Snow and Thanksgiving in March….Wait, What?

What is going on around here? It’s nearly April and it’s snowing in Portland. March usually brings a solid 31 days of pouring, dreary rain but snow?! It’s such bizarre weather. All the spring flowers that popped up froze in the snow. Last Thursday it snowed here in Portland and then Friday and Saturday were gorgeous, sunny and in the 60’s!

Instead of Easter this year, Michael’s family celebrated Thanksgiving. This is nothing new. They celebrated Thanksgiving in March last year, too. After nearly four years with Michael now, it’s just the norm.

It’s hard to believe that this time last year we were jetting of to sunny Tucson…running in the desert, hiking in the 90 degree sunshine, and swimming in an outdoor pool. Amazing. That was such a fantastic trip. I wish we could make it an annual thing in the nasty Oregon spring when it rains every day. But alas, this year we had to pass.

I started my day out with a nice swim at the gym (empty pool, always good too), skipped lunch and then we headed out to Michael’s mom’s house. I was looking forward to the afternoon with them. I love his Mom and she’s a great cook! When we got there we munched on some fresh veggies while dinner finished cooking.

I love veggie trays. They are one of my favorite things. It’s impossible to ever feel bad about eating the veggie tray at a potluck or party. It was the “safe” food I ate a lot of when I was trying to lose weight. Plus, I love veggies. So I will always gravate towards that. His mom mixed up a little bit of dip–sour cream and blue cheese–but most of the veggies didn’t need it.

Do you seen the yellowish celery? Michael’s mom said she found out that the greener the celery is, the more bitter and stringy it is. But buying the smaller, yellowish kind or just using the “hearts” of the celery is better. She was totally right. The celery wasn’t stringy at all and it tasted a lot better. It was almost sweet.

I didn’t go too crazy on dinner–except for my two weaknesses: mashed potatoes and stuffing. I had two servings of that but I honestly didn’t feel too badly about it because I was starving from not eating lunch and swimming my butt off that morning.

Thanksgiving dinner was mashed potatoes with gravy, turkey, cranberries, stuffing, baked asparagus and baked sweet potato wedges. Everything was delicious of course. It’s kind of a nice treat to have a thanksgiving feast in the middle of spring! All the stress of the holidays was gone and it was just family eating way too much food.

We took home some leftovers. I had the leftover turkey on top of salads for my lunches at work for a few days. It was a nice way to get some protein on my salad.

QUESTION: How was your March? What were the highlights?