How did everyone else fare at Thanksgiving dinner?

I didn't do too badly, though I make such good stuffing that I did indulge in a small serving of it.  Otherwise, I stuck to low-carb.

Here's what I made:

--Turkey, rubbed all over (under skin and on top) with sage butter (mixed finely chopped sage with softened butter).  I stuffed the cavity with pieces of lemon to infuse the turkey with some subtle lemon aroma.

--Low carb green bean casserole.  I will post the actual recipe later, but it involved a lot of bacon.

--Mashed carnival squash mixed with loads of butter and a touch of honey.  This was in place of sweet potato casserole.  To go even further low carb, sugar free maple syrup could be used in place of the honey, but I only used about 1 tbs for a humongous bowl, so I wasn't too concerned. 

--Roasted asparagus with homemade hollandaise sauce (I used Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything for the sauce).

--Giblet gravy.  I just simmer the turkey organs and neck in water while the bird is cooking to make a broth.  When the bird is done, remove the neck and toss it, take out the orgrans and chop them finely.  Then return to the broth, add all of the lovely pan drippings, then whisk and thicken with low carb thickener (I prefer Thicken Thin not/Starch).  I had some leftover sage butter and whisked it in as well.  Wow, the gravy this year was so rich and tasty, I could almost eat a bowl of it like soup.

And for the non-low carbers:

--Traditional stuffing with sausage, mushrooms, onion and celery.  Even though it's wonderful, I won't post the recipe because it's not low-carb!

--Mashed potatoes with bacon and cheddar cheese.

--Pan rolls (store bought 'cause I just don't bake).

I didn't make any dessert this year.  Nobody is a big dessert eater, so I didn't really want any temptation around. :)

Unfortunately, the scale wasn't kind to me, saying I'd gained 5 lbs.  I figure it must just be some water weight from the stuffing, because I didn't overeat and barely indulged in non low-carb.  Monday is my official weigh-in, so I hope it's back to normal by then!

Well, I think I've finally recovered from my latest sinus infection.  I still blame Januvia for making it worse.  I'm going to try to see a sinus specialist after the new year, because horrible sinuses are something I've been dealing with my entire life, and I'm pretty tired of it.  I've tried everything under the sun: allergy medicine, nasal steroids, sinus irrigation (I have one of those irrigators that is like a water pik for your nose), pepper spray (no kidding).  Everything offers very temporary relief but not much else.

I'm going to start posting numbers and recipes again starting tomorrow.  I've been suffering from a little bit of carb creep, so I really need to batten down the hatches and start keeping better track of what I'm eating again.  I haven't gained any weight, thankfully. 

I'll be sharing a few of my Thanksgiving dishes.  I really don't make anything terribly fancy, but I don't think Thanksgiving is about how complicated a meal is or how long you slave in the kitchen.  There's probably nothing more frustrating than spending hours and hours preparing something only to have it gobbled up in 10 minutes and then have to clean up. 

I'm off to make some tacos for dinner tonight.  Again, nothing extravagent.  Just beef, a very small amount of refried beans (I spread probably a tablespoon on each taco), cheese, sour cream and salsa on the 3 net carb tortillas (that way I can get away with two of them).

This week, I'm down a couple more pounds, for a grand total of 19 lbs so far!  On top of that, I think I've lost about 4 inches around my waist.  Nobody has particularly noticed yet though.

My a1c was 6.9.  Still waaaaay too high for my taste.  My doctor was happy with it of course, saying 'it's not bad.'  I'm going to switch to a dose of time release metformin before bed to see if that helps my crazy morning fasting numbers out a bit.

I apologize for being so lazy with the blog.  I actually have about 4 or 5 recipes I need to post.  I've just been pretty busy working lately and haven't wanted to look at a computer when I get home (I'm a computer programmer so get dazed enough by the glowing screen during the day).

My weight was jumping up and down like crazy all week.  Today, my weight was down 1 lb from last week, so weight-wise I'm moving in the right direction.  I have a pair of jean shorts that I'm using as my first pair of 'test clothes' that I couldn't even zip when I first started this journey.  Now, I can actually button them!  They're extremely tight and uncomfortable, but I'm happy with the progress. 

I've been working on the Wii Fit Plus almost every day, for 30-60 minutes.  I've been really amazed by how quickly I've improved on some of the exercises.  I'm really glad that we bought the Wii, because I feel like this is something I can actually stick with. Though, I think I overdid it yesterday.  I was in massive pain for most of the day, but I'm feeling okay this morning.

Yesterday, I was trolling the spice aisle at the grocery store for some good spice mixtures.  I was really disgusted to find sugar in almost all of them.  There was one seafood mixture that looked promising until I saw that it contained high fuctose corn syrup solids.  UGH!  I think I'm going to keep a list of unlikely places that I find the nefarious ingredient and post them.

I will try to get my lazy butt in gear and get some of my latest recipes posted this week.