Goodbye Old Friend...

(Posting by Jes)

I guess I'm a big traditionalist. I love Christmas, and with Christmas comes many of the favorite things (mostly food) I remember about growing up... This was food you didn't normally eat the rest of the year: The Lifesavers book, tin(s) of Danish short-bread, peanut brittle, fudge, popcorn balls, and of course egg nog.

As I get older, some of these traditions have had to stop, such as the Lifesavers book. The last time I ate some Lifesavers, I had to follow them with half a bottle of Tums. Short-bread doesn't last long between myself and Mason, and the peanut brittle, fudge, and popcorn balls have slowly diminshed after we left Utah (too hard to ship). But egg nog? I'm certainly not going to give up one of my FAVORITE holiday joys?!? No way. I love it and I'll continue to drink it like water from Thanksgiving to Christmas day... Or so I thought....

It's now December 22nd and the only egg nog I've had this season was a thimble cup sample at Costco (and it was excellent!). While I almost bought the 5 gallon container of it, thankfully I had just sampled the cheesecake, truffles, muffins, chocolate cake, and some weird chicken roll...so I didn't...

I've worked hard over the past 6 months to lose about 25 pounds. My goal was to simply maintain my weight during the holidays and so far I've been successful. So each time I go to reach for that wonderful glass of egg delight, I stop. And I keep thinking, "I'll have some tomorrow." With only 3 days left and the holiday treats appearing like fire-ants after a rain (Texas joke), I fear I'll have a hard time justifying drinking 1 cup of egg nog at 400 calories (and who can simply have 1 measured cup?) when I can eat 2-3 times the amount of the other cookies, candy, cake, popcorn, etc while breaking about even in the calorie count?

So, I guess this is goodbye old friend. We shall meet again next year.

(by the way, yes, in Mason's stocking this year will be a Lifesavers book, Danish cookies, and other "traditional" treats that I remember growing up).