The twelve days before Christmas are almost upon us and I haven’t lost the ten pounds I promised myself I would lose in preparation for all the holiday goodies that will be thrust in front of me. If I had some will power and if I didn’t mind hurting people’s feelings I would just say “no thank you”.
“No thank you” at Christmas time? That just doesn’t sound right. How do you say no thank you when Christmas is the time for giving and allowing others to give and experiencing the joy in the eyes of so many who have worked so hard to make their dearly departed Aunt Mable’s blue ribbon fudge or their Great Grandma Ethel’s special holiday cookies just for you?
Then there is the twelve days of Christmas where we, as a family, choose another family, make a little delicious treat of some kind each night for twelve nights, and leave it on a their doorstep, ring the bell and run. It’s a lot of fun and we get to experience the gift of giving along with the leftovers waiting for us at home. “No thank you” to all the leftover fudge and cookies and what have you littering the kitchen table at home every night for twelve nights?
Also there is my wife who likes to experiment with new recipes this time of year. One Christmas for about three weeks prior she tried a new cheese cake recipe every day. I would come home from work and there would be at least three beautiful cheese cakes of one kind or another waiting for me to taste test. “No thank you dear”, right. I gained an easy ten pounds that year.
No, “no thank you” doesn’t have a place at Christmas. Even if I did manage a “no thank you” no one would believe me. They would just smile like I was playing hard to get and wave that plate of goodies all piled high on top of one of those decorated Christmas plates under my nose until I caved. Which wouldn’t take too long. I’m weak. Besides like I said it’s Christmas. It’s not the time for saying no.
So that’s where losing the ten pounds come in. I figure If I lose the ten pounds before Christmas then I can enjoy myself during the holidays and make a lot of people happy. It’s almost my civic duty.
Last night I fixed dinner and for some reason I forgot about the ten pounds I was trying to lose. I didn’t fix anything too rich or fattening just a nice fresh pork shoulder picnic roast with mashed potatoes, a very tasty gravy from the drippings, some festive baked pumpkin served with just butter and a batch of wonderful hot from the oven rolls that the wife whipped up while I was mashing the potatoes. A very nice meal but not exactly diet food.
Oh well. The fresh picnic roast turned out very nice. Normally when I want a pork roast for dinner I grab a shoulder butt roast but I had a couple of fresh picnic roasts in the freezer.
I place the thawed out picnic in my large roasting pan and dumped three cans of cream of chicken soup and one can of cream of mushroom soup on top of it. I rubbed it all around and then sloshed a little bit of chicken stock in there as well for some moisture. Then I shook a generous amount of onion and garlic powder over everything and some ground pepper. Then I added about four tablespoons of red wine vinegar. I covered and baked for 4 1/2 hours at 300F. The roast turned out very tender and nice. I drained off the liquid form the roasting pan into a sauce pan and simple thickened with cornstarch for gravy. The meal was delicious. But it wasn’t low cal. It was however inexpensive. Fresh picnics are usually the cheapest item in the meat case. There is a fair amount of bone and fat that is discarded but still a pretty darn good value.
I guess if I can’t lose weight before Christmas maybe I can save money. Saving money at Christmas can be a good thing. Yeah, I’ll just say no thank you to spending money. I think I’m on to something here I’ll keep you posted.