The 100-Calorie Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! (Where “everybody” means “my readers who live in the United States and are celebrating this week.”)

I know you’ve probably got big plans and won’t be following your usual daily routine—where you read all your favorite blogs and then stop by mine, so I’ll keep this short and sweet.

Thanksgiving is more than just three or four uncomfortable visits to relatives you only see once every year or two. It’s more than just taking a moment to give thanks for the good things in your life, such as family, friends, and the fact that you know me. No, when it gets right down to it, it’s all about the guilt-ridden dinner you’ve been planning to enjoy for about a year now.

Well, take heart everyone, because I’ve come up with the perfect solution. It’s the 100-Calorie Thanksgiving Dinner. I’ve spent the last two weeks or so conducting this research and I’m sure you’ll all be happy with my results. You can now enjoy the big day, eat all you want, and not worry about blowing eleven months of dieting in a single afternoon.

Here’s how it works:

• Turkey; eight ounces: 15 calories
• Mashed potatoes smothered in butter; six ounces: 18 calories
• Stuffing; twelve ounces, 22 calories
• Gravy, poured over aforementioned ingredients; four ounces: 20 calories
• Bread, to drench up the remaining gravy; two ounces: 14 calories
• Cranberry sauce, freshly splunked from a can; three ounces: 8 calories
• Pumpkin pie, topped with whipped cream, and then topped with a second pumpkin pie; fifteen ounces: 3 calories

Grand total: one hundred calories. Isn’t that amazing? Makes you wonder what we’ve been worrying about all this time. So eat up and quit worrying. Besides, you’ve got all of 2011 to work it off, in the unlikely event I’ve made any sort of miscalculation.