Our Healthier Thanksgiving Plans

When I made my meal plan this week I completely forgot about Thanksgiving.

Oops.

As soon as I realized my error I talked it over with Kepa and we decided we should celebrate semi-traditionally. Since we don’t have space to invite friends over it’s just a meal for us but we still wanted some traditional things I’ve had at every Thanksgiving and introduced Kepa to last year.

Our beginning plan was a healthified version of traditional Thanksgiving foods: turkey breasts, sweet potatoes, and green beans. And a pumpkin pie.

Sadly, no candied pecans this year.

I’d eat them all myself. YUM.

That plan changed when we realized we could not find turkey breasts for sale anywhere! Normally our local supermarket carries turkey breasts. But yesterday when we did our weekly shopping trip they were nowhere to be found. Today we tried two different stores and came up with nothing. We just could not find turkey breasts anywhere! At our third store today we were told they would be plentiful in about three weeks, but that wasn’t helpful.

We changed our plan and instead ended up buying this:

Turkey breast roast with stuffing!

It was cheaper and smaller than a regular turkey (we don’t need a big turkey for two people!), 98% fat free, and it came with stuffing and cranberry. Sounds like it will be perfect for our needs.

We also specifically went to Martha’s Backyard the store that sells American goods you can’t get most places in NZ for these:

Martha’s Backyard generally sells a lot of junk food and packaged, processed stuff so we don’t visit often but it’s the right place for pumpkin pie ingredients!

I’m planning on making a lower calorie protein pumpkin pie (though the crust is obviously not). I have the general idea in my head and will look up a few recipes to see if I’m on the right track. If we are going to eat a slice or two of pumpkin pie then it’s going to be a healthier version!

Our thanksgiving dinner menu for two:

• turkey with cranberry stuffing
• baked sweet potatoes
• sauteed ginger green beans
• protein pumpkin pie

Sounds delicious to me! It will be the most labor intensive meal of the week but definitely less work than last year. It will also be a lot healthier as I won’t be breaking out the butter this time around.

Plus part of our healthy plan is to go get in our workout during the two hours it takes the turkey to cook. Who knows, maybe this will start a trend for our future thanksgivings even when they are bigger?

What are your Thanksgiving plans? What are you doing to celebrate? What are you eating?