Christmas Is A Time To Let It All Hang Out...Stomach And All

IT'S GETTING NEAR Christmas and the parties are numerous!

It's no time to be thinking about expanding waistlines with all those "sinfully fattening" treats available for the snarfing down.

Every magazine and every newspaper I get has badly timed articles on how to avoid fat, how to limit carbs in your cooking, and non-fattening recipes, galore.

Even USA Today supplement in the Sunday paper and Readers Digest got into the act last week. They're all promoting slimness.

Christmas is a time to let it all hang out . . . stomach and all, and you can't do a party tray justice while worrying about fat and carbs with every mouthful.

I'm a svelt 160 pounds, now [with my clothes on] so I don't have to worry about the food I eat blowing me up all out of proportion. Of course I'm not supposed to eat chocolate, bananas, nuts, potatoes of any kind, and outrageous amounts of anything.

But, heck, it's Christmas! What is Christmas, if it isn't a time to stuff yourself?

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I HAD ALREADY seen 10 pages of the low fat propaganda in Newsweek, but imagine my surprise when I got the latest edition of Readers Digest, only to find nine pages of health and diet.

There was even a suggestion on how to serve a traditional Christmas meal and take all the bad stuff out of it. What's a "traditional" Christmas meal WITHOUT the "bad stuff" still in the ingredients? Bleah! eating, that's what!

For instance, who's going to skim the fat off the turkey drippings before making a gravy out of the drippings? The article said to substitute low-fat chicken broth [there is such a thing?]

For egg nog you stick to an aspertame ingredient instead of sugar and substitute skim milk rather than sinfully fattening whole milk and cream. It says you'll save 200 calories and 18 grams of fat per cup. But what'll you have? Egg nog-less you can pour over your breakfast cereal!

There's other tasteless suggestions, such as lose the butter and milk in mashed potatoes and instead, use nonfat sour cream instead.

That ought to titillate your taste buds!

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I'LL GIVE USA TODAY credit, though. They gave recipes for dishes prepared by the folks who lived in Jessica Lynch's hometown in West Virginia.

Now, those folks know how to go about preparing a satisfying Christmas dinner!

People up there save their fat by eating a lot of venison, which is naturally low in fat content, anyhow.

They do things like coating a ham in brown sugar and letting it marinate for 24 hours, then bake it all night long, with pineapple, at 250 degrees. That would make even ham fit to eat!

I still have a desire for what aggravated my bad high blood pressure all my life, until it ruined my kidneys. It's a shame to put a set of kidneys, which weren't built strong enough to cut the mustard in someone who lived to "cut mustard" every chance he got.

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IT MUST BE SOME sort of conspiracy with all the news media. Why would they all get together on this fat kick this close to 'Christmas?"

Nobody is going to pay any attention to their dire warnings; not even those who know better than to eat huge amounts of fat and carbs--especially, those who know better than to eat huge amounts of fat and carbs.

I've seen, first hand and three times a week, what can happen to those who abuse their right to ingest too much fat and carbs, until they develop diabetes, and it isn't pretty.

But, I suppose every red-blooded American will continue to indulge--mightily--at this time of the year, without any second thoughts. I'd recommend that you just not read any of those warnings on getting fat, recipes for preparing treats "just as good as their replacement" and other tips for fixing a "sensible" Christmas meal.

I know I'm going to partially ignore them, each and every one; to a certain extent.

Shucks, I might even eat a piece of chocolate cake, with nuts! A former no-no!

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READERS DIGEST closed out with an article for substituting ingredients one would ordinarily eat for something else. As a matter of fact it gave exactly six suggestions for using substitutes. The only thing is, there are only two weeks until Christmas and I don't have time to incorporate them all in my diet as the magazine warned to incorporate only one change a week for fear of upsetting your digestive tract!