Festive Food Fight

I try very hard to be a good girl during the holidays. No, not my character…my calories. I limit myself to only a couple pieces of shortbread a day. I try to squeeze in a run or Zumba. I make sure I eat a healthy breakfast. But sometimes, it just doesn’t matter how good my intentions are…somehow I always end up in a Festive Food Fight.

Christmas Eve was the beginning…dinner of Lobster Newburg and prime rib with chocolate fondue for dessert and then brunch on Christmas Day with our traditional sticky, gooey, caramelly, cinnamony Monkey Bread.  The day after Christmas we loaded the car and headed to Vancouver, British Columbia to visit with the Wells side of the family. Because it rained too hard for the annual ball hockey game, we stayed inside and ate lots of food while watching hockey on TV (guys) and going to the movies instead! The night we arrived it was a Ukrainian dinner with genuine baba-made pyrogies and halapchi, kielbasa, sauteed cabbage and good bread with butter. This is now a real treat for us since we have moved to Oregon where nobody even knows what a baba is, let alone a pyrogy! The next day my niece's Mexican husband made us an authentic Mexican meal, complete with fried flautas and tacos to die for with chunks of beef, not hamburger, slow-cooked refried beans, fresh pico de gallo, rice, and muy bien guacamole!! Then the next day we said goodbye to our family and headed over to our good friends' house for dinner...buttermilk-marinated oven-fried chicken cooked to crispy perfection, ooey-gooey smoked gouda mac and cheese, baked beans, cornbread and a garlicky caesar salad (our friend's specialty!). Dessert was Red Velvet Coca-Cola cake. Then we got into the car and drove the 5 hours home, crawling into bed at 2 a.m. Yesterday morning, I reluctantly stepped onto the scale to face the inevitable. I have gained 4 lbs since November! So I went to Zumba last night, but only for half the class because we had to go to our neighbor's house for dinner...two kinds of gourmet grilled homemade flatbread pizza, kabobs over rice and a raspberry-apple Bavarian torte. Sigh. So delicious, but oh, so BAD!!! So the next morning I had a small bowl of my own homemade healthy granola for breakfast, carrots, tuna, crackers and a V-8 for lunch, no dinner, and a bowl of popcorn in the evening. But that was only because tonight we are going to some friends' house for a New Year's Eve party and then having a big dinner with a group of around 20 at my house tomorrow for New Year's Day.

I never make New Year’s Resolutions, but I do resolve this:  To end the food fight, round 2011, and get in shape for round 2012!