-*- -*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
Turkey Roasting Times
The National Turkey Federation recommends
roasting a turkey in a 325 degrees F oven until a meat thermometer
indicates the internal temperature registers 180 degrees F in the
thigh and 170 degrees F in the breast. Pop-up timers are helpful as
a preliminary step in judging the correct temperature, but a meat
thermometer is the best final authority to determine doneness.
A shallow roasting pan should be used so oven air can flow
completely around the turkey. Pans with sides higher than 1 inch
will shield the thickest part of the turkey thighs from the heat,
and the thighs will not cook evenly. For easier clean up, add ½ cup
of water to the bottom of the pan.
If you stuff your bird, stuff it immediately before you place it in
the oven. The center of the stuffing must register 160-165 degrees F
before removing the turkey from the oven. If you do not stuff your
turkey, the addition of 2 cups of coarsely chopped celery, onion and
carrots to the cavity will enhance the fragrance and add to the
flavor of the pan juices.
The roasting times shown on the chart below reflect the shorter
cooking times of the turkeys produced by today's turkey industry.
Turkeys today take less time to cook than in the past because new
turkey breeds produce a higher proportion of white meat. Since white
meat cooks faster than dark meat, care should be taken to follow
these guidelines to ensure a moist turkey. Use roasting times as a
planning guide only; use a thermometer to determine actual doneness.
NTF Roasting Guidelines for a Fresh or Thawed Turkey. Roast in a 325
degrees F Conventional Oven on the Lowest Oven Rack.
8 to 12 pounds unstuffed 2 3/4 to 3
hours, stuffed 3 to 3 ½ hours
12 to 14 pounds unstuffed 3 to 3 3/4 hours, stuffed 3 ½ to 4 hours
14 to 18 pounds unstuffed 3 3/4 to 4 1/4 hours, stuffed 4 to 4 1/4
hours
18 to 20 pounds unstuffed 4 1/4 to 4 ½ hours, stuffed 4 1/4 to 4 3/4
hours
20 to 24 pounds unstuffed 4 ½ to 5 hours, stuffed 4 3/4 to 5 1/4
hours
24 to 30 pounds unstuffed 5 to 5 1/4 hours, stuffed 5 1/4 to 6 1/4
hours
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
Turkey Calories Chart
** Be sure to note the calories and fat in the skin **
Breast with skin 194 calories 8 grams
fat 29 grams protein
Breast w/o skin 161 calories 4 grams fat 30 grams protein
Dark meat w/skin 232 calories 13 grams fat 27 grams protein
Dark meat w/o skin 192 calories 8 grams fat 28 grams protein
Skin only 482 calories 44 grams fat 19 grams protein
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
HANDLING THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
Dr. Mary Dan Eades
Every year the arrival of late October
heralds the beginning of the diet disaster season that lasts through
first day of the New Year. The temptations to veer from our
well-intentioned nutritional plans surround us: huge sacks of candy
fill the shelves of the stores; every magazine cover shows off its
glorious holiday treats and plans for bounteous holiday feasts. It's
hard enough trying to keep the goal of nutritional rehabilitation
and maintenance in mind without all the extra temptations. What's a
poor dieter to do during these times? Just give up and gain the
national average of 5 to 15 pounds between Halloween and New Year's?
Dream of everything, but enjoy nothing? Perhaps we can come up with
a Disaster Preparedness Plan for the Holidays.
Thanksgiving Feast
Where else but in America would people
have a national holiday for the sole purpose of gathering friends
and loved ones together to eat the biggest possible amount of food
in one afternoon? We would be better off to remember that what we
celebrate is a sense of thankfulness for our good fortune, for the
communion of family and friends, and for our good health. As you
plan for, prepare, and relish your own family's version of a
traditional Thanksgiving feast, I ask you to remember the last
part-the part about the good health-and to try not to end up more
stuffed than the bird this year.
Don't approach the day with a sense of
resentment, restriction and denial-on the contrary, I recommend that
your give yourself license to be human. Go ahead and sample a bite
of everything that appeals to you on this day. Yes, you'll pay the
proverbial piper come Friday morning, and yes, you will pick up
several pounds of retained fluid, and yes, your eyes will be puffy
and your rings will be tight and your waistband will dig in a little
more for a day or two-but you knew all of this ahead of time.... You
can minimize the damage somewhat just by being more conscious of
portion size on the stuffing, the potatoes, the rolls, and the
pie-in short on all the starchy and sugary things. Try to eat larger
portions of the juicy turkey, the green beans and the green salad.
Remember to drink plenty of water or unsweetened tea, or your diet
beverage of choice.
You may even want to try to modify some
of your favorite Thanksgiving recipes as we've done at our house.
Let me give you some examples of how easy that can be and a few
dietary tricks:
1, If you "candy" sweet potatoes, try
cutting the sugar, molasses, or brown sugar you use by half and
substituting Splenda or Sweet One, the artificial sweetener that
stands up to baking temperatures.
2, Use sugar-free gelatin in place of
regular Jell-O for Jell-O molds or cranberry molds.
3. Make your own bread crumbs or cubes
for stuffing using Lite whole grain breads or low carb breads or
make your own low carb breads from our cookbook: The Low Carb
Comfort Foods cookbook
http://www.eatprotein.com/cookbook.htm
4.Try baking a pumpkin custard pie
without a crust. Just spray a non-stick coating onto a quiche or pie
plate and pour the "filling" into the plate. Set it into a water
bath just as you would custard and bake at the same temperature you
would a custard pie. It's done when a knife inserted in the center
comes out clean. You may want to make the pumpkin custard into
individual custard cups or ramekin dishes. You have better portion
control this way.
5. Experiment with new vegetable dishes
using vegetables with higher fiber and lower starch content.
Zucchini, asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, and green beans can
round out a table that has smaller amounts of yams, mashed potatoes,
and dressing to tempt you to overeat.
6. Prepare a low-carbohydrate low-calorie
clear soup to serve before the main meal. Eating a good sized bowl
of soup before the feast will help curb your appetite somewhat.
7. Drink plenty of non-caloric fluid or
water during the meal.
8. Cut a piece of pie or cake in half
before you put it on your plate. Eat only this amount.
9. Offer to help clear the dishes away
immediately. If it sits there in front of you, you'll pick and
nibble while you visit.
10. Take a walk, weather permitting,
after your meal.
11. Sign a pact now with yourself that
you will not sit in front of the television and continue to eat. If
you'd like more of something, unpark yourself and go back to the
table and eat a bit more, but don't do it in front of the TV. Even
though watching the football game is part of many family
Thanksgiving Day celebrations, it's no place to eat. Unconsciously,
you'll pack away far more food than you'd ever intended to eat-and
the piper awaits a bigger payment on Friday.
12. Get rid of the evidence. Freeze the
leftovers, send them away with friends, and get the remnants of the
feast out of your house by any means except consuming them yourself!
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
FITNESS MOTIVATORS
* Short and Frequent Mini-Workouts
During the holidays there often seems to
be no time to work out. When time is short, put a time-saving change
into your exercise routine and still receive the health benefits.
According to several studies on exercise duration, short and
frequent mini-workouts throughout the day may lower your
triglycerides (fats in the blood) as effectively as one long
exercise session. Exercise reduces the spike in blood fats that
occurs after consuming a high-fat meal.
* Best and Worst Times of Day to Exercise
New research shows your lungs work worst
at noon and best at 4-5 pm. For a walk or easy workout, you may not
notice the difference. But for a vigorous workout, you probably
will. Most of all, you need to pick the time that is most convenient
and least prone to finding an excuse to skip your workout. I explore
all of the reasons why morning, noon, afternoon, and night could be
your best time or worst time to exercise.
* Fitness With A Busy Schedule
How do you balance the demands of
family, important errands, relationships,and other
responsibilities, and working out? Below are a few suggestions that
all of us might put into practice.
Commit to a specific schedule
When you fail to plan you plan to fail.
Don't try to haphazardly fit your workouts into your schedule
without any rhyme or reason. Don't think you're guilty? If you've
every told yourself "I'll workout as soon as I get some time", you
were in direct violation of this key principle.
In order to set yourself up for success,
you will need to take the time to literally write your workouts into
your weekly schedule. In order to be effective, you will want to be
following your exercise program at least 3 days per week. Anything
less would be kidding yourself.
Therefore, right in the midst of all of
your appointments, "to-do" lists, etc., should be a written plan for
your weekly workout routine, so that you will never be in the dark
as to when you committed to yourself to go.
Take advantage of your weekends
Take advantage of the fact that it only
takes 3-5 days per week to put together an effective,
results-producing workout. One trick to help you pull it all off is
to workout on the weekends. One of the benefits to this course of
action is that your schedule is more flexible and under your control
during this time.
What is also means is that when the
hectic weekdays roll back around, you will only be responsible for
working out 1-3 days during the work week.
Keep your workouts as a high priority
One of the biggest mistakes that even
many people who have scheduled a workout program into their schedule
make is allowing it to be bumped off of their schedule to easily.
Although things will occasionally come up
that will cause you to have to reschedule the workout you had
planned, you must be vigilant in making sure that only the most
important emergencies are allowed to temporarily take you off of
your plan.
In the event that one of those important
emergencies does happen and you can't make it to your workout,
reschedule with yourself to make it up on the next possible day that
you are available to do so. If your own health, fitness, and efforts
to lose weight are not a priority to you, they certainly won't be so
to anyone else.
Enroll others in your goals
Don't go at this alone. Let the important
people in your life know what you are up to. You love interest,
spouse, parents, children, co-workers, and close friends will often
pitch in and help you to meet your fitness or weight loss commitment
to yourself if you make them aware and ask for their support.
Leverage these relationships to delegate
some of your normal responsibilities or even allow you to shift
appointments that you have with them as you restructure your
schedule for your workout. If any of them are into exercise or
trying to lose weight themselves, don't hesitate to form a buddy
system with them as you move forward with your program.
* Don't beat yourself up
No matter who you are, there will be
times in your workout program that you just aren't able to keep it
up as you would like due to outside demands. Don't be too tough on
yourself on this.
Remember that it is what you do
consistently over a long period of time, not what you do in spurts,
that truly counts. Just make sure that you get back on the horse
full force as soon as you can and continue to press forward, doing
your best to avoid slacking off again.
No matter what goals you have for health,
fitness, or weight loss, you CAN fit an effective exercise program
into that hectic schedule of yours and be amazingly successful at
getting the exact results that you want!
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
Pray...with Thanksgiving
I've heard a lot of droopy prayers in my
life. Hey! I've prayed a lot of them, too.
Prayers of desperation -- God, you've got to help me!
Prayers of self-pity -- God, things are so awful!
Prayers of resignation -- God, if you want to leave me unemployed,
then I can't stop you!
But I'm learning how to pray a different
kind of prayer -- prayer said with thanksgiving. I learned it from
St. Paul who, writing from prison, taught me a most powerful lesson.
He said: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by
prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to
God." Philippians 4:6
Strange. Here he is suffering himself,
yet he's telling me to pray with thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is the seasoning that makes our prayers edible to God.
After all, who wants to hear people whine all the time? I've learned
that you can't whine and give thanks in the same breath. Self-pity
and thankfulness don't mix any better than oil and water.
In fact, mixing thanks with prayer somehow changes it. When we
remember what God has done for us in the past and think about who he
is in the present -- and express that in thankfulness -- our prayers
become more gentle, more trusting somehow. Thankful prayers are
offered with faith. And faith is an essential ingredient for prayers
that God chooses to answer.
We remember the Pilgrims on Thanksgiving Day, not so much for their
turkey dinner, but for the sheer faith that inspired them to give
thanks in a year that saw nearly half their number die of sickness.
Yet they prayed with thanksgiving.
When your annual day of feasting is over, you may bemoan your extra
helpings of dressing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. But if you
can hang on to the "thanks" part of Thanksgiving, you'll be a
different person. Because when you learn to talk to God about your
needs -- mixed with a healthy dose of heartfelt thanks -- then you
have crossed the divide from whining at God to real prayer.
Happy thanks-giving!
Joyful Heart Renewal Ministry
http://www.joyfulheart.com/holiday/offer-blessing.htm
Copywrite. Reprinted with Dr. Wilson's
permission
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
Have a joyous Thanksgiving
DISCLAIMER: I am not a
licensed health care provider. All diet/health/fitness articles are
compiled from my own personal experiences, research and/or studies
with other health minded Christian Women, and from my own personal
choices of biblically sound nutrition and healthy living. All
articles shared at Healthy Truths are strictly for information. You
are responsible for what and how you use any teachings and/or health
information.
Please be aware that I may not be in full agreement, nutritionally,
with some of the articles presented by contributing writers---all
articles are posted strictly for information.
Whether you are healthy, pregnant, or have any health problems it is
best to consult with a Physician or Health Practitioner before
beginning any diet or exercise program