Thanksgiving 2004. My last at Club Fed. I had the pleasure of spending one last holiday here. Turkey Day. Hmm, just think, me and Martha Stewart sharing the same grub! Hey, her Thanksgiving letter makes all the news and entertainment shows! Give me a break!

I returned from our special dinner and was watching "You Only Live Twice", part of the James Bond movie marathon on Spike TV. A commercial break comes along, so I flip my radio from TV to the radio stations, and sure enough as I arrived at the Rock station I hear the chorus of Alice's Restaurant.

Now I wonder, am I hearing the beginning or the end? Well, as luck would have it, it was the beginning. So I am now sitting on my bunk with a full belly and the snow flurries flurrying outside my window and I am listening to one of the great songs from the 1960's.

Full belly you said? Yes, I did. Our special Thanksgiving meal was actually more food than one human being could possibly eat. The turkey was a foil-wrapped package of chunks of white and dark meat that all the kitchen staff had to do was heat up. We had cranberry sauce with the whole cranberries in it! I passed on the potatoes (white mashed and sweet non-mashed). Dessert was a nice, large slice of pecan pie, plus we had Dixie cups of vanilla ice cream. I am very full!

Yesterday I polished off a 14 oz. bucket of Christmas cookies. Well, I did not eat the whole thing; my cellie had about nine cookies. One serving is three cookies and there are fourteen servings per bucket, so each serving is 140 calories, times ten is 1,400 calories!

What I cannot figure out is on Tuesday when I made my usual mackerel dinner, I used two cans of mackerel at 120 calories per can and I was stuffed. An extra 120 calories filled me up, yet eating 1,400 calories of sugar and fat was no problem!

It's strange, only 120 calories per can, yet there is a major difference in "fullness." Yet I could easily devour multiple 250-calorie bags of M&M's with no problem!

I think the key to healthy eating is finding the calories that are geometrically higher in fuel use. Certainly an extra 120 calories of high protein stuff is better than all the sugar and fat of M&M's. But try telling that to the brain!
  ¶ 7:59 AM