Low Glycemic Thanksgiving and the Joy of Simplicity, by Mollie

Sounds impossible, doesn't it? With the plethora of high carbohydrate and fatty foods that constitute the classic Thanksgiving meal, it's hard to be low-glycemic. Well, we tried this year. We still had mashed potatoes, but we didn't cook them with any butter. Of course we had stuffing - that's always the best part - but we used millet bread and small amounts of oil. Instead of stuffing a turkey - which we never eat anyway because we're all vegetarians - we stuffed two small pumpkins. Pumpkin pie was, of course, a necessity, but we used a recipe we found a couple of years ago for vegan pumpkin pie, which uses a nutty crust. We used bananas in the pumpkin filling to decrease the fat content, and we had it with a small scoop of coconut ice cream instead of whipped cream.

That was probably the best pumpkin pie I've ever tasted.

As my mother remarked as we sat down for our meal (well, actually, as I took a picture of it before we sat down), it all looked just like a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving. We saw the original painting only a week later at the Dayton Art Institute, and she really was right.

Over the week of November, my mother made a lot of REALLY YUMMY low glycemic dinners. I'll leave the details of those left to be discussed by the Cook herself, but let me just say that I was extremely impressed with the variance that a low glycemic diet presents. Like with a salad bar, there are so many different options for combination, every one of which tastes good alone also, that the possibilities are endless. And they are so SIMPLE. Low-glycemic meals don't require a long amount of frying or baking. Some people mistake the simplicity of a vegetarian or gluten-free diet for repetitiveness. But the truth is that vegetables are vegetables no matter what, and they are so many different kinds that will be good together in almost any combination, as long as they are combined with good seasonings. I was SO GLAD to have those wonderful, feel-good meals when I got home after a long day, and I can never thank my mother enough for cooking them, or for converting us to a largely low-glycemic diet.