Food: Holiday Snacking Overboard

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Holiday Snacking Overboard
Friday, October 28, 2005

By Christina VanGinkel

I am a perpetual snack eater, always have been, and probably always will be. With the holidays approaching, this can mean trouble for a person such as me who is constantly watching their weight. It seems that no matter where I go, people have placed food items about for others to 'have just one'. Offices are terrible, with nearly everyone making something to share, or bringing in a little something their spouse made. Grocery stores seem to step up their samples, offering filled cups of this or that to tempt you before you get to the checkout. Even the library is not safe, with whole trays of cookies and chocolate covered concoctions laid out for visitors to take a few. (It does not help that our librarian's mother is a woman who bakes some of the most delicious treats I have ever been fortunate enough to try!)

This reminds me of all the little informal get together parties that everyone and every place seem to host this time of year. I have been invited to no less than five separate 'home' parties in the last two weeks, one selling toys, one selling Home Interiors, and three different ones that were selling baking supplies including packages food to shorten your time spent in the kitchen. All of them had displays of snack foods out for their guests to enjoy, and each of the three food parties had snacks, plus they each cooked a dish while everyone was their. Snacks are bad enough, but actually smelling the food as it cooked was just too much. Even someone with the best of intentions cannot say no to fresh baked beer bread with a choice of dips!

I am also one of my own worst enemies when it comes to the snack wars, as every recipe I see in a magazine, or mix I come across online, I just have to try. I am as bad as everyone else is, fully intending to 'share' my creations, but I also keep my own fair share at home, which the majority I indelibly eat. My favorites at this time of year are the ever-popular Chex Mix, baked with a fair share of nuts and pretzels. I also love the 'Puppy Chow' mix, also made with Chex Mix cereal, but coated with powdered sugar, peanut butter, and chocolate.

If you are like me, the only bit of advice I can think to share is to try to be sensible when you are offered yet one more, one more of this, one more of that! Hold out for your favorites, and always keep a bit of something on hand, especially in an office setting, that you can snack on without guilt when something is being passed around that you know you should not have. Or have one, just one! Sometimes denying the first one will backfire and you will compensate by having several. If you know this is your normal reaction, give yourself permission to have the one. The holidays will be gone before we know it, and we can always hit the treadmills come January!

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