For those Thanksgiving cooks

Randomly curious, but do you try to cook healthy for Thanksgiving? I was at the doctor's office the other day and was reading a magazine that had healthy Thanksgiving recipes: low fat/low cal stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc.

I'm usually pretty conscious about the healthiness of what I cook throughout the year, but Thanksgiving? Not a chance! It's pretty much the only day of the year where I cook everything like Paula Dean and the Barefoot Contessa. "What does it need? MORE BUTTERRR!" :lol-sign:

Anybody ever try cooking a light Thanksgiving? How did it turn out?

I don't really cook a light meal but i do focus more on veggies when i am doing the cooking. It seems the only vegatable most people cook is green beans.

I can't eat a meal full of that much heavy starch stuff so i usually cook a good amount of green veggies.

But then I'm British, living in America my ideas are based around what we would eat for Christmas at home.

Its one day a year... soooo

NOOOOOOOOOOO

GIMME BUTTER...

:hail:opcorn::hail:

I'm with you. I was just buying heavy cream this morning for the squash soup.

Another vote for this one :hail:

LOL

YES. That's my thought too. Did I mention that my cornbread stuffing contains salt pork (basically bacon), heavy cream and butter? :lol-sign:

ETA: Darn you Kat, I love squash soup. Now you have me craving.

Well, and considering fats, butter, cream, etc ARE actually healthy......

It tends to be pretty starch and carb heavy but eh, its a holiday

We don't really make a conscious choice to be healthy, but we don't have 5 pies, in fact we usually only make one, and we don't really go overboard on butter. Its unhealthy, but not deathly if you know what I mean

I am very conscious about butter because I have high cholesterol. I'm constantly thinking about how I cook things so I don't take in too many calories or an over abundance of fat. It's just habit. But I probably will put some butter and a little cream in my mash potatoes. I replace some of the cream with chicken broth. I don't know how I can get around putting butter in the stuffing. And I don't see any way to not put a few strips of bacon over the turkey while it's cooking. :rofl1: The only part of the pie that isn't so healthy is the crust and the sugar, but oh well....a couple times a year isn't going to make a huge difference, right? The squash....well, people can put butter on it if they want. I like it just plain, myself. Gravy: I'm cheating and using those packets to mix with the real gravy, I guess. All that fat and grease kind of grosses me out, just thinking of it solidifying in my arteries. LOL. So yeah...I'm still thinking about how I can make it less unhealthy but that's about it....just thinking about it. opcorn:

This one!

We eat pretty healthy and low carb, but tomorrow it'll be what the yummy recipes call for. I guess a lot of my dishes have apple in it, so I'm not concerned :rofl1:

No useful thanksgiving comment as I already cooked ours a month ago.

There is no link between eating cholesterol and levels of blood cholesterol (unless you are a rabbit) New research has shown if you want to lower cholesterol try lowering empty carbs.

My idea of healthy is to use real foods, real ingredients etc.
So yeah, we use real butter, raw, whole milk etc. But I don't keep margarine in the house anyway.
Now, I will add a whole package of cream cheese to the mashed potatoes though, normally I leave that out

Also, I am lazy and the apple pies will have store bought crust. There was a time when I made the crust from scratch too, but I was never good enough at it that it made that much of a difference in taste. Nutrition sure, but I'm not the best baker, so my home made crust was usually hit or miss LOL.