What? New Years Resolutions?

This is a TV show we watched on Chritmas Eve. It's called Yule Log, and is a constantly running motion picture of a fire. Our Christmas Tree was too close to the fireplace for us to have our own fire, so we "borrowed" one from channel 45

To my Canadian and Down Under friends, I hope for you a grand Boxing Day.

It never ceases to amaze me how time and motion wait for no one. Every tick of the clock moves us towards the next moment, and gathered together, they become hours, then days. It’s Sunday. Christmas is over. The holiday season is still in full swing for many though. I know my Grandkids are celebrating with another part of their family. But it’s over for us. Back to everyday living started yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, I heard the term New Years Resolution for the first time this season. I don’t have any. I don’t even think about making any. It’s not that I don’t want to change anything. But I’m such a realist that I know that I’ll never keep doing something that I start doing when I haven’t been doing it all along, so why start trying to do it all the time?

An example would be the band wagon approach to weight loss. Everyone is starting a new diet and on New Years, they will implement said diet. Sales of lettuce and fat free salad dressing go up disproportionately to the sales of Toasted Almond Fudge Ice Cream.

Although, I can’t remember a day in the past twenty-some years that I haven’t said, “I need to lose a few pounds.”

But starting an eating routine so drastic that I sit and bite my finger nails for nourishment and chew on raw broccoli spears has never worked. I can go into the whole idea of a real change in what we eat and how much we eat, habit changes, but the emphasis is really about vanity, what you think others think of the way you look and maybe a few health concerns.

Today, the day after Christmas, I still have to eat. I still must nourish my body. We certainly didn’t eat every morsel that we had prepared for the family Christmas celebration, and there is no way I’m throwing away, or feeding to the birds and squirrels, foodstuffs that cost the proverbial arm and leg. No way I’m going to let that food rot from neglect in the refrigerator either.

Folks, they hardly touched the home made oatmeal raisin nut cookies. By the way, the way I tweaked the recipe to make them crunchy worked. Lessen the brown sugar and make it up with the white granulated sugar and use egg whites instead of whole eggs. They came out perfect. Crunchy. And because we had so many other offerings, the cookies were relegated to sitting on the counter in a beautiful pan. Now they must be eaten.

Same with the stuffed mushroom caps. They turned out so rich with the crab meat, onion, celery and portobello mushrooms all sauteed in butter and olive oil as a filling. I made eighteen of them for eight people, but half the attendees were little kids whose gullets were filled with red and green peanut M and M’s, candy canes and Sprite. They may have eaten some of the other cookies that were available, like the Ritz Crackers laced with peanut butter then dipped into the chocolate almond bark.

It’s also hard to make small pizzas. We use the large cookie sheets as pans to bake them. And I don’t like a pizza with half of this or that on one side and the other side with some other concocted assortment of vegetables and pepperoni. Give me the whole pie laden with Italian sausage with no plain cheese on one end.

Italian Sausage Pizza at Spadoville

That special pizza, the one with the asparagus tips, sun dried tomatoes, fresh basil, red onion, portobello mushroom with ricotta and fresh mozzarella cheese was to die for. We heated up some of the left over pizza yesterday, just our platefuls that we were planning on eating around dinner time. Today looks no different as we have no plans for any activity except to laze around, watch football and talk about upcoming plans to get out of Dodge sometime after New Years and head down to New Mexico.

The "Special" Pizza, hot out of the oven

There are other leftover items, some in great abundance and others that hardly have a serving left in a container, like the three or four shrimp. Maybe I’ll have to incorporate them into an omelette along with some black olives and onion. You know, omelettes and such can be served for any meal? They’re not just for breakfast. I never did make the Italian sausage Calabrese, and I won’t refreeze. That’s gonna be dinner tonight, and I better wash that down with another Cannoli so that cheese won’t spoil. The cookies will last another day.

Maybe that’s why they have Christmas and New Years holidays planned exactly one week apart. It’s my own personal rule of thumb that a leftover container does not get eaten if it has sat in the fridge for one week. So, in my estimation, we have one week to eat all this food, and if it’s not eaten by January first, we toss it. Kind of a contest then. Let’s see if we can eat this up and hence not waste anything by next Friday. It makes perfect fiscal sense.

See, that brings me back to the New Years resolution dilemma.  It’s gonna take at least another week or two to wean yourself back to regular size portions and balanced protein, fat and carb measurements let alone the overuse of butter and high fructose corn syrup!

You’ve been eating like a pregnant sow for a week straight in the interest of not wasting food and you’re thinking of going cold turkey into a lettuce salad and cous cous diet?

Nope, I’m going to be realistic. No crash diet for me. Gonna eat up these leftovers on a One Day at a Time schedule and add a salad here and there to the mix. I’ll diet when I change my scenery and head South. After all, I need some extra calories to stay warm out in this cold and snow we have here in the Northland. I’ll eat less in New Mexico, where the weather is warmer,  and get down to a steady diet of beans and rice, the complete protein and all that. The capsaicin from the intake of red and green chiles is good for the circulation. This dietary change must be gradual. Wouldn’t want to startle my fragile digestive system into anything drastic.

Oh look at the time, I’ve been sitting here typing this piece and I see it’s time to put on the coffee pot. The acid and high caffeine in the coffee has been bothering me lately, so I’ll be switching to drinking tea, starting today.

Peace