Many of you may have read this article from Yahoo Health that went up two days ago. It’s the sad tale of British teen Stacey Irvine who collapsed and was rushed to the hospital with severe breathing problems.

Turns out what was wrong with her was that since she was two years old – that’s fifteen years, folks – Irvine has subsisted on a diet of Chicken McNuggets meals. That’s pretty much it. Just incredibly processed, deep-fried chicken nuggets and fries, with an occasional slice of toast or handful of potato chips to mix things up. No leafy greens, no root veggies that aren’t fried potatoes, no fruit, no fish, no red meat, no pulses: nada else.

As a result, Irvine suffers from anemia and swollen veins in her tongue. Clearly what she was doing was not good for her health.

But what interests me is the fact that the article seems to focus on the badness of Chicken McNuggets as opposed to what was really wrong with Irvine’s diet: she was eating only one thing and had done so for fifteen years.

In many ways, what shocks me the most about this story isn’t that eating nothing but Chicken McNuggets is bad for you, but the fact that she managed to get along on that and so very little else for so freaking long.

Even proponents of fad diets based around a single food, such as grapefruit or cabbage soup, only recommend you stay on them for roughly a week at a time and then stop for at least a couple weeks. For my money, that’s a great big flashing red warning sign to stay away from that diet. After all, if it were healthy to eat nothing but grapefruit, you wouldn’t have to stop so quickly or give it as long a rest, would you?

In a more nuanced article at CBS News, it’s pointed out that even if what Irvine had been eating every day to the exclusion of all other foods had been something generally recognized as healthy, such as carrots, she would still be suffering ill effects on her health because no single food item can fulfill all of a person’s nutritional needs.

So if you like McNuggets, eat the freaking McNuggets. Just make sure you eat something else once in a while, too. And if you like carrots, eat the freaking carrots… and make sure you eat something else once in a while, too.

It’s not what food you eat that makes it unhealthy: it’s eating only one food.

Variety isn’t just the spice of life. It’s also good for you.

Every twice in a while dreams really do come true.

Remember way back in November when I wrote up a Christmas wish list? If not, I’ll give you a minute to go back and take another look. It’s okay. I’ll be right here.

Got it? Good.

Four of the five things on that list are still not within my grasp, but they will be one day. One of them, though…

Yes, Mr. Twistie got the hint and gave me the entire series of Pushing Daisies on Blu Ray!

Soooo… I guess the party’s at Casa Twistie, all you fellow Pushing Daisies fans!

Of course, between one thing and another it took us until yesterday to actually set up the Blu Ray player we bought three months ago (don’t ask). But yesterday at long last I was able once again to follow the adventures of the Pie Maker and the Girl Called Chuck.

What could possibly make me happier?

Well, there is one thing. I may not have gotten that Jacques Pepin megatome I wanted, but I did get another amazing cookbook I wanted for Christmas:

All About Roasting by Molly Stevens is an in-depth look at the art of roasting as well as a fabulous compendium of tasty recipes to test out your new skills. I’m  learning lots of new exciting things about roasting food, which delights me. But even if you don’t sit down and read about the whys and wherefores, the recipes are so delicious the book would still be well worth the list price of $35.00. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that you can get it right now at Cooking.com for a mere $23.09.

Trust me, the recipe for the roasted fennel, red onion, and orange salad is worth the price of admission alone! How do I know? I made it last night for dinner. Mr. Twistie was a little unsure about eating roasted orange peel at first, but once he tasted it he yummed it up.

I can’t wait to try out more recipes!

So yesterday was a wonderful day. I got to try out my two favorite Christmas presents, and they both made me tremendously happy.

What does all this mean?

Clearly it means the party is at Casa Twistie!

What’s making you feel like the party’s at your place today?

If you work in an office setting, chances are the annual holiday bash is rapidly approaching. It’s a time to let your hair down, relax a bit with the people you spend more time with than your family, and see whether the big bosses can take the legendarily lethal punch the folks in accounts receivable make.

If you don’t work in an office setting, chances are you still have at least one good friend or family member who considers the winter holiday season a darn good excuse to throw a big bash. It’s a time to catch up with those people you only see at these parties, nibble from the annual cheese ball, and see who succumbs to the lethal punch the host makes.

I well remember my parents’ annual Christmas do. The decorations, the careful choosing of which music to play in what order, the platters of fabulous food… and my fathers’ lethal eggnog which I swear could induce alcohol poisoning from six feet away.

I’ve been to a lot of parties for a lot of holidays over the years, and the one thing that seems absolutely guaranteed at each of them is seriously free-flowing liquor. Either there’s a single punch that will begin impairing your ability to pass a sobriety test before you even begin to drink it, or there’s a bewildering variety  of adult beverages and a genial host urging you to try a bit of everything.

How to get through the season with your driving record clean and your social network intact? Thinking just a bit beforehand can be just the ticket to keep you from disaster.

Know your limits. The simple fact is that we all have different limits. What yours is will depend on a number of factors, including: your weight, your history with alcohol, your individual metabolism, how much you eat… a lot of things. Pay attention to how you feel when you drink. For some of us one beer will be enough to make getting behind the wheel of a car a risky proposition, while another might still be okay after a lot more… provided the other circumstances are right, too. Don’t try to prove you’re less of a lightweight than you actually are.

Never drink on an empty stomach. And if you’re going to drink more, don’t stop eating. No, this is not advising everyone to gorge themselves all night long. But it’s a well-documented fact that liquor hits a lot harder on a system that has nothing else to chew on, as it were. Food helps slightly mitigate the effects of alcohol, so have a couple nibbles before you have a cocktail. And then eat again shortly.

Don’t mix your drinks. That’s not to say never have a mixed drink, of course. Just if you start with wine, don’t move on to hard liquor. And if you start with martinis, don’t switch to a different cocktail. Sticking to one drink makes it a little easier to discern when you’ve had enough, and when having more is a bad idea. The one exception to this rule is that it’s okay to mix it up a bit with something non-alcoholic. There’s no shame in club soda.

Have a designated driver. This is a great idea. As long as there’s more than one person in the car, have one of them stick to the apple cider and club soda end of the scale, so everyone knows there’s someone safe to drive. Just remember that if you use the fact you’re not driving as an excuse to get blotto in public, you’d better be prepared to be the cautionary tale until someone else embarrasses themselves worse at another party. The guy who came to our family Christmas party when I was fourteen, had too much of Dad’s eggnog and started eating the styrofoam popcorn strings? Yeah, we still remember him, even though he never came to another one of our parties. People who were there still shake their heads.

If you see someone about to leave who has clearly had too much to drink, get the car keys away from them. You don’t want the accident they get into on your conscience, do you? Drunk driving causes too many deaths every year. And if it was your party, in some areas you can be held legally responsible if someone leaves tanked and gets into an accident.

There are a lot of great reasons to celebrate this time of year. And everyone should have a great time celebrating. Just remember not to be the one suffering the repercussions of poor judgment with booze. Besides, isn’t it better to be the one who kept a level enough head to know where all the bodies are buried?

Why yes, yes it is.

Remember, everyone: there’s still time to change your plans.

I’m talking about having Thanksgiving with your family.

No, I’m definitely not saying that Thanksgiving with your family is a horrible idea. I don’t know your family. A family Thanksgiving may be just what you need to make you feel fantastic and confident and joyful for the rest of the year… I’m just saying not all families are created equal. And not all families are healthy for us to interact with during the holidays.

If your family feels no meal is complete without a side of body shame or the ritual humiliation of the fatty at the table, don’t go. Don’t do this to yourself. Really don’t do this to yourself if you’re expected to cook the feast, but accept that every mouthful will be accompanied with snide remarks about whether you really need the calories.

Nobody deserves to be treated that way. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.

Now if you have already made the plans, bought the turkey, and polished the silver, well, okay, you may have to go through with the dinner as planned. But that doesn’t mean you need to put up with abuse at your own table. Here are a few tips to help you get through the ordeal, and a couple to break the cycle afterwards.

Stand up for yourself. You are not a doormat. You do not deserve to be walked upon. Your raison d’etre is not so that others may wipe their muddy souls on you. I know it’s much easier said than done, and believe it or not, I do sometimes struggle with this one. But it gets easier the more you do it, so don’t hesitate to practice. Sit down in front of the mirror or in a room by yourself and practice telling people that yes, you have every right to a slice of the pumpkin pie you baked. No, you do not need to discuss the latest fad diet, and no, you do not wish everyone else at the table to discuss which sort of bariatric surgery you ought to have. It’s your body. You get to decide how to care for it, and it’s not up for general discussion.

Set the ground rules beforehand. If people are coming to your home, they need to follow your house rules. Even if you are going to them, you get to set boundaries around your body and your personal decisions. Let your guests know that the house rules include not commenting on what any person at the table has or has not put on their plate. If you are going to them, inform everyone in advance that comments on what you choose to eat or pass by are not welcome. Tell them your weight is not something you wish discussed.

Be prepared to follow through if the rules are broken. If it’s your home and the insults get bad enough, you can tell people to leave it. Yes, even your own mother. If you’re at their house, you still aren’t glued to the chair… and your pie/cake/stuffing/cranberry sauce/whatever you provided isn’t nailed down to the table, either. You can leave… and take your goodies with you. It won’t be fun. It will be talked about. People will take sides. It could get ugly. All the same, you deserve respect simply because you are a person. If others are unprepared to treat you with that respect, they need to understand that you can still respect yourself.

Don’t stoop to a schoolyard level. I’m not advocating simply taking your toys and going home at the first slip of the tongue, mind you. Nor do I in any way condone being rude about this. Don’t get into shouting matches, don’t call people names, and don’t hurl a pie in their faces. There are much better uses for pie. If someone snottily asks if you need that helping of stuffing, I recommend the Miss Manners approach: raise one eyebrow (if you can), stare icily at them and reply with  ’I beg your pardon?’ This immediately identifies the etiquette faux pas as theirs for asking, not yours for choosing to eat.

If you cannot muster up the icy stare and raised eyebrow, you can also just look them in the eye, say ‘yes’ and go back to eating. Either way, you have demonstrated that you will not be shamed into starving yourself at a feast. If the inquisition continues, see the previous rule.

Your health includes your mental and emotional health. A lot of body shamers are quick to tell us that they are only doing it for our health. This is a combination of horse hockey and weasel language that deserves to be laughed at until tears of mirth stream down our faces. Teaching people to be ashamed of their body size/shape is toxic, both mentally and physically. There are studies out there that demonstrate that people who feel good about their bodies are healthier physically and emotionally than those who dislike their bodies, regardless of the actual size of those bodies. Anyone who tells you to hate your body for health is actually part of making you unhealthier. Don’t let them do it to you.

Plan to opt out for next year. Look, you can set rules, you can refuse to accept a side of shame with your dinner, you can stand up for yourself… and Thanksgiving with your family may still be a form of torture that would make Medieval witch hunters blanche at in horror. If they can’t find a way to include you at the table without making you the ritual whipping girl, don’t eat with them again. Eat with friends. Go serve Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen. Make a perfect Thanksgiving for one for yourself and share it with a good book.

Look, I love me some tradition, but only when that tradition offers comfort and joy. If you’re doing something you hate simply because it’s expected, it’s time to throw off the shackles of expectation. Go do something that heals you and gives you joy.

The point of Thanksgiving is appreciation of whatever level of bounty you have available to you. So do what makes you feel comforted and thankful. Being abused is never something that will do that for you.

Find your happy place. Be there.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Ahh, the beauty of the Thanksgiving table! The bounty! The rich fall colors! The delicious aromas wafting their ways teasingly to your schnozzola!

Of course, all this waxing poetic isn’t going to help much if you’re still poring over your cookbooks looking for the best side dishes at this eleventh hour. If I may, I have a couple recipes that may answer a maiden’s prayer deliciously and easily. Both are tasty and super simple. In fact, one of them requires about three minutes, one knife, and a food processor. Let’s start with that, shall we?

Last week I mentioned my favorite cranberry, orange, ginger relish, and the ever-delightful dinazad requested the recipe. Well, here it is in all its three-minute glory:

12oz fresh cranberries

1 small navel orange cut into wedges. Leave unpeeled.

1/3Cup crystalized ginger, roughly chopped. Don’t be afraid to be generous with this.

1Tblsp granulated sugar

dash salt

Put all the ingredients into a food processor. Process until coarsely ground, scraping down the sides once or twice. Put into the prettiest bowl you can find, and refrigerate covered until it’s time to serve.

How easy is that?

The other is a little more complicated, but still a lot easier than people will assume when they taste it. It’s the one recipe I still have from my mother, and it tastes like the holidays to me.

Patrician Potatoes

1 1/2lbs. potatoes

3Cups cottage cheese

3/4Cup sour cream

1 1/2Tbsp grated onion (I like to be a bit generous, here)

salt and pepper to taste

1/4Cup melted butter

1/2Cup chopped toasted almonds

Preheat oven to 350F

Peel potatoes and cook in boiling water until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and mash thoroughly.   Stir in cottage cheese, sour cream, onions, salt and pepper. Spoon mixture into a buttered 2qt. baking dish. Drizzle melted butter over the top, and sprinkle with almonds. The dish may be made up to a day in advance to this point. If you do this, keep it covered in the refrigerator until ready to bake.

Bake for 30 minutes. Serve to delighted dinner guests. Have copies of the recipe on hand, because I can virtually guarantee you that someone will ask for it.

“Easy as pie” has long struck me as an ironic colloquialism. Oh, not for me. When I pulled my very first pie from the oven as a small child, it was pretty much perfect, and in more than forty years, I’ve still never turned out a bad one. Don’t hate me because I make perfect pie crust.

But it took about two minutes once that golden, flaky crust emerged from the oven to realize that mine was not the common experience. I think that’s about how long it took me to look up from my creation to see my mother banging her head against a wall in frustration because she had never in her life ever made a pie crust that nice. Over the remaining twenty years of her life, she never would, either. My mother was an amazing cook, but pie crust eluded her entirely. From that day forward, pie crust was my bailiwick and mine alone. If Mom wanted a pie, I was the one deputized to bake it.

For Thanksgiving each year, it was my task to bake the pumpkin pies. I loved doing it. To this day I love doing it. And to this day, my crusts turn out perfect. I don’t know why this is so, but they do. Still, over the years I’ve read up on the subject and learned a few tricks and tips that I can pass on to those who don’t have the same natural affinity for pie crust that I apparently was born with. And so I shall.

Keep your ingredients cold. The more your butter/shortening/lard heats up, the more likely you are to wind up with a greasy mess. Heat is not your friend here. Don’t start with room temperature fat; make sure it’s cold when  you start working it in. And yes, I find that cooling the flour as well beforehand helps keep the fat cool while working it.

Work quickly. The longer you work your dough, the hotter it gets, and the less likely to turn out well. Whether you’re doing it by hand (my preferred method) or in a food processor, get things mixed as quickly as you can.

Don’t get your fat too well mixed in. When you stop mixing your dough, the butter (or whatever fat you’re using) should still be in visible chunks. You don’t want it in slabs, of course, but when the books talk about ‘pea sized grains’ they mean make sure you can still see where the butter is. If you get it to the point where everything is too smooth, you’ve overworked the dough and your crust will be tough. So keep it grainy and rustic.

Rest your dough before rolling it out. I will admit, I left this step out for years. Then again, for many years I never knew the joy of an all butter crust because Mom taught me to make them with Crisco. I now make my crusts with butter because I think they taste better and I prefer the texture. There was nothing wrong with Crisco crusts, but now that I’ve seen the difference, I much prefer butter. It’s a personal choice. And my unrested dough did just fine, back in the day, but I find that since I started resting the dough by putting it in the refrigerator for half an hour to an hour after mixing it, that I really prefer the results.

You see, not only does keeping the butter cold help to make a flaky crust, letting your dough rest after mixing (and by that I mean forming it into a flattened disk about five or six inches across, wrapping in plastic wrap and setting in the fridge) also relaxes the gluten, making the dough less elastic. That means that when you roll it out it sticks less to the surface, which means you use less flour on your rolling surface, making your crust less likely to turn out tough. It also means that once you roll it out and put it in your pie pan, it’s a lot less likely to shrink. As I said, I usually only rest the dough for half an hour to an hour, but I’m impatient for pie. The longer you let it rest, the more the gluten relaxes, and the better the results. Leave the dough in the fridge overnight for the very best results.

Don’t be afraid to flavor your crust. Look, a basic pie crust is certainly a tasty thing, but I love to add a tiny touch of the unexpected and it’s never let me down yet. When I’m putting together my dry ingredients, I like to add a little bit of the dominant herb or spice that will be in the filling. Tossing in a little ginger or cinnamon for a sweet pie, or a dash of thyme or rosemary for a quiche is something I find tremendously tasty. Polls of happy dinner guests confirm my analysis.

Protect your edges. Crimp a little aluminum foil over the rim  of your pie crust so it doesn’t overbake. It’s usually best to do this in about the final fifteen to twenty minutes of the bake time.

If all else fails, there is no shame in frozen pie crust. That’s right, I said it. Not everyone has a natural affinity for pie crust, and not everyone who doesn’t is going to find it worthwhile to spend the time and effort to overcome that particular weakness. No, it’s not the same. And?

Look, in the end, it’s up to you how you get pie on your table. I’ve known a lot of otherwise amazing cooks who just never got the hang of pie crust. My own mother was one of them. She shamelessly used her seven-year-old daughter to get a better pie on the table. If you’ve tried and tried and it’s just not working for you, use the freezer case, or order pie from the bakery. It’s not the end of the world by any means. Getting decent food on the table is more important than whether you made every bit of it from scratch.

Happy pie baking to you all!

There were some fabulous comments to my article last week about Thanksgiving dishes we love and loathe. It’s a meal most people have wildly strong opinions about, in large part because of our histories with the holiday.

So I’m not going to even attempt to tell you what you have to have on your table or what you must needs avoid for fear of winding up in Food Hell. Where one person adores green bean casserole, another hates it. Where one can only eat homemade stuffing straight from the bird, another will only eat Stove Top cooked on, well, the stove top. Where one thinks sweet potatoes are naked sans miniature marshmallows, another holds any sweetening of sweet potatoes as an abomination. Where one wants a Jell-o mold, another longs for green salad. Pitched battles can be fought over pumpkin pie vs pecan.

In the end, I’m not too exercised about which dishes make it Thanksgiving for you and which you hold in contempt. I’m curious, but not worried too much about your individual decisions.

I do, however, have a few tips if you’re floundering about wondering what to cook for this Important Meal.

Know your audience. Before you can make any decisions, you need to know how many people are coming over to eat with you, and have a general idea of their Thanksgiving preferences. Be aware of any dietary restrictions, whether from religious belief, moral choice, medical issues, or just plain old preference. The great thing about the fact that Thanksgiving is usually served family style with platters and bowls being passed around the table is that you don’t have to limit every dish so that every person can have some… but you do need to know what to quietly warn people they won’t find appropriate.

Really think about what makes it Thanksgiving to you. See? There was a method to the madness of asking that question last week. You need to know what still makes it Thanksgiving if everything else is different. But once you know that, you are free to consider a Thanksgiving without the things you really hate, or that your family never touches despite your efforts. If the Thanksgiving thing you can’t stand is the turkey, you can serve ham or roast beef or sweet and sour shrimp, or pumpkin barley casserole instead. So long as you’ve got your beloved dish of green bean casserole or that special Jell-o mold or cranberries in some form on the table to make it the holiday you know, it’s okay to think outside the box. Just be sure the rest of your family is ready to experiment, too.

Play to your culinary strengths. This is not the time to try out something you aren’t absolutely sure you can do. Just be aware of techniques you’re good at and go with dishes that use those techniques. I’m just plain brilliant with baking and roasting… but sauces, not so much. I can do them, but they aren’t my strong suit. Knowing that, I look for recipes that allow me to show off what I do best and don’t rely heavily on the stuff I’m not as good at. So if you poach like a whiz, but aren’t very good at frying, look for something you can poach and pass the fried dishes by.

Know your resources. I’ve got one stove with five burners and a single oven to work with. I’ve got a sadly slender bank account. I’ve got a bajillion cookbooks. I’ve got a beautiful marble pastry slab. I’ve got great taste buds and a lot of food knowledge. I’ve got a kitchen table that seats four in reasonable comfort as long as nobody needs to get into the refrigerator. I’ve got Mom’s silver, but no formal china. I’ve got plenty of time. That’s what I’ve got. You may have more or less burners, a second oven or just one that’s really tiny. You may have more money but less literature to work with. You may have half an hour here and there to work with. Each of us has resources that help and lack of resources that hinder us in creating the perfect menu. Be aware of both your options and your limitations. After all, if you have one oven, you can’t cook two dishes in it at the same time unless they cook at the same temperature. And when the money’s gone, the money’s gone. But once you know where your strong and weak points are, you can get creative about exploiting one and mitigating the other.

Once you have a good idea of what you’re cooking, take a moment to work out a prep timeline. See what can be prepared in advance and how long things need to cook at the last minute. When you see  a conflict, either figure out a way around it or change your menu. This is where you get the best grasp of whether you’ve created a truly workable plan. And be sure to give yourself a bit of leeway here and there. Things come up at the last moment, we all lose track of time once in a while. If your schedule is too rigid, you’ll have no room if you fall behind. Besides, you’ll need time to relax a little and make yourself presentable before people show up hungry!

If you’ve got another cook coming to your table, consider farming out a dish or two. This is actually the deal I’ve got with a good friend. Mr. Twistie and I go visit her, and bring along a couple dishes. Basically, she makes the turkey and stuffing (homemade, in the bird, sausage and cornbread), a salad, and opens the can of cranberry jelly. I make the mashed potatoes (my mother’s recipe with sour cream and cottage cheese in it, topped with melted butter and toasted almonds), a fabulous fresh cranberry ginger orange relish, and the pumpkin pie. Then I spend a couple days with my friend eating leftovers and watching insane amounts of Criminal Minds and the occasional Bruce Campbell movie while Mr. Twistie goes home and plays in his studio for a couple days without worrying about whether I’m feeling oppressed by it. All is well. Then she sends me home with a rabbit to put in my freezer until such time as Mr. Twistie will be gone for several days. Yum.

Having Thanksgiving at your table without my mother’s annual meltdown that signaled the official start of the holiday season is mostly a matter of preparation. If you know what you’re doing, avoid things that make you crazy, rely on your strengths, know where to delegate and what to just punt… you can have a lovely meal with good friends and family that will please them all and leave you smiling.

In fact, until I checked the comments here, I had no idea it was just a few weeks away. I am, at the moment, sitting on the terraza of Villa Plumcake overlooking the Pacific, drinking pineapple juice and watching the solitary surfer in hopes case he gets attacked by a shark (what? Shark Week was months ago and now I’m bored. That doesn’t make me a bad person.) which makes it difficult to think of turkeys and casseroles and poorly-dressed yankees who couldn’t find their way to a proper place like Virginia and probably weren’t even Episcopalians to begin with.

However, this upcoming Thanksgiving will be my last one in the US for at least a few years so I am getting uncharacteristically sentimental, especially because it’s my first Thanksgiving without my grandparents who raised me, as they both died in December of last year.

That brings us to Moldy Salad.

Moldy salad made its appearance twice a year: Christmas and Thanksgiving. It was a…festive…gelatin-based creation, consisting of layers of a white Cool Whip/gelatin/cream cheese  concoction and a red-flavored Jell-O one into which canned cherries had been lovingly incorporated. My grandmother set this in an avocado green aluminum bundt mold that will probably give us all early-onset Alzheimer’s, and served it sliced on a single leaf of–you guessed it– iceberg lettuce. The overall effect was as if someone served us a bisected wedge of the Wicked Witch leg, and I’m not sure it tasted much better.

So now here’s the question:

My grandmother, whose qualities were otherwise countless (depending on how high you could count) could not cook to save her life. She didn’t like food, she didn’t like cooking and she didn’t like eating. Still, if there was a dish for which she was familially famous, it was Moldy Salad.

I am now in possession of the old bundt mold and am halfway tempted to try to recreate the recipe as a sort of homage to my grandmother for my last Thanksgiving with my relatives.

Do I try to recreate her authentic recipe? Make a more posh (as in, actually made of food recognized as such in nature or at least by the FDA) version? Skip it altogether and let its memory stay jiggly but unsullied? I don’t eat Jell-O in any shape or form (long stay in the hospital when I was but a wee bairn) but it might be nice to do for the fam.

Suggestions? Recipes? Hideous family dishes you’ve known and loved? Put it in the comments!

As you’re all probably aware by now, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. It’s about good food, and it’s about appreciating the good things in life, both of which are things I really love. It gives me a chance to show off my culinary chops, which is my idea of a good time.

Over the centuries… well, the century and a half and change that Thanksgiving has been an official, annual, national holiday here in the States, the menu has more or less codified across the country. Sure there are regional and family traditions that don’t translate elsewhere, and there are the families who – because of allergies or other food restrictions – have to find ways to adapt the meal to fit their needs. And there are those brave souls who chuck the entire traditional meal because they just plain don’t like any of it. Still, wherever you go in the US of A on that fateful thursday, the vast majority of tables will feature at least these dishes: roast turkey with stuffing/dressing, mashed potatoes or a sweet potato dish, cranberries in some form, and pumpkin pie. And then there are the things that are more common than not, such as: green bean casserole, biscuits or dinner rolls, some sort of salad, and a second dessert, often apple or pecan pie.

Of that list, the one I absolutely cannot do without no matter what else is or isn’t on the table is the pumpkin pie, preferably baked by my own fair hands. I admit that part freely. I love to bake pies, and baking the pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving has been my job for the last forty-two years. No way am I giving that up until I am physically incapable of doing it anymore! For me, pumpkin is the flavor of Thanksgiving. It’s also my traditional day after Thanksgiving breakfast, along with a cup of strong, black coffee.

But there are a couple things on that list I could definitely survive never seeing on a Thanksgiving table again. Green bean casserole and anything that mucks up perfectly good sweet potatoes with marshmallows and too many sweet things, I’m looking at you. Sweet potatoes are already sweet. That’s why they’re called sweet potatoes. They don’t need to be drowned in sugar. As for green bean casserole, well, whether it’s made with a can of Campbell’s or from absolute scratch… it’s still got mushrooms in it and I can’t stand mushrooms. Leave out the casserole, though, and I love me some green beans.

If those things are on the table, obviously I won’t scream and throw hissey fits until they go away. I’ll just quietly keep passing them when they get to my end of the table and fill my plate with the things I love. But if they weren’t there… yeah, no tear shedding over that.

And there’s a family dish that I miss a lot. My mother’s second dessert on Thanksgiving was always a steamed pudding, usually ginger. It was fabulous. Cakey and moist and full of little bites of fresh ginger, it made my mouth sing. Alas! These days I don’t have enough people around the table to seriously justify a second dessert. And since for the past couple years Mr. Twistie and I have shared the holiday with a friend who lives a two-hour drive away… we have to think carefully about what we can transport successfully in the confines of our car. A freshly steamed pudding is not easily transported. But maybe I’ll do one for Christmas this year.

So how about you? What’s your favorite of the traditional Thanksgiving dishes? What’s the one you never want to eat again in your lifetime? Is there a family or regional dish you grew up with that you miss? Or one you remember with a shudder of horror?

Let’s dish!

Intuitive eating is a concept that scares a lot of people. It makes many of them angry because of that fear. It seems like a runaway horse that’s going to trample the world. But when you get right down to it, it’s not such a scary thing. It’s just paying attention to your body and honoring it.

No, not everybody has to follow intuitive eating. That’s up to you as an individual. Still, before rejecting the idea out of hand, wouldn’t you like to know what it really is and isn’t? Here are some common myths about the concept and the truth behind the panic.

Myth 1: Intuitive eating is just sitting around stuffing Twinkies in your gobhole all day long. If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard this one… well, all of my credit cards would be paid off, that’s for sure! Say the words ‘intuitive eating’ and someone will immediately accuse you of wanting them to sit around on their backsides eating the world.

The Truth: intuitive eating is about listening to your body for cues of hunger and satiety. You do your best to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. Anyone who does this successfully isn’t going to eat all day and all night, because pretty much no body actually wants that much food. Intuitive eating is all about checking in with your body to figure out how much it really wants, and of what. My other guess is that Twinkies will not be the sole thing your body actually wants. That’s kind of a rare thing in the longrun.

Myth 2: You can’t do intuitive eating on a budget, because if your body wants surf and turf, you can’t afford it. This falls into the trap of thinking that every impulse has to be followed precisely and immediately. I would love to be able to afford to go out and get expensive foods every time the impulse comes to me, but the reality is that I couldn’t possibly afford it. And yet, I still practice intuitive eating on a sometimes painfully small budget.

The Truth: When your body is asking for lobster, it’s time to ask what there is in lobster that it wants, and then do your best to provide it. We all get cravings for very specific things that we may not be able to get right then. This might be due to budget restraints, access, or any number of causes. But when you start dreaming wildly of any particular meat, chances are your body is asking for protein. If you’re craving red meat, it might want iron, which your brain knows is present in red meats. Depending on which you think is more likely, you can reach for some peanut butter or some leafy greens, or leftover fried chicken… whatever you have available that will fulfill that need.

Myth 3: If I try intuitive eating, I’ll gain a bazillion pounds and get diabetes. A of of people are sure their bodies are the enemy and that only careful restriction keeps them from being one of those legendary people who become so large they are bedridden by it. Also, they are sure that every person over a particular body weight has diabetes, but thin people don’t get it… or at least aren’t to blame when they do, like fat people.

The Truth: If you try intuitive eating, you may, indeed gain weight… or you may lose it, or you may see no significant change in your body size. Also? Only a minority of fat people ever develop diabetes. Roughly three-quarters of us never do.

Weight is actually the second most heritable trait of the human body. The only one that is more directly traceable to your genetic history is height. If most of the people in your family tree are thin, chances are you will be, too. If most of them are fat, chances are that’s what your body will be like. If you’ve got a wide mix, well, anything might go.  We all talk about how we got our shoulders, our eyes, our noses, and our predilection for mystery novels from one relative or another. Well guess what: you got your waistline from them, too. And while it’s definitely possible to both lose and gain a certain amount of weight, the vast majority of people can only manage it within a pretty narrow margin, and then only over the short term. Over ninety percent of those who lose a significant amount of weight gain it all back within five years… along with some extra. By contrast, people who practice intuitive eating tend to maintain a fairly stable weight over the longterm. What that weight will be… well, that’s between you and your genes.

Myth 4: Intuitive eating doesn’t work. I know because I tried it once and I couldn’t stop eating chocolate.

The Truth: Intuitive eating isn’t like a light switch. It’s a process. That means that it takes time to get the hang of it, and the longer you’ve been out of tune with your body, the longer it will take to relearn how to listen. You may find that you do binge on chocolate or pasta or whatever you’ve been restricting in your diet… for a while. That’s the key. For a while. Eventually your body will figure out that it can have that food when it really wants to and will stop clamoring so hard for it. The thing is, it’s going to take time for it to figure out you’ll give it what it really wants. How long will it take? I can’t tell you that. But the day will come when you actually turn down your dietary Achilles’ heel because you don’t want it right then. It will happen, because your body will trust that it can get that treat when it really wants to.

Myth 5: I can’t practice intuitive eating because I have allergies/diabetes/gluten sensitivity.

The Truth: Any of these conditions does make practicing intuitive eating a little trickier, but not impossible. One of the things that makes non-fatal allergies and diabetes so frustrating to many people who have them is the dietary restrictions. But if you allow your body to take the lead in telling you what and when to eat, you’ll be able to gauge when it’s worth it to you to follow a craving for something you know isn’t very good for you, and when it isn’t. Mr. Twistie, as I have mentioned here before, has diabetes. He knows that cake isn’t good for him. But when we were both trying desperately to keep any sort of sugar away from him, cake was a terrible temptation, even though he hadn’t much cared for it before his diagnosis. Now that I’ve stopped being the Food Police, he knows he can make his own decision, and usually passes on the cake. Once in a blue moon he decides it’s worth a little less leeway with his food for the next day or two and has a small slice.

Obviously, if eating peanuts or shellfish will land you in the hospital and quite possibly kill you, you should avoid them. But if you get a sudden craving for something that won’t kill you, you can just take a moment and decide whether it’s worth it to you right then.

Myth 6: You just want me to be disgustingly fat!

The Truth: Seriously? I don’t give a rodent’s posterior what you weigh. Again, you may gain weight through intuitive eating, you may lose weight, or you may stay pretty much the same size. I don’t know which, and frankly I don’t care. I’m not concerned with the measure of your waistline or the size tag in your clothes. All I’m interested in is letting people know it’s okay to opt out of the diet industry and love their bodies unconditionally.

Whether or not you choose to try out intuitive eating is entirely up to you. What modifications you find work for you are between you and your body. I’m just pointing out that in this model, your body is your friend instead of your enemy.

You’ve got one life. You’ve got one body. Why spend one fighting the other?