This Mama Cooks! On a Diet

Seven tips for using visualization to plan your holiday eating

Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., author of Healthiest Meals on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What Meals to Eat and Why, has a marvelous idea to combat overindulging during the holidays – visualization.

Here are his seven tips on how to use visualization to help you with holiday eating:

1. Close your eyes and really picture the situation clearly.
2. Ask yourself whether what's being offered is going to be something that supports you in what you're doing or takes you off course.
3. Decide what you wish to allow yourself to indulge in -- if anything -- and when you decide to do it, indulge in it with gusto.
4. Make the choice and take the action.
5. Don't arrive hungry. A cup of soup or vegetable juice before arriving at a big event will help keep you in charge of your own actions.
6. Remember that stress leads to stress eating. Stress management is a critical part of managing weight gain during the holiday season.
7. If you do indulge, for goodness' sake enjoy it!

I like his philosophy behind indulging. If you do decide to indulge, do it consciously, guilt free, and make it worth your while. (Have a taste of a wonderful cheese or fine chocolate, not a Big Mac.)

Dr. Bowden goes into more detail about how to plan for holiday eating through visualization below.

Reynolds Parchment Paper is not just for holiday cookies

Even though you're trying to lose weight - and all your friends know it - you've probably been invited to a cookie swap party. You know, a party where each participant brings cookies to swap with friends along with a copy of the cookie recipe.

I was invited to two cookie exchanges this month, and I couldn't attend either of them because of a my new job (I'm now a community manager at CafeMom.com), and because I was already going out three times that week to parties and a holiday concert. Like I had time to bake let alone go out two more times!

I really dodged a bullet there and was thankful not to blow my weight loss plan. But just in case you're invited to a cookie exchange - and promise only to indulge a little and to give the rest of the cookies to friends, family and coworkers - you may want to check out ReynoldsSimpleSecrets.com.

(You should also check out my 5 Ways to Avoid Temptation During Bake Sale Season post for some tips to get out of baking yourself or eating everything you make.)

Get a Free Cookie Swap Starter Kit from Reynolds

Reynolds Parchment Paper and cookie exchange hostess, Robin Olson have teamed up to give helpful tips and tricks for a successful cookie exchange this holiday season.

Here's the cool part. You can get a cookie swap starter kit complete with Reynolds parchment paper, recipe cards, invitations, a cookie tin, and tips and tricks for hosting your own cookie swap by signing up here. The nice folks at MS&L Digital sent me one and its worth getting.

Extreme Fat Smash Diet uses for parchment paper

But since you don't want to get side tracked on your weight loss journey, give the recipes and invites to a friend, put your arts and crafts supplies in the tin, and keep the parchment paper to make a delicious, low calorie - Pesto Snapper en Papillote (in paper). This would be a perfect meal on either Weight Watchers (only 4 POINTS per serving) or the Extreme Fat Smash Diet.

(Check out Reynold's other en Papillote recipes.)

Christmas side dishes

To go along with the rotisserie pork roast, the mashed potatoes with blue cheese and the port wine gravy with mushrooms (click here to see those recipes), I'll be making roast veggies, a corn bread stuffing, cranberry sauce, and an English trifle for dessert (from The All New, All Purpose Joy of Cooking though this recipe is pretty close). While the stuffing and cranberry recipes are for Thanksgiving turkey, I don't see why these won't go with pork, too.

First, the cornbread stuffing. This recipes is adapted from the December 2005 issue of Healthy Cooking magazine - mostly the addition of sausage. I'm a firm believer in sausage in stuffing, so I just added it to the recipe.

The cranberry sauce is a cranberry-cherry compote from the November/December 2005 issue of Weight Watchers magazine. The year-end issue is always packed with fantastic, healthy, lower calorie recipes and worth keeping for future reference.

As always, having an egg allergic daughter and a mother-in-law who eats gluten free, makes any meal challenging. This year I hit the health food store and got gluten-free cornbread mix for the stuffing, gluten-free cake mix for the trifle, and egg substitute to use in both. I've had good luck with the gluten-free mixes in the past, but this will be the first time I use an egg substitute. Wish me luck!

Christmas grilling

This year I'm cooking Christmas dinner on our fabulous grill. This pork roast recipe comes from Dr. BBQ's Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook: A Real Barbecue Champion Brings the Tasty Recipes and Juicy Stories of the Barbecue Circuit to Your Backyard.

I've made it once before and it was fantastic. Nothing like taking advantage of the pork sales they have from time to time at the local grocery store, too.

My Mom's Rotisserie Pork Roast
Yield 8-12 servings

Ingredients:

1. 1 boneless pork loin roast (5 lbs.), rolled and tied
2. Freshly ground black pepper
3. 1 1/2 c. ketchup
4. 1 1/2 c. soy sauce

Directions:

1. Prepare your rotisserie to cook at medium-high heat, using hickory wood for flavor, if desired.
2. Season the roast liberally with the black pepper. Place the roast on the rotisserie per the manufacturer's instructions.
3. Whisk together the ketchup and soy sauce.
4. While the roast is cooking, brush with the ketchup and soy sauce mixture every ten minutes. Do it gently so as not to brush off the buildup of carmelization.
5. Continue applying the sauce until the roast reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees F. This should take 1 to 2 hours depending on your equipment.
6. Carefully remove the roast from the spit and transfer it to a platter. Let it rest 15 minutes, tented loosely with aluminum foil.
7. Slice and serve.

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Mashed potatoes with blue cheese and port wine gravy with mushrooms

We're attending a holiday party at Big Bad Dad's coworker's home. The whole point of the party is that one of his company's vendor/partners has a lamb farm and is bringing some lamb to roast. Everyone is going to bring side dishes.

We'll be bringing Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Blue Cheese and Garlic from the December 2005 issue of Healthy Cooking magazine. I made this for Thanksgiving, along with the Port Wine Gravy with Mushrooms. Both were rather fantastic and decadent dishes for being in a health-related magazine.

(Healthy Cooking's website is still under construction, so you can't see what a great magazine it is online. However, go down to your local gourmet food store and check it out. I recommend it over Cooking Light, which in my opinion, features too many fitness articles and the recipes are full of things you'd never use twice.)

Holiday madness

Here's my cooking list next week:

• bake 2 dozen cookies for Thursday night
• bake 2 dozen cookies for Friday afternoon
• cut and "glue" with royal frosting at least 24 "houses" made out of graham crackers for kindergarteners to decorate
• prepare 1 English dessert trifle for Friday night (see Joy of Baking for a great recipe)
• prepare 1 large dish of roasted vegetables for Friday night

Plus I have to clean the house for guests arriving Thursday, make sure that my son has one clean pair of dress pants without holes in the knees for Thursday night holiday concert, and grocery shop (including a trip to the health food store) for the week. I have two round trips to take to the airport and my usual freelance writing assignments and charter school duties. So what to do?

Cookie baking drives me nuts. First, I live at over a mile high in altitude, so my baking is flakey at best. Then I swear I'm cursed when it comes to cookies. Just see last year's attempt. However, there were some great recipes for cookies in last week's Denver Post. I'm very tempted to try the Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread cookies by Barbara Ellis. They sound easy, straightforward, and very, very delicious. So do her Santa's Bellybuttons cookies.

Worse comes to worse I can buy store-made cookies or use Pillsbury® refrigerated sugar dough. There's lots of cute cookie projects (like the ones from the US Postal Service's Christmas postage stamps) on the Pillsbury site, too!

Crockery ham with beer glaze

Having company or family over for Christmas is stressful enough without having to spend the whole day in the kitchen roasting a turkey and preparing elaborate side dishes. Spiral cut ham is a great option since it's precooked and presliced. Just warm it up and use the included flavor packet to make a sauce.

This recipe for crockery ham with a beer glaze is an easy alternative to using the sauce packet, requires very little prep time and only a small amount of attention.

So when you need a break from the holiday crowd, dash into the kitchen and prepare some mash potatoes and a couple of boxes of Green Giant's Frozen Baby Sweet Peas & Butter Sauce before serving up the ham.

(Hey, don't turn up your nose at these packaged frozen vegetables. James Beard created the butter sauce recipe for Clarence Birdsye back in either the '40s or '50s, and they're yummy.)

It's cookie time - final thoughts

I tried making the Pinwheel Cookies again, and this batch turned out even worse looking that the first ones. The cookies were cracked and not round. And the swirls got all goofed up again. Storing them is impossible because they crumble. But they're still delicious and the raw dough is addictive.

Some thoughts:

• A friend mentioned that you need to buy "real" butter from a dairy. She believes that the butter at the grocery store is full of oils that can affect the results of your cookie baking. She says her sister uses butter-flavored Crisco with good results, but she prefers butter.
• Forget the Pinwheel Cookies or the Sugar Cookie cutouts, since the dough has to be rolled out. Try making the Pecan Bars or the Thumbprint Cookies instead.
• If you ever have the jones for raw cookie dough, this is a perfect recipe - no raw, bacteria-laden eggs!

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It's cookie time! - Update

I just finished making the Pinwheel Cookies from Kraft's recipe for 4-in-1 cookie dough. The dough was easy to make and absolutely delicious.

Another benefit of this recipe (versus a traditional sugar cookie recipe) is that it's egg-free for those allergic to eggs, or people like me who like to nibble on raw cookie dough.

However, rolling out the dough was much harder than I thought, because it was too fragile to pick up once you rolled it out. The dough stretched out and ripped numerous times, and the rolls I made look pretty funky.

Then I remembered that Alton Brown's did a Good Eats show on making sugar cookies. Even though I only caught the last five minutes of the The Cookie Clause last night, I remembered there were some good tips so I looked 'em up.

Wishful Thinking - Le Creuset Casseroles

All I want for Christmas is a Cherry Red Le Creuset 2-Quart Heart Casserole.

Or a Le Creuset 2-1/4-Quart Pumpkin Casserole.

I love Le Crueset Dutch ovens (or as they call them, French ovens) and casseroles. The whimsical casseroles come in various shapes and colors - Purple Eggplant, Chili Red Tomato, Garlic, Jade Bellpepper, Fruit Green Apple, and Red Apple. They range in price from $69.99 to $119.99 on Amazon.com.

Yes, they're a little pricey, but they are practical and extremely durable. Did you know they have a 101-year warranty?

If I could, I'd throw away most of my pots and restock with Le Crueset. Hear that Santa?

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