A Calorie Counter Christmas

Well, it's that time of the year again. I'm not talking about the white, fluffy snow, or the shopping, or even the gift giving. I'm talking about the food. The turkey, the stuffing, the pie, the side dishes, the sweets, and of course the multiple meals. Christmas Eve you have dinner at your Grams, then Christmas Day you have to go to his or her parent's house and then you have to go to your parent's house. How many meals can one person consume in one day?! You know their going to force feed you! If you don't have the Christmas run around to different homes to deal with, you more than likely just took everything onto yourself and you are the cook.

You're on a diet and want to make a healthy meal, but Christmas is a time for splurging and indulging with friends and family! So what do you do?

This is the situation I want to address.

First of all you have the main course, which inevitably is the roast turkey. You really can't change the calorie content of the bird. About one serving, about 6 ounces is going to add up to about 350 calories. However, many do choose to have a cured ham, which would bounce that calorie count down to 300 calories per serving. Some people also like to make goose for the holiday; I would highly recommend staying away from goose, your looking at around 400 calories there. Since there is really little you can do about the main meat of the meal, you may want to choose to concentrate on the side dishes to keep the calories down, but yet give your guests something to talk about, in a good way of course.

Let's take a look at what's on the menu for stuffing. Your traditional bread stuffing grabs you by the love handles at 250 calories for one serving and cornbread stuffing is a hefty runner up at 240 calories for that one yummy serving. But what if you could make a stuffing that only had 110 calories and was out of this world!? Well you can. Mushroom Herb Stuffing is only 110 calories and easy to make.