Holiday Cooking. Hip Hip Hooray!

Everyone knows that Thanksgiving and Christmas are the two holidays of the year where the greatest foods can be found. Because my parents are divorced, I celebrate Thanksgiving four times, with my mother's family, my step-father's family, my dad's family, and my step-mom's family and Christmas is the same. As I'm sure you can concur, this means four meals at each of these major holidays. As gaining weight is a dreaded possibility for most during this time of the year, it is a certainty for me. Thanksgiving has already passed, but Christmas is less than 20 days away now and I am anxiously awaiting the hustle and bustle of rushing to different celebrations and and enjoying a plethora of holiday eats. First, I'll celebrate with my step-mom's family on Dec. 19. The food at this celebration is generally not your traditional style Christmas food. We usually have delicious potato soup, buffalo chicken dip, various fruit trays, cookies, homemade cheesecake, and tons of other food made with a butter base and saturated fat galore. Then, on Christmas Eve, I celebrate with my step-father's family. This usually consists of separate boy and girl pass-arounds (there are just waaaay too many people for us all to have one) and a nativity play staring the most recently born baby and it's parents. The food is generally fairly mellow. Ham, turkey, various cheese balls, broccoli casserole, and your standard pecan, cherry, and pumpkin pies. Christmas day is always spent with my dad's family. Of course I open presents, enjoy watching my little sister open presents from Santa, and eat a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, homemade biscuits, hash brown casserole, and gravy. Mmmm. :) The day after Christmas is when my mom's family get's together. Of course we open presents as well and then we eat. My grandmother may be the greatest cook in the world. Baked chicken, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, asparagus, broccoli, sweet potato casserole, homemade rolls, and quiche. As anyone can clearly see not gaining 20 pounds over this period of a week would be a difficult challenge for anyone to face. Thus my New Year's resolution always being to go on a diet or work out more. One of these days I will have my own home and family and I will make all four sides come to be for one big celebration. Wait... That could be catastrophic. Nevermind.