So…
Posted on November 22, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 48 Comments
I ate about 42,000 calories at Thanksgiving dinner tonight. That’s a rough estimate.
You?
Posted on November 22, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 48 Comments
I ate about 42,000 calories at Thanksgiving dinner tonight. That’s a rough estimate.
You?
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John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, contributor – AMS
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I prefer to count my meal in cubic inches (or feet), and then pretend it was mostly fat free, sugar free Cool Whip.
I hope not to find my bathroom scale for the next few days. :)
Oh jeeez.. I AM Mr. Creosote this year … It was a smaller affair (usually 30, this time 11) , so I felt I needed to eat to make up for it.
The Turkey was a bit dry, but the ham was excellent! The Boy and i also ate ourselves silly on Deviled Eggs … Between that and the Casserole it’s going to be deadly soon ..
I can blame it on the dog, so all is good.
Oh, Scalzi. I’m not counting calories today. I mean, doing so would only make me horribly depressed, and I’d probably develop an eating disorder if I figured it out.
After cooking 15 lbs of mashed potatoes, I decided that counting calories would be beside the point. Besides, we had four kinds of stuffing this year. Now those were calories worth having!
I can’t say how many calories it was, but,
1. Jule was worried she had made too much stuffing…silly woman.
2. If the bones of my game hen been softer, I can’t promise they would have survived.
3. Yam the size of my head? No problemo.
4. I did have to wait 1/2 hour before I was able to dig into the apple pie…three slices…wiv ice-cream.
Yay me.
Over two days I consumed enough food to match the body weight of a starving child. I’m thankful I’m not from wherever they live…starving sucks.
I never eat much on Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s the stress of all the cooking and stuff. But, I can’t wait until tomorrow! Leftovers! Yummy!
I tried to limit myself this year, however I must have had to much apple pie because I am ready for a 10 hour nap.
I had some banana-papaya smoothie and raw almonds.
I’m celebrating the holiday by sitting in front of the computer in my nightshirt. At four in the afternoon.
Movies today — turkey tomorrow. So today was popcorn and hotdogs inbetween American Gangster and Blade Runner – The Final Cut. And on the way, one of our favorite Italian places in town was actually open, so we phoned in an order and picked up just before they closed for the night. Lasagna… mmm…
There is no such thing as “too much stuffing”. The phrase makes no grammatical sense and was banned from the English language around 1622.
Dr. Phil
All I can say is I am thankful to live where overeating is a bigger problem than starvation.
42,001
(who says I’m competitive…)
How many calories are in bourbon? Don’t answer.
I consider 42 000 calories to be a light day. However, since I am Canadian, our Thanksgiving was a month ago, but I did drink a pitcher of beer to celebrate American thanksgiving…actually, thats a complete lie. I drank it because I love beer.
I went and asked a dental surgeon to remove one of my molars.
Then, Ice cream.
Luckily, we don’t celebrate thanksgiving in Denmark. Wouldn’t make much sense, would it?
Thanks for making me feel bad for being a poor college student. I had Thanksgiving canned ravioli.
Today, we saw Enchanted, which was fun and almost enchanting. A little sharper than typical DIsney, but not as satiric as Shrek.
After a few hours sitting around and dozing, I went to work for a few hours. I do some part-time work at the airport doing miscellaneous tasks for a small aircraft services company.
After a few hours running around, I drove to Jim’s godparents house for the annual dinner. I was prepared to be late (in fact, we drove separately), but I got out of work a little early, and things at Aunt Franny and Uncle Joe’s were a little late. I had two plates of dinner, probably about 2,000 calories total. No desserts and only one tiny glass of wine.
Jim and Jim’s cousin Michael have taken to wearing those flat caps popularized in Ireland. Both Jim and Michael have fine heads of hair (if a bit silvery). I said they shouldn’t be wearing old men’s caps (they’re both in their early 50s). Michael’s wife thought that was funny as she’s told him the same thing.
One of Jim’s aunts is now a great-grandmother.
Actually, I counted and I only ate 1400. And 600 of that was cookies. Lol.
I’d tell you, but I’m not done yet. Does Thanksgiving end at midnight, or when I go to sleep?
You should try harder! The day is not done! I broke two plates from the sheer weight of comestibles. They started making me use a cookie sheet, until I broke the sawhorses. Now, I think I would like a mint.
When my mother-in-law was alive, she cook for an army even though there were three of us and then would get a hankering for leftovers every two hours. She’d always want one of us to eat with her. It got to the point where Steven and I would tag each other in.
“No, I just had stuffing and gravy with her–it’s your turn to go have pie!”
I miss the hell out of that woman, and am off to consume an extra helping of potatoes gratin in her memory.
Well, I had the pecan pie from the diner for breakfast/lunch/brunch/whatever you want to call it if it was the first thing I ate today and I ate it at 3pm. Now I’ve got a turkey sandwich. It’s on rye-pumpernickel swirl bread with cheddar and swiss. The turkey is slices from the grocery’s deli dept.
In between I had some leftover noodle soup from the Chinese takeout I work at. It turns out they make a big pot of soup for themselves every afternoon, but never manage to eat it all, and then they throw out perfectly good soup when they’re done. Every day. So I claimed some. Even though I don’t like mussels.
I think anyone who is that wasteful with food is doomed to starve later on. I once lived for four months with a family that threw out so much leftovers that a whole other family could’ve lived on it. Also, one time they came home from a big grocery run of ~$113 – I looked at the receipt and noticed that almost $100 of it was various forms of junk food (chips, sodas, etc.). They didn’t do so well when they later lost over half their income…
Two slices of pork roast w/sage and garlic: 323 calories
Two crescent rolls: 220 calories
Corn and green beans: 67 calories
1/2 cup creamy mashed potatoes: 245 calories
1/2 cup roast potatoes w/sage and garlic: 300 calories
2 teaspoons of mango jelly: 50 calories
Total: 1205 calories.
All calories are approximate. That’s not that bad, considering I had one bowl of cereal earlier in the day. Woot.
Also, I have homemade eggnog ice cream waiting for me. God knows how many calories THAT will be.
PixelFish,
It’s sort of scary that you know the actual calories. Quit teasing. You know it isn’t true! You ate at least 5,000 calories today. ;-)
BTW, I love it when my family sits around and groans about their full stomachs. I know I did a good job. Yay, for me!!! My holiday is Thanksgiving. Oh, btw, I used 4 pounds of real butter and a quart of real cream in my meal. Yep. It is fattening. But, you know what? It is perfect for winter. We need the fat. It is cold outside. We need the extra calories. Right? That’s what I tell myself. It’s genetic! Stock up and save up! It’s winter! Or close to it. It’s a natural extinct. Enjoy. ;-)
I can’t even guess how many calories I consumed. We did enough food for about six people and then ate it between the two of us. We forgot to put out the cranberry jelly which is lucky because after my third and a half helping I think I would have thrown up if there had been another bite of food on my plate.
We also had to wait hours before we could manage a bite of pie (two pies for two people, we couldn’t even start the pumpkin one tonight).
And the dogs must absolutely love us by now. They’ve been getting bits of Turkey all night.
With 7 Grandkids at the table and they wanting to help feed Grandpa (me)… I feel like I ate 55,000 calories but was only 5,000, damn giblet gravey and mashed potatoes, pie, turkey, pie, Ham, pie, did I mention I had some Pie…????
Not many calories for me and I burned a lot by being the cook. Buffalo braised with mushrooms & garlic, green beans w/mushrooms & onions and rice pilaf. But since it was also #1 son’s birthday we had cake. Lots of cake. The cats got bits of buffalo fat (not much, it is a lean meat) and are thinking of giving up on rodents in favor of bigger game.
It was a small dinner for a change – just four of us. We had a lovely meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, carrots and pie. Nicole brought a new kind of pie – cranberry/caramel. With a little vanilla ice cream, that turned out to be the Number One Hit of the Night.
This lovely meal was followed by the now-traditional clog of the kitchen sink leading to water backed up in the laundry room.
We don’t know why, we don’t know how, but our holidays often are followed by a visit from the plumber.
Also had dinner at the in-laws house. The first round was turkey, potatoes, yam and cranberry crisp, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry and dried cherry sauce, gravy, and sourdough oat rolls. But, alas, I miscalculated and didn’t finish evenly, so I had to go back and get more of the foods that I ate too quickly and tried again… and then there was the homemade roast pumpkin, sweet potato, and pecan pie– made from a recipe heavy on the eggs, butter, and cream.
Forgot to bring the stretchy pants.
I’m visiting the extended family and friends in SoCal, and some of them had never done Thanksgiving with our family. I had to divulge many of my feasting secrets so that they would be able to more fully enjoy the meal.
I will say that while I fought the good fight, I was only able to sustain three rounds of food not including the appetizers.
Hi!
You realize that 42000calories is about 4.5 kilogram of pure fat?
Impressive feat!
/nisse
Hah, I estimate my intake to be roughly 1,500,000 calories. (where each calorie = ~4.2 joules)
I didn’t do any particularly spectacular eating, but the cat brought home a wood duck on Wednesday, which was interesting. Of course, he’s still a (large) kitten and left it for daddy to kill. Walking into a twilit (twilight lit?) house and hearing a very large something flying around is not the greatest feeling in the world. But what could I do? The cat was just doin’ his part for Thanksgiving. (No, I didn’t kill the duck, because I didn’t feel like plucking it.) I’m starting to worry that I’m going to see a deer stuck in the cat door one day soon.
Brett L.
Are you sure you own a cat? It might be a toyger
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/photogalleries/cats-toygers/
34. Brett L wrote: “I’m starting to worry that I’m going to see a deer stuck in the cat door one day soon.”
Years ago I had a cat that actually trailed a deer that ran through our yard. I watched him follow the tracks carefully over the fence and on through the neighborhood. Being a smart cat, he gave the deer a 15 minute head start to keep from actually catching it. However, since he was in the habit of bringing home adult rabbits for snacks he might have just had ambitions of dining on venison.
Geekygirl: Hehe…I normally don’t keep track of my Thanksgiving dinners, but when Scalzi said he’d eaten 42,000 calories, my brain said, “I wonder how many calories I really did eat?” I had to look it up and try and do the math conversions from the online recipes.
That sounds about right! At least we had our annual family football game that gave us a couple hours of burning off some of the calories we ate. Hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!!!
What I’d like to know is, how is it possible to eat three plates of food and then willingly go back for two pieces of pie? Knowing full-well how much it will eventually hurt. At what point did humans mate with garbage disposals, anyway?
3,900.
I ordered sukiyaki.
:)
I am Canadian, therefore my thanksgiving was one month ago.
I like making turkey, as I like the amount of leftovers that I can then turn into casseroles; they freeze well, and provide me with meals on the weeks that I am too busy to prepare meals.
When I make a turkey I put alot of compound butter (in my case butter with garlic, fresh thyme and fresh rosemary) between the meat and the skin and then put slices of good bacon over the breast. When the turkey is done, there is alot of fat in the pan dripping.
This is about the only time that I make mash potatoes as well. Instead of using butter to make the mash potatoes, I use the leftover fat from the pan drippings. I always get complements on my mash potatoes and I rarely (or maybe never) tell people that the goodness comes from the fat of three animals (turkey, cow and especially that tasty porkfat).
Cheers
Andrew
Nathan, there is never enough stuffing.
I had to watch the typtophan intake as the drive to Mom’s is two hours. That long of a drive at midnight, in the first real snow of the season while fighting off the turkey twightlight isn’t a good idea. Well, that and I am tyring to lose some of this spare tire.
I ran a 5k on thanksgiving morning. This is made more impressive by the fact that I don’t normally run. Or jog. I’m suitably impressed by my 34 minute time.
Then I made pumpkin pie, fixed a computer, and cooked the feast for 2 (thank you Jenny-O), feeling guilty because little of the food was local. I’m jealous of the buffalo, Mark.
Calorie guestimate, courtesy of http://www.calorieking.com:
Turkey – 320
Asparagus – 26
croissants – 228
mashed potatoes – 237
butter – 36
pie – 316
total = 1163 (plus the fruit & yogurt for breakfast)
I treated myself to a waffle (with cashew butter and Grade B maple syrup–mmmmm, maple-y…) yesterday morning in honor of it being my birthday. And then made something vaguely stir-fry-like about five, in and around devouring Song of Susannah (would have been You’re Not Fooling… except it has not, of course, arrived. I wonder if it’s even been printed yet? Hmmm…).
p.s. I like the snowflake theme!
33. Hao — There are three kinds of calories, which you may have been aware of: Big-C Calories, little-c calories and kilocalories.
Calories = kilocalories = 1000 calories = 4184 Joules
In the U.S., Calories are used for food. It’s the energy to raise 1 kilogram of water by 1 deg C. (As opposed to a BTU, which is the energy to raise 1 pound of water by 1 deg F.)
Our Black Friday Turkey is out of the oven and the root vegetables are baking. Mmm…
Dr. Phil
I am a Thanksgiving orphan, so I went with some friends to their family feast. There were 20 of us, all seated around a huge table (constructed of 6 folding banquet tables jammed together). Everyone (including me) brought food: baked turkey, deep-fried turkey, baked ham, two kinds of stuffing, three kinds of potatoes, two kinds of cranberry jelly, beans, veggie salads, fruit salads, olives, rolls. Then a small intermission – to clear the table – before dessert: 4 pumpkin pies, 1 pecan pie, 1 “lemon goodie” merenge thingie the size of a lasagna.
The food was incredible – god, do I love deep-fried turkey – and the company even better. They were all genuinely sweet, warm, generous people.
Afterwards, my friends and I went to a bar, where we drank and played pinball.
Best Thanksgiving in years!
I know a number of people who love deep-fried turkey. But please be careful cooking it. A West Michigan business burned to the ground on Thanksgiving when a turkey fryer went out of control and it spread to the horse barn, but fortunately the horses were saved.
Oops, sorry for posting a downer here. Be safe, everyone. Otherwise there will be less people to eat the leftovers. Wait, doesn’t that mean more for me? (grin)
Dr. Phil
I had a couple of baby carrots, a small bowl of corn, and a roll. I’m a picky eater and haven’t ever enjoyed Thanksgiving.
Although, I’m continually amazed that before dinner people pray and give thanks to God…and then partake in committing the 2nd deadly sin Gluttony.