Emotional Eating During the Holidays is Not ALL Bad - Grandma's Nanaimo Bars

Last week our Weight Watchers leader gave us a great tip for holiday treats.  Keep a mental list of all the foods you have an emotional connection with, and as you go through the holiday season enjoy the foods you love - once - then check them off your mental list.  For instance, if Grandma's Pumpkin Pie is your absolute favorite and she always makes it for St. Nicholas Day, you can look forward to having it then and easily say "no, thank you very much" to an offer of a lesser version at a different time.  It may also mean saying "no, thank you very much" to foods not already on the list.

When I allow myself one (or two) indulgences at a time, I enjoy the experience of the food and better remember it later.  Since I mindfully try to eat only what my body needs for nourishment, I want to really mark those times I choose to eat a treat because I really do enjoy eating.  On Christmas Eve I will have an opportunity to eat several of the treats on my list and believe me I will savor them.

One of those treats are the Nanaimo Bars my Grandma is finishing up today.  These are a staple on our family dessert table at Christmas and for a very long time I thought they were unique unto my Grandmother.  The bars are not unique to our family but they do come from a small town on Vancouver Island, Canada and that is pretty close to where we live and local, after all, is almost as good a family.  There is a fun little article on Wikipedia if you'd like to read the history of Nanaimo Bars.

These bars are chocolatey-creamy-ooey-gooey-sticky-yummy goodness and I absolutely have an emotional association with eating them.  The great thing is I can have a warm fuzzy feeling with just a few bites then I am good for another year.  It is completely normal and okay to have nostalgic happy feelings tied to food, especially foods that only come out at certain times during the year.  I simply make these foods part of my plan and practice moderation.

If we shutter ourselves away from tempting foods we may miss out on wonderful opportunities to enjoy our family and friends.  As you go through this week of celebrations be present in each moment.  Choose what you will enjoy and enjoy what you choose!

Naniamo Bars on the lower half of the tray,
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars and Frosting Dipped Pretzels on top.

NANAIMO BARS

from Our Lady of Second Helpings' Grandma's Recipe Card

Base Layer:

½ C. Butter  - Softened

¼ C. White Sugar    

5 TBSP Cocoa

1 TSP. Vanilla          

1 Egg

2 C. Graham Cracker Crumbs

1 C. Coconut

½ Chopped Walnuts

Place softened butter, sugar, cocoa, vanilla, and egg into a bowl over a sauce pan of boiling water.

Stir well until butter is melted and mixture looks like a custard.

In a large bowl -Combine crumbs, nuts, and coconut.

Add cooked ingredients to crumb mixture folding together until blended.

Press combined ingredients into a 9” pan

Chill 15 minutes to overnight.

Middle Layer

¼ C. Butter

3 TBSP Milk

2 TSP Vanilla Instant Pudding

2 C. Powdered Sugar

Mix together first three ingredients and fold in powdered sugar until completely blended.

Spread over chilled base and chill an additional 15 to 30 minutes.

Top Layer:

When first two layers are chilled: Melt 4 squares of Semi-Sweet (or Unsweetened) Baking Chocolate with 1 TB Butter.

Spread melted chocolate over the chilled layers.

Fully chill completed bars before cutting into squares.

Keep the bars cool until ready to serve.

Meringue Cookies or The Snowmen Debacle

The other day I got a great idea for a Christmas confection, sort of a cookie, but a light and guiltless one.  I thought it would be super fun to make meringue snowmen.  My hope was to have cute little snowmen with the same crisp and airy texture as the pre-made puffs I have bought in the past.  Most importantly I wanted something I could decorate.  I poked around on-line to find a recipe and found a few variations so I went with the simplest one to start.

On a quiet afternoon with frost still glittering on the grass I got busy turning my brilliant idea into an edible delight.  As I staged the ingredients and mixed the meringue I photographed my progress, already envisioning the amazing final product.

Room temperature egg whites, 1/3 of a cup of Splenda Sugar Blend, 1/8 of a teaspoon of cream of tarter, and the seeds from a vanilla bean.  Scrapping the insides out of the vanilla bean made me feel like I really knew what I was doing.  Whipping the egg whites into stiff peaks was so rewarding.  The tiny vanilla bean seeds clearly defined by the stark fluffy whites already tasted delicious.

I don't own a pipping bag so I cut the zipper off of a gallon sized storage bag and snipped away a small piece of one corner.  As I began to pipe the snowmen on to my parchment lined cookies sheets I felt like I might be able to submit my genius idea to a culinary magazine.

The recipe called for the meringues to bake at 175 degrees for 2 hours.  I placed the two pans of snowmen into the oven, set the timer, and sat down to finish stamping my Christmas cards while Miracle on 34th Street (with Maureen O'Hara and Natalie Wood) played in the background.  I felt like the crowned Queen of Christmas.

After an hour I peeked in the oven and found the snowmen just sitting there as though nothing had happened with perhaps a few extra little bubbles on their surface.  Another half an hour later I was concerned that the snowmen did not have any sort of a crust forming on them.  One of the recipes I glanced at used a slightly higher temperature so I turned the heat up to 200 degrees.

Twenty seven minutes later I pulled two pans of sticky, soft, peed on snowmen out of the oven.

They firmed up a little after cooling for a few minutes but were no where near my vision.  This caused me to frown, then sigh, and then I handed one to my son who smiled, gobbled it up, and demanded another.

Things do not always go the way I envision them.  I am not The Queen of Christmas and sometimes life sends me "peed on snowmen" but, at the end of the day, I am queen of my own kitchen and that's about all I can handle right now.


*Got any tips for making a crisp meringue cookie?  Let me know in the comments!