menu. She made pumpkin pie for dessert, which required a bit more advising, but was still her own pie. She learned the important life lesson that there is no use stressing out about perfect pie crust: just put that raggedy thing in the pan, fix it up a bit, and it will work out just fine. Plenty of whipped cream. Good job, honey. I'm so proud. She rarely cooks with me, but every time I complimented her skills she said that her knowledge came from watching me or cooking with me on past occasions. So when did this happen? What a mystery. I guess I consider that my dad taught me to cook, even though I only spent a minority of weekends at his house.
Snacks: Oh, man. I don't know. A Mary Jane candy. A Ferrero Rocher truffle or two. A Ghiradelli dark chocolate square. Part of an Equal Exchange lemon-ginger-black pepper chocolate bar. A Sugar Daddy pop. Two Christmas cookies. Tiny sliver of extra pie. 3.5 cups coffee with half and half, 2.5 regular, 1 decaf. 2 glasses of eggnog with brandy in it. (And yet there were supplies we didn't even get into. The red wine. The fancy hot cocoa. The candied nuts.)
A lot of chocolate, like I have. Dec. 26
Despite the moderate sugar chaos of the past week, I think that writing this diary has kept it calmer than most years. It is the morning after Christmas and I have been up for an hour and a half drinking coffee (because the cat woke me up by standing on my chest at 6:30)... and still I have not touched a single item out of my stocking yet. No impulse even to do so. Not even after extensive writing about yesterday's chocolate and treats. If the main dietary problem with the holidays is that we totally lose track of what and when we are eating-- just grazing on the treats that are constantly placed in front of us-- the mere practice of accounting may keep things from spiraling out of control.
Having written this, I then got interrupted and have virtually no idea what I ate for the rest of the day. I believe that for breakfast I had a jalapeno-cheddar bagel sandwich with garlic-chive cream cheese spread, ham, tomato, and red onion. There was occasional eating of chocolate, though not too excessively. Did I eat lunch? I have no memory of having done so. Oh, yes, I reheated a leftover hamburger patty with some roasted potato and green peas and ate that while my loved ones were eating different reheated things. For dinner, my husband and I were pretty tired of eating rich food, and so we stopped at the Sweet Green, where I had a big salad of romaine lettuce and spinach, roast turkey, sweet potato, brussels sprouts, broccoli, beets and parmesan cheese with balsamic dressing. I asked for light dressing, but ended up having quite a lot. It was good to have a big bowl of vegetables, though. At the movies afterwards, I ate only one or two dark chocolate squares that I'd brought with me, and a few of my husband's candied nuts-- no big packages of Sour Patch Kids this time!
Oh, and at some point during the day I fixed my whole family fancy mochas, with coffee, special La Chatelaine cocoa, hot milk, and real whipped cream left over from the pumpkin pie.
Despite the moderate sugar chaos of the past week, I think that writing this diary has kept it calmer than most years. It is the morning after Christmas and I have been up for an hour and a half drinking coffee (because the cat woke me up by standing on my chest at 6:30)... and still I have not touched a single item out of my stocking yet. No impulse even to do so. Not even after extensive writing about yesterday's chocolate and treats. If the main dietary problem with the holidays is that we totally lose track of what and when we are eating-- just grazing on the treats that are constantly placed in front of us-- the mere practice of accounting may keep things from spiraling out of control.
Having written this, I then got interrupted and have virtually no idea what I ate for the rest of the day. I believe that for breakfast I had a jalapeno-cheddar bagel sandwich with garlic-chive cream cheese spread, ham, tomato, and red onion. There was occasional eating of chocolate, though not too excessively. Did I eat lunch? I have no memory of having done so. Oh, yes, I reheated a leftover hamburger patty with some roasted potato and green peas and ate that while my loved ones were eating different reheated things. For dinner, my husband and I were pretty tired of eating rich food, and so we stopped at the Sweet Green, where I had a big salad of romaine lettuce and spinach, roast turkey, sweet potato, brussels sprouts, broccoli, beets and parmesan cheese with balsamic dressing. I asked for light dressing, but ended up having quite a lot. It was good to have a big bowl of vegetables, though. At the movies afterwards, I ate only one or two dark chocolate squares that I'd brought with me, and a few of my husband's candied nuts-- no big packages of Sour Patch Kids this time!
Oh, and at some point during the day I fixed my whole family fancy mochas, with coffee, special La Chatelaine cocoa, hot milk, and real whipped cream left over from the pumpkin pie.