Instead of evoking childhood memories of pretty spring dresses covered with winter jackets, candy filled baskets overflowing with plastic green grass, fluffy whited stuffed bunnies, and spiral cut ham I am blessed with visions of my father standing over us yelling as we dyed Easter eggs. I am fairly certain my compulsive behavior came from him. He didn't mean to turn Easter festivities (thinking back there are quite a few holidays traditions I remember him taking to that next level) into a reason to need therapy later in life. Picture this: Middle aged man standing over two small girls vein bulging out of the temple because every ounce of restraint is being used to refrain from grabbing the egg wand used to lower eggs into the dye. Children trying to have fun whilst their hands shake waiting for the inevitable explosion...here it comes...."NO, STOP, TO THE SIDE....NO, THE OTHER SIDE....NOT IN THE BLUE AND RED AND YELLOW YOU ARE GOING TO MUDDY THE EGG. LET ME DO IT!!" And so on and so forth. Furthermore, the dye we used most likely came from a nuclear plant in Buffalo (childhood home of my father). This stuff was no doubt toxic...the eggs, once peeled took on the entire color of the dye. They were slick and greasy. I tried to find a picture of this dye but surprise surprise it's no where to be found. By the end of the egg dying process we were ill from the dye fumes and terrified my father was going to have a heart attack over our decorating methods. I hope I do not pass on the same experiences to my children.
I thought that was a funny little way to capture the spirit of Easter since the weekend is upon us. While it is certainly a tier below Thanksgiving and Christmas on the "pig out" scale, it is none the less a golden opportunity to blow the diet. Putting aside the barrels of jelly beans, peanut butter covered eggs, marshmellow peeps, and foot tall chocolate bunnies, there is the Easter Brunch. Oh how I love brunch...Easter or any other. I could do more bodily damage via breakfast foods than any other meal. It's the perfect balance between salty and sweet. I've provided a sample of items that surface at our Easter Brunch below. If I were to eat ONLY the servings sizes of each of the items below I'd be consuming 32 points in ONE meal.
Our Easter Brunch:
*Polish Kielbasa: 5 points/2 oz
*Spiral Cut Ham: 4 points/3 oz
*Hard Boiled Egg: 2 points/extra large egg
*French Bread: 3 points/ 1/5 loaf
*Cheese: Jarlsberg (3 points/1 oz), Cheddar (3 points/1 oz)
*Reese's Peanut Butter Cups: (5 points/package)
*Bread Pudding (I found a recipe online as an example of what I may make and its 7 points/serving, recipe yields 6 servings)
All I have to say is YIKES!!!! I am mildly sickened just looking at this breakdown. It might look like a long list, but I think if you saw all those items at the alloted portions piled on a plate, it would not seem all that much...at least not for a special holiday brunch....at least not the way I eat, which is clearly the reason I am always 20 lbs away from my goal! Seriously, who eats only 2 oz of cheese at a time? I think what is even worse is that I would say this is a conservative estimate of what is truly ingested over the course of the few hour-long family gathering. Undoubtedly there are appetizers like nuts, cheese/meat tray, dips. I'm not sure about everyone else's family, but we have traditionally used this holiday to concoct a plethora of Vodka recipes prepared in Vodka soakers. My father and my husband seem to try to one up each other's recipes each year. Add a festive Mimosa to kick off the celebration. And who can forget the Easter candy laying around?? Really, does anyone restrict themselves to just ONE package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups on Easter Sunday?? As well, having a toddler in the house enables all the adults to partake in not only excessive candy giving, but candy consuming! Suffice it to say, these holiday gathering which span a few hours of the day are an inevitable way to fall so far off the wagon you'll need a shovel to dig yourself out from underground. What makes me laugh even more is that most of us, despite eating until the point of undoing that top button so your gut can hang over your pants on the car ride home, we proceed to eat dinner later that very night.
Now I think it's unrealistic to say stick to that diet, although I am going to try my best. I think there are two key elements to behaving better: a. Be aware of the food you are eating and set limits verses grazing for hours at a time and b. Provide a few more low calorie dishes to the meal plan that enable you to stretch your eating over the course of the event so you are not merely sitting in a corner eating your finger nails just so you have something to chew on while everyone else stuff their faces. I did a little searching online for a few healthier recipes as an alternative to the normally high calorie foods of a traditional Easter Brunch. I pulled all these from Cooking Light (http://www.cookinglight.com/). There are a lot more Easter Recipes there if you want to look further. This is a great site for recipes because they provide all the nutritional information. I found some other recipes doing a Google search (French Toast Strata which sounded really great) but most of the one off's don't provide nutritional info so I did not include. I plan to make possibly two of these to bring the the family celebration so I can enjoy a decent portion verses a sliver each food at our traditional Easter Brunch.
Anyway, check out some of the recipes below and I hope it helps make for a healthier and still enjoyable Easter Eat Fest. This will be my hardest test to date, so we'll see on Monday if I came through with flying colors or not. I'm just going to keep telling myself "Scale, Scale, Scale on Monday morning!!!"
1. Basil-Lime Fruit Salad: 1 point/ 3/4 cup
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1714553
2. Lemon-Chive Roasted Vegetables: 2 points/cup
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1714558
3. Ham and Asparagus Frittata: 5 points/ 1/2 the Frittata
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=604813
4. Herbed Potato Salad: 3 points/cup
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=263956
5. Simple Baked Ham: 3 points/3 oz
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1011300
6. Prosciutto and Melon Salad w/Cantaloupe Vinaigrette: 2 points/serving (Recipe yields 8 servings)
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1886391
7. Golden Onion Strata with Gruyere and Prosciutto: 5 points/serving (Recipe yields 8 servings)
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=222022
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