Every Meal Does NOT Need to be Thanksgiving

STOP MAKING EVERY MEAL THANKSGIVING!

I am a really good cook but some of the meals that some of you prepare and post in our BE Support Group on Facebook are EXHAUSTING. Four side dishes with each one a preparation in itself.

Even worse are the dishes with multiple proteins. Steak and shrimp and cottage cheese. Noooooo. Eggs Sausage AND Bacon. Nooooo. Making our Orange Chicken AND our Fried Cauliflower 'Rice'? Noooo, too much. Each of those is a separate main dish. You don't serve a pork chop with a chicken leg, do you?

And please stop putting cheese on top of your meat. You do not need that extra 100 Calories. Pleaseeeee stop putting *a sprinkle* of cheese on top of things. HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THAT THIS IS PERHAPS WHY YOU WERE FAT. You do not need cheese on top of a salad, plus bacon, plus avocado, plus Ranch.

CHOOSE ONE PROTEIN... CHOOSE ONE FAT. This is a very important concept to grasp. You are lying to yourself if you think this does not matter.

Construct your meal with ONE PROTEIN and ONE VEGETABLE SIDE... MAYBEEEEEE two. Period. Boom. Done.

Pork chops? Great. After cooking pork chops on the grill, paint them with some GL HUGHES sugar free BBQ Sauce that you bought at Walmart. Make a bowl of salad - lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber. Toss with Bolthouse Farms Yogurt Ranch dressing. Done!

Chicken? Great. Soak the chicken legs in a homemade teriyaki marinade - 1/4 cup Kikkoman soy sauce, 1/4 cup Smuckers Sugar Free Preserves ANY FLAVOR, 1 teaspoon garlic powder. - and bake them on a sheet pan. Slice a big tomato for a family style plate and put one ear of fresh summer corn per person on to boil. Done!

Shrimp? Great! You can buy a pound for $7 and thread them on skewers that cook on a hot grill in 3 minutes. Put two skewers per person on a bed of baby lettuce tossed with salt pepper olive oil and lime juice, sliced avocado and a little chopped tomato. Sauce is Greek yogurt blended with a little ketchup and seafood seasoning.

Steak? Great! Season both sides of a slab of sirloin with salt and pepper. Throw it on the grill. DO NOT TOUCH IT for 3 minutes. Flip it, and cook it until it feels like the palm of your hand. (Psssssttt... about 2 more minutes) Put it on a plate. Let it rest while you cut a cup of grape tomatoes in half, put them in a small bowl and mix them with a spoonful of blue cheese dressing. Then put the steak on a cutting board and slice it thinly across the grain - pile the slices on a platter - add more salt and pepper and scatter it with Italian Flat Leaf Parsley.

None of these meals would be improved by the addition of cheese, cottage cheese, more meat, or an Inspire flat bread.

ONE PROTEIN PLUS ONE SIDE DISH. Easy peasy. No need for a Thanksgiving dinner number of sides. Any questions?