Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc...name the worst thing you've eaten so far during the holidays.

[Miles Archer]

I'm assuming that for most of us, that period between Thanksgiving and New Year's involves some combination of our own cooking, restaurants, meals at family members' homes, work or church pot lucks...it couldn't have all been delicious...could it?

Share your cautionary tales of fine holiday dining here.

[Dream Girl]

1. We ordered a goose that turned out to be freezer burned!

😩

[OnDoutside]

2. Breakfast today was one slice of well buttered toast, a Walnut Whip

And a Tunnocks Teacake. Washed down with a diet coke. The day went downhill from there.

[Rorey]

3. Vegan gravy on Thanksgiving

My daughter-in-law is vegan, and I'm vegetarian. I found the recipe for vegan gravy online and it got great reviews. It was not good. At all. And the worst part was that it cost quite a bit to make with ingredients that I likely will never use again.

[Miles Archer]

5. I recently downloaded a vegan cookbook on Kindle...

...and the thing that struck me was how many ingredients were required to make pretty much anything.

I didn't get the book to make a complete lifestyle change, just to possibly replace a few meat meals and also have balanced proteins / nutrients / etc.

It seemed like the simplest recipes either had a list of ingredients longer than my arm or called for things I never have in the house, and you'll never find on supermarket shelves in my town.

[Rorey]

6. So true

I wanted it to be special, and that would have justified the cost.

For Christmas Day dinner I made a tortilla bake thing with cashew cheese. While it wasn't awful, it's also something I'll never make again. Personally, I don't like something to take longer to make than it takes to eat (not counting cooking time). I'm easily satisfied with simple things.

[csziggy]

8. I did NOT try the Vegan Mac & Cheese for Christmas dinner

As the husband of the niece that made it described, it was made of food like synthetic substitutes for the pasta and the cheese. With family members that are allergic to gluten and dairy, I guess it was an effort to simulate a favorite dish, but really, how could it possibly be as good as the real thing? The irony is, next to it was real home made mac & cheese, which I also didn't eat.

All in all, the food at the dinner was fantastic, but a little heavy on the carbs - three different kinds of dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (with brown sugar and pecans, no marshmallows in sight), and gravy, with ham, and smoked and roast turkey, but only two kinds of vegetables. Then the desserts - key lime pie (mine), pumpkin pie, apple pie, cranberry bars, and six different kinds of cookies - put it over the top.

The two mac & cheese dishes were not really needed.

[Rorey]

9. You had a feast!

I ate way too much of the desserts. I'm going to have to get back on track in the next week.

[csziggy]

11. Yes - and I am going back on my diet

With my continuing back problems I can't comfortably exercise like I'd like. I've put five pounds on since I got back from the UK in November. Of course, that included Thanksgiving and Christmas with all the baking involved with both holidays.

Since my diet was successful last year at helping me lose 35 pounds in six months with no exercise, I'll do it again but maybe not as drastically. 1100 calories a day is brutal!

[Rorey]

15. That's got to be tough

1100 calories, I mean.

I lost about 170 pounds last year. I got a divorce.

Seriously, I lost about 40 pounds since February, and then hit a plateau, but I'm going to get more serious now. I've had a lot of life changes in the past year. I got that divorce and then my son and his family moved in with me for about nine months while they were building a new house. They're out now, so for the first time in my life I'm living alone. Well, I was alone for about a week and a half, but now my 21 year old grandson is here over the holidays. I love him with all of my heart, but I'm looking forward to experiencing some real solitude so I can figure out who I really am.

And when he's gone, I'll have the real test of my resolve when it comes to my eating habits. I feel that if I can get out of the grocery store without buying junk, I'll pretty much have won most of the battle. But we'll see.

[csziggy]

16. I had to lose 40 pounds to get my back operated on

And I managed - about three months in I hit a plateau so I cut out almost all carbs and dropped the rest. Got the operation and my back seemed OK. Then I spend nearly three months in he UK, at whatever I wanted, but hiked 2-6 miles a day. Since I got back, I haven't been hiking so much and my back is giving me problems again. I'm doing physical therapy which is mostly stretches to try to relieve the nerve impingement I still have. I've got to get back to hiking but it's hard right now with business and other things keeping at the computer.

As for staying on the low calorie diet - make make my own muffins with stevia and/or Splenda, substitute unsweetened applesauce for oil. Lunch is usually a smoothie, again using fake sugars, though sometimes I splurge with celery and pimento cheese. Dinner is lean meats, chicken, or fish with lots of vegetables, no carbs, sometimes with a salad and vinaigrette dressing. Since I seldom eat out and do most of my own cooking, it is easier to keep to the diet. I put everything I eat into MyFitnessPal.com which lets me put in my own recipes and gives me the nutrients per serving.

My goal now is to lose another 40-50 pounds. The big challenge is keeping it off!

My husband goes to the store for me a lot since he goes to town while I stay home. He is very good about not buying junk food - or if he does, he hides it upstairs where I don't see it.

[Rorey]

20. I wish my husband would have done that for me

I really think he'd purposely try to sabotage me. He'd bring home way too much junk for himself, and then there it would be.....a temptation.

At this point I've pretty much given up baking. If I want to give in and have a treat, I'll go buy one serving of something. I've noticed that the longer I can hold out without eating junk, the less tempting it is. I try to find distractions until the temptation is gone.

I hope you're able to make time to start hiking again. It's so good for body and soul. I love walking and live in the perfect place for hiking. It's ridiculous that I don't do it more.

[csziggy]

21. Yeah - my husband used to buy junk food - but I complained too much

That's when he started taking it upstairs to "his" room where his computer and comic books are. Since I almost never go upstairs, that put it out of impulse reach. I'm lucky, he is really supportive.

Mostly I bake for the holidays, though the muffins are a regular thing as is my own bread. I like a carb for breakfast and oatmeal was my go-to breakfast meal. But it is harder to control portions with oatmeal with sugar on top, plus I can't find a large crystal fake sugar like I like to sprinkle on top. The muffins are controllable - I've been eating two each morning but I am cutting back to one. My recipe has oatmeal, whole wheat and oat flour, applesauce, one egg, and lots of spices. About 100 calories each without butter and they are moist enough to not need butter and quite filling.

My bread is whole grain with oatmeal or a multigrain cereal (Bob's Red Mill) and very good. I don't eat it very often but my husband loves it. It's healthier than store bought bread, less sugar (mine uses 1/3 cup honey for two 12" long loaves) and is really good, even though I make it myself.

I'll get my hiking in - we have 60 acres so I have no excuse other than time. With short winter days and getting ready for an addition to the house, I've spent way too much time on the computer. One the construction starts, I'll be walking around supervising and get my walking in, for certain.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. It seems like a lot of vegan food that attempts to replicate the real thing -

meat or cheese in various forms - has a weird, gummy texture that's pretty repellent. Maybe it's better to just stick to real vegetables and not try to synthesize something else.

[csziggy]

17. That's what I thought - why fake something if you can't eat it

While I could never live without cheese, if I became sensitive to it, I wouldn't make fake cheese things - I'd just not make the dishes that use it. If I were avoiding gluten, I'd have cheese with cauliflower instead of fake pasta.

[Rorey]

18. I grew up on a dairy farm

I don't foresee myself giving up dairy, though I haven't eaten meat in a few decades.

I've tried to make a few things when my vegan daughter-in-law is going to be here, but the only thing that was palatable to me was vegan cupcakes. They were pretty good, but would have been more tasty with eggs. I'd really rather just do without cheese than have the fake stuff on the market.

I really don't like the products that are trying to replicate the taste of meat. I guess I'm sort of a purist in some ways. I only eat real butter, and have no desire to try fake eggs. I just really never liked eating meat, but I always cooked it for my kids and my husband. It doesn't bother me at all to sit across the table from someone who is enjoying a steak. I feel like humans, for the most part, are omnivores. My daughter-in-law is a strict vegan for moral reasons. I respect her right to make her own choices, but I've also tried to gently mention once in awhile that advocating for humane conditions for animals might be more effective than trying to get the whole world to stop eating meat.

I know that my son and his wife spend a fortune on groceries. He eats eggs and chicken and some types of fish, but insists that they be as humanely sourced as possible. I'd go without eggs before I'll spend $9 per dozen, which he has done.

[csziggy]

22. I won't give up dairy or eggs

I still eat meat, but much less than I used to.

I've never tried to make egg free cupcakes, but I have made egg free muffins that turned out good.

As for dairy and eggs - if people stopped eating meat and all animal products, I suspect the species that provide those would go extinct.

If I had to pay $9 a dozen for eggs, I'd get my own chickens! The major problem I would have is keeping the chickens from the foxes and coyotes - but a solid moveable coop that I could drag around the yard might help with that. A guy doing some work for us is house sitting for some people that have chickens. He has to get back each afternoon to bring the chickens in before dark. I'm not sure my schedule would fit with that, so I'd rather move the coop and keep the chickens inside it. I have a one + acre field south of the house that would make a great place to put a moveable chicken coop.

[underpants]

4. Friends in town who used to live here

They are on the Keto diet. He's lost 80 and she's lost 50. He was craving a Carytown Burger & Fries. The original in Carytown is a grease fest but that's what makes it so good.

Due to their swim meet schedule we met at the west end (flight) antiseptic shopping mall location. Horrible. Literally a nothingburger. Service was horrible too and the menu is too complicated. At the original you basically build your own this had a lot of stupid made-for-the-burbs items. The "Flying Squirrel" (local baseball team) is peanut butter, bacon, and cheddar.

That was the worst thing I've had other than Maty's Cough Syrup which works but ithe aftertaste will curl your toes.

[defacto7]

7. One nasty tough turkey that seemed to have

so much triptifan in it, it made me depressed. Twice.

[Kali]

10. since I haven't gotten around to making tamales yet I bought a half dozen each of red chile pork and

green chile cheese. the red ones were OK but the cheese was fooking velveta or canned nacho cheese or something decidedly NOT real cheese.

all that work to put together and then ruined with plastic cheese???!!!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. I could have had lutefisk, but didn't.

[whistler162]

13. For some reason the ham

just tasted wierd., likely the orange and pineapple juice that was added with the pineapples.

[Phentex]

19. I got lucky!...

maybe I just avoided the bad things but everything I ate was pretty good. At my mother-in-law's, I avoided some casseroles and desserts but ate decently otherwise.

[Dem2theMax]

23. Everything. Why?

Because I've gained 4 pounds!

[Niagara]

24. Too many desserts (sugar)

I have to keep reminding myself not to consume too many desserts because I end up having a sugar crash.