Happy Thanksgiving day-after everybody   I had a great time yesterday, hanging out with family… and eating of course!   The morning started on a slightly hectic note.  I had a lot to get done before leaving for our Thanksgiving linner at 1pm.  After blogging about the day before, I made some breakfast.  So let’s recap…

BREAKFAST

I had plans to hit the gym in a little while, but my stomach started growling a bit so I knew I had to feed it   I made a yogurt bowl with lots of yummy toppings:1/2 banana, some pb puffins, Erin Baker’s double chocolate granola and a bit of TJ’s smooth peanut butter.  This combo always hits the spot!

BAKING

For Thanksgiving dinner, I decided to make the white chocolate cranberry bars I made last week.  My husband really liked them and I thought it was a fall kind of dessert (with cranberries and all) so I got to baking.  This time I took some pics of the process for you   Here is the recipe I followed.  Once again I used the smart balance butter, dried cranberries and (as you will see later) omitted the brown sugar.  Here are a few pics of the step-by-step process:

Combine the dry ingredients:

Butter and sugar creaming in the Kitchen Aid:

Add the dry into the butter:

Mix the cranberries and white chocolate chips (or chunks in my case) into the dough:

Transfer into a pan (I used an 8×8 pan because I don’t have the 11×7 as suggested):

Bake for about 30 minutes…

After putting this in the oven and starting to clean the counter top I noticed the bag of brown sugar and started panicking a little.  Yep, I forgot the brown sugar!!!!  After forgetting to add the sugar while making the pumpkin muffins last weekend, I was extra careful to follow the recipe since this time I was bringing it for other people.  Apparently, not careful enough.  I was so upset!  My husband wrote it off. He told me to throw it away immediately and start over again.  I thought these babies had a chance because I did remember the granulated white sugar + it had a whole bunch of white chocolate chips which added sweetness.  We agreed to let it bake and taste right away to determine whether I needed to make another batch.  Here is the pan, 30 minutes later (minus our little tasting piece):

It came out great!!!!  I didn’t miss the brown sugar at all.  Phew! It was plenty sweet and I crossed it off the ingredients list for future reference.   Now I’m thinking maybe I’ll just halve each of the sugars next time since brown sugar may help it brown better (?)…  I was so relieved!

Here they are after cooling for about an hour, ready to be brought to the party:

They look pretty homemade, heh? My husband was kind enough to cut them up and photograph them while I was getting ready

WORKOUT

Before heading out, we hit our downstairs gym for a quick workout.  I ran somewhere between 43 and 45 minutes (my treadmill was having issues so I had to reset it a few times so that’s why I don’t know for sure).  On my running schedule I planned a 30 minute tempo run (a continuous run with an easy beginning, a build-up in the middle then ease back and slow down toward the end), but since I was pressed for time and didn’t want to switch machines (normally I’d do the 30 minute run and then jump on the elliptical) I just kept on running.  I increased my speed while varying the incline between 0 and 2; I ran between 6.5 and 7.5 mph and walked for about 2.5 minutes at the end to cool down.  It was fun and it felt great to burn some calories before some serious eating

THANKSGIVING MUNCHIES

We started with some appetizers while chatting in the kitchen.  Here is the whole spread, there were lots of goodies there!

I had 7 or 8 shrimp with cocktail sauce and some “Texan caviar” salad (beans, celery, corn and some other things I don’t recall – there was also some sugar and oil in there for sure!).  I was also sipping on some red wine

About an hour later we were ready for a sit-down dinner.  Here is a picture of the dinner table:

The beautiful turkey (my sister in law did a great job!  Doesn’t it look professional?):

And a closeup of my favorite dish: sweet potatoes with brown sugar, pecans and cranberries.  Sooo good!

And now let’s see what I ate… I was totally stuffed when I was done, but I can tell you for a fact that I ate the least out of everyone.  It was hard to stop myself when everyone was piling food on their plates miles high…

Plate #1:

I basically had a little bit of everything.  My sister-in-law made everything onion-free.  How sweet is that?!!!  Let’s see what we have here… a crescent roll, some broccoli and cheese, mashed potatoes, green beans with almonds, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and of course some turkey.  Yum!

Unfortunately sitting in front of the delicious food made me go back for seconds.  I kept it semi-reasonable, I think.  Plate #2 included another crescent roll, turkey, more sweet potatoes and broccoli and cheese.  Awesome awesome awesome!

And of course I saved some room for dessert.  Ok, not really.  I was already stuffed but after a few hours decided I had to have some dessert.  There were a lot of options but I picked a few of my favorites and kept the portions very small.  Here is my plate:

Homemade pecan pie, homemade apple/pecan cheesecake + some german chocolate cake which was brought by someone and definitely came out of a box.  It was dry and no good despite looking super delicious.  I only had a few bites of the chocolate cake but polished off the other 2.  About an hour later I had another sliver of the pecan pie.  I just really love nuts and pecans are on the top of my list!!!

I also drank maybe about 4 glasses of wine.  Overall I think I did ok.  My nephew (in-law) kept on pushing Hershey’s kisses on me.  He kept on talking about how great they were (he ate like a million of them… ok, really probably like 20) and kept on putting them in front of my face.  I was saying how I’m still full and will try them later.  I finally put them back in the bowl when he wasn’t looking and told him I had some and they were delicious.  He was happy to hear that   I think that’s a big thing for me, because normally I don’t turn down chocolate.  I had to pick my battles though and I much preferred to have another piece of homemade pie than mediocre chocolate I can have any day of the week if I really wanted it.

I also refused to take any leftovers with me!  This was also a huge step because seriously there were so many things I would love to have today.  This does, however, eliminate any temptation and I can (and did) start today on a healthy note.  I don’t feel guilty at all about indulging.  I made conscious decisions and enjoyed myself.

I did have a few chocolate truffles when I got home.  I think I was actually slight hungry by that point (or maybe less full) and I was craving chocolate, so I grabbed a box and shoved a few in my mouth.  Oops.  I didn’t take any pictures, but today I took a photo of the last little guy left in the box just so you know what they looked like   Here it is:

Total calories for the day: who knows!