Bu-u-u-r-r-r-p

Ihave the feeling that I just set the diet back two, maybe three weeks, and I expect to fall into a tryptophan coma shortly. All the gatherings are now over. All were warm and pleasant. All were delicious. I'm stuffed to the gills and still have three Weight Watchers points left for the day and 20 bonus points for the week. If I use them, someone shoot me. Well, maybe just one more slice of turkey. That's just two points. After nearly three months of dieting, Thanksgiving has felt like a four day food orgy.

I planned on cooking my turkey on Thursday after my original plans got changed. That didn't work out, and I got treated to lunch at the local buffet. The first time I took my sister there, she took one look around and said, "I know this will be good. There are so many old people." She was right. It's country cooking heaven. Friday, the in-laws decided to treat the grandkids to the local pizza buffet as a break from the turkey. I had two Thanksgiving dinners yesterday, and today I cooked my turkey.

I was going to try the maple syrup recipe but found out just today that I didn't have quite enough of the real stuff and wasn't going to substitute pancake syrup. So, I just modified my mother's recipe and got the moistest, most flavorful turkey I've ever cooked. I chopped fresh sage and mixed it into whipped butter, added poultry seasoning, fresh ground black pepper and kosher salt and lime juice. I rubbed some under the skin and then saturated the surface. Every hour, I'd brush more on the surface and then baste it with broth. I opted out of making stuffing and put a whole onion, chopped apple and quince soaked in lemon juice in the cavity. There was just a hint of the fruit flavor. For once, the color was perfect, and that has to be because I removed the cover for the last half hour of cooking.

Here's the kicker. I could handle the vegetarian womanchild not eating the turkey. I even handled the turkey genocide comments. When the husband came over for dinner though, he wouldn't even try it. Now, I didn't go all out to make a big holiday meal, but opting for peanut butter and crackers when there was this incredible turkey, green beans, corn, greens and rolls was just an insult. I'm used to his picky eating habits, but the rudeness galls me now.

I love to cook. I taught myself after I got married, because my mother, a phenomenal cook, had no patience in the kitchen (or anywhere else for that matter). Slowly that domestic pleasure got taken from me, because there was no point cooking good food when half the time the husband wouldn't eat it and stuff himself on junk food instead. When the womanchild's eating disorder kicked in, the frustration over food tripled. What could I cook to lure her to eat? I let their food issues become my problem and blamed myself. Every food decision was too serious, and I got tired of having my cooking criticized at every meal. When I cooked for friends, they would tell me what a good cook I was, and I could tell the compliments were sincere, but my family treated me like a kitchen disaster. Frozen dinners and pizza came to rule our regular menus, and I would eat every meal thinking that I could do better and have no one around believe me.

Even if I ignore all the childhood food, weight and body image issues, it's still no wonder that food has been a seriously messed up issue in my life. It's been tied to that nasty people-pleasing habit and feeling like a failure for two freaking decades. This diet is making me rethink everything about food, and I think that I'm dropping some of the sick thinking. If I cook something now, either they like it or they don't. If they won't eat it, they can fix something else. Just half an hour ago, the daughter was complaining that she was hungry and angrily asking me to fix her something. After about five minutes of suggesting different leftovers, I gave up and said, there's popcorn in the cabinet, fix it yourself. I wasn't going to start cooking again at midnight or get sucked into solving someone else's problem and have it taken for granted again. That sounds like a little thing, but it feels just as good as cooking the perfect turkey.

food, diets