Importance Of Thanksgiving Dinner Essay

The holiday dinner is important for celebrating events. We expect juicy roasted turkey and mash potato with gravy sauce on top for Thanksgiving dinner. Holiday dinner like Thanksgiving is very delicious, so we tend to eat too much. According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), average Thanksgiving dinner equals 3,000 calories and 229 grams of fat. I had experienced that I ate the special dinner too much and the next day my stomach hurts. It causes greasy food weighs heavy on my stomach. This time I tried to make healthy and balanced nutrients dinner for the special day.

For my Thanksgiving dinner, I prepared roasted turkey with gravy sauce and cranberry sauce, mash potato, steamed rice with wild rice, steamed vegetables, including carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, pecoros onion and zucchinis, green salad, sweet pea & bacon salad, and pumpkin soup. To

roast a turkey, I didn’t brush the turkey with oil. Using an oven bag was a very easy way to make a roasted turkey. Even if I didn’t use oil, the turkey was perfectly moist when done. Like the turkey, I tried to cook dinner without oil, and I chose non-oil dressing for the green salad, although mash potato and gravy sauce contained butter. I decided to eliminate a pumpkin pie for dessert. The pumpkin pie is lighter than a pecan pie, but still has estimated 300 calories per one slice. Instead, my son made homemade orange jello with orange juice that he squeezed. He added sweet mascarpone cheese with peach on side of orange jello instead of whipped cream. My Thanksgiving dinner was a calorie-reduced diet.

After cooking the dinner, I checked my dinner whether it had all five components in My Plate.

Steamed rice, wild rice and mash potato were served as grains group that is expected to eat ¼ cup for a child aged 1-5, ½ for a child 6-12. Cranberry sauce, orange jello, peach in mascarpone cheese were categorized into fruits group. Steamed vegetables and green salad were vegetables group. These fruits and vegetables should be served ¼ cup for 1-2 years-old child, ½ cup for 3-5 year-old child, ¾ cup for 6-12 year-old child. Turkey and pea & bacon salad were classified as proteins Group. While proteins, grains, vegetables and fruits were easy to add my Thanksgiving dinner, it was difficult to serve Dairy group. So I make pumpkin soup, including smashed pumpkin, diced pumpkin, turkey juice and 1% milk. Also, I added sweet mascarpone cheese on side of orange jello. The dairy group should be eaten ½ cup by a child 1-2, ¾ cup by a child 3-5, and 1 cup by a child 6-12. I served the appropriate size of the foods, but actually I couldn’t make sure how many foods they ate for the reason that we shared foods arranged on big

plates.

Unlike holiday dinner, I usually enjoy dinner, talking with my son at home, and don’t share foods with him. I usually use individual dishes and have meals using a tray on which accompanying dishes are served individually. I serve protein group, grains group, vegetables group and fruits group on small individual plates. In the meal time I always enjoy conversation with him. I love to sit down and hear him about his school life and books that he read. He also wants to know what I learned at PCC. To enjoy conversation, he is not allowed to use his electronic devices, so he will complain to me if I answer my phone during the meal time. Conversation during dinner is efficient not only for our relationship, but also for our health. When we talk, we eat slowly. Eating slowly aids digestion. The conversation makes us happy and healthy during meal time.

In sum, holiday dinner is important for our life, but it tends to high caloric meals. For management of health, I believe that we can decline to caloric intake by cooking in a healthy way. However, it is difficult to notice how many meals the children eat because we tend to share foods arranged on big plates at special occasions. They can take foods that they want during special dinner. Through this assignment, I reconfirmed that we should not share foods except special occasions such as holidays.