Thanksgiving... Yeaaaaaaah...

So it's been a while since my last super emotional/intense post. Been an interesting week+... Thanksgiving, my birthday, and just dealing with not losing/losing weight and food food food. But I think I'm gonna split my posts up so they're not killer long.

Thanksgiving was...interesting. Made a yummy cauliflower puree. I told a few people about it, so I'll post my general recipe/what I did.

• Diced up some onion and garlic - 3 cloves I think.
• Saute them in a teensy bit of olive oil and some PAM.
• Once softened, add a can (maybe less?) chicken broth - I used low sodium Swanson.
• Season with salt and pepper.
• Add 1/2 head diced cauliflower (smaller is better - faster cooking, easier to pulse later) to the broth.
• Simmer for 10 minutes, or however long until the cauliflower is tender. I did some simmering with the pan covered, and uncovered it and turned it up to get some of the liquid reduced.
• Pour everything from the pan into food processor (or blender...or if you wanna try, you can use a potato masher). Pulse.
• I then added 2 tablespoons of 1% milk, 2 tablespoons of plain nonfat yogurt, a teaspoon of butter and a few teaspoons, maybe a tablespoon of butter buds.
• Pulse pulse pulse. I did it till it got as creamy as it looked like it would. It wasn't as smooth as potatoes, but decent.

It still tasted like cauliflower, but it had a nice creaminess to it. I wouldn't suggest making that much unless you're gonna eat it all. I reheated some yesterday/day before and it was okay, but not wonderful. It makes more than you think. Also, I used this recipe as a guideline, and how to double/triple it. So if you wanted to try it for one, you could use those amounts listed!

I spiced and grilled some portobellos, and my mother makes a great green bean dish that has tomatoes and onions and it's good. So I had a 'meaty' mushroom, a 'potato' side, a veg side, and salad. And I also made a yummy pumpkin dessert. For those of you that don't know, pumpkin has fiber and some protein and good vitamins, so the plain canned stuff seemed healthy enough for me. I followed the pumpkin pie recipe my mom uses, spice-wise: cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, added a dash of vanilla, and a little bit of 1% milk into 1 can of pumpkin. Baked the mixture in little ramekins in a water bath and topped them with Cool Whip Free. It was a nice, warm, pumpkiny dessert!

So, other than the chocolate souffles my aunt made, the key lime pie w/graham cracker and cashew crust and orange whipped cream my brother made, the pumpkin and pecan pies my mom made, and the chocolate pecan pie my brother also made, you know, there weren't THAT many sugar temptations. >.<