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List the 1 thing you are MOST Thankful for:

Thankful for many things ~ my son especially
 
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Every person I've met in this life, every lesson I've learned (even the bad), every one who has crossed my path - regardless of differences of opinions and I am thankful for each strangers smile, for all God's creatures and the beautiful sights of nature and the universe.

I start each day before sun-up - - I end each day after sun-down - - there is nothing as beautiful and I am thankful to "absorb" them daily!
 
First and foremost my husband. After that all my family and friends. I'm thankful for everyone of them being in good health and also very thankful we all still have our jobs. Last but not least I'm thankful I don't live anywhere near Dianncy's MIL's ! :D
 
Happy Thanksgiving!!

:) I Love the Sun, and it was Shining today!! I feel very grateful for having someone to Love and for having Love in my life. I also Love & grateful for all pets and animals. I'm Happy for a good appetite! :D Cookie :)
 
I'm thankful Thanksgiving is over ~ what a wonderful dinner and everyone was relaxed and enjoyed themselves. Dinner was great (even without the sweet potato's) and the best thing of all: Had plenty of help cleaning my kitchen ~ That I am thankful for.
 
I am thankful our stomache's don't burst when we over-do-it at Thanksgiving:D

Everyone had great in-put here, we are all blessed in so many ways!!!

Burp ooops..... that stuffing was soooo good and the gravy-oh my!!!;)
 
Cathy,

Was the feast at your home?

I so agree with you, we are all blessed in many ways and every day too, we just need to open our eyes, our hearts, and our ears because they are always right there.
 
Yes we cooked, and there was one guest... my daughter. So there were 4 at our table and it was quiet and just perfect. We all stopped in next door and gifted our neighbors with a bottle of our favorite Blueberry Wine from Georgia Wineries and helped spread a little Brotherly Love with them, we have a very good friendship with them and it will be sad not having them for neighbors once we move. They are sad we're leaving too. You know how that goes you are excited about the new "Diggs" but there is still some sadness in the good things you leave behind.
 
I'm sorry to hear about your sweet potatoes. I marinade my sweet potatoes over night with Aunt Jemima's light pancake syrup. The next day I melt margarine, mix brown sugar, white sugar, (mix some bottle water in with it) vanilla , cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, top it off with marshmallows and pecan chips bake for 25 min in oven covered. I slice my potatoes in rounds. I made 5 sweet potatoes this year so I had to adjust my measurements. Usually I make 16 sweet potatoes. I stayed home this year. The potatoes turned out good with the Ham.

My Mac-cheese turned out mushy, I thought. I made it the night before and I baked it, how dumb... I should have made the noodles the night before and the cheese sauce the next day then baked it. Oh well I put it in the crock pot and served it warm. The flavor wasn't bad but this recipe said to put bread crumbs on top and it just didn't taste like mac cheese. I did throw out the top of the baked mac-cheese. I will never make that again that way.

I bought apple pie for desert, with light whip cream and cinnamon on top, girl scout (short bread) cookies for desert. It was a Good Thanksgiving, so I'm glad of that! Cookie :)
 
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"Plastic" according to the Oxford English Dictionary means "moulding, giving form to, clay, wax, or other yielding solid". That is, something is "plastic" if it is malleable. And in this sense, then, the statement that "margarine is plastic" is correct. Margarine can be molded and shaped.

Like butter, margarine is about 80% fat and 20% water and solids. But being from vegetable sources, it lacks cholesterol. It is flavoured, coloured, and fortified with vitamins and so "nutritionally" it is very similar to butter - without the cholesterol. Today, soy and corn oils predominate as the source - eating margarine is really not that much different from eating the raw oils from either corn or soy.
 
Here is in excerpt from: Mayo Clinic cardiologist Martha Grogan, M.D~~

"Margarine is made from vegetable oils, so it contains no cholesterol. Margarine is also higher in "good" fats — polyunsaturated and monounsaturated — than butter is".

"These types of fat help reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or "bad," cholesterol, when substituted for saturated fat. Butter, on the other hand, is made from animal fat, so it contains cholesterol and high levels of saturated fat".


"Not all margarine's are created equal — and some may even be worse than butter. Most margarine's are processed using a method called hydrogenation, which results in unhealthy trans fats. In general, the more solid the margarine, the more trans fats it contains — so stick margarine's usually have more trans fats than do tub margarine's. Like saturated fats, trans fats increase blood cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. In addition, trans fats can lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good," cholesterol levels."

I have high cholesterol (heredity) so I do not use margarine and very little unsalted butter but mostly if not all the time~ I use "I can't believe it's not butter spray.

Here is a web site for Snopes, regarding Butter, Margarine, and the Butter Truth


snopes.com: Butter, Margarine and Heart Attacks
 
Margerine as it used to be made is Transfat which is about the worst thing you can eat. Parkay is definetly worse than butter. That being said there are butter substitutes that are naturally solid at room temperature so they don't need to be partially hydrogenated. Soy butter being at the top of this list. I also am genetically predisposed to high cholesterol and I do use a light soy butter when adding a little butter to steamed veggies and such. I agree it is extremely important to read ALL labels so that you can understand what you are eating and make good choices.
 
just for reading -

Margarine or Butter-Truth! & Fiction!


Summary of the eRumor:
A list of comparative facts about margarine and butter.

The Truth:

The heart of this eRumor, the comparison between butter and Margarine, has been circulating since 2005. Later versions added the tidbit about Margarine being manufactured to fatten turkeys.

We'll go through the email one fact at time but it needs to be kept in mind that not every Margarine product is the same. There are other spreads that are loosely called Margarine but may, for example, be part vegetable oil or a fat-free Margarine product.

1. Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed The turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a Payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this Product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food Appeal so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in Place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever New flavorings-Fiction!
According to the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers, Margarine was the idea of a Frenchman named Hippolyte Mege-Mouriez in response to a request from Emperor Louis Napoleon for ideas for a substitute for butter. In 1870 he used margaric acid and the name of his formulation became known as Margarine. It became a hit in the United States in the late 1800's.

2. Both have the same amount of calories-Truth!
A tablespoon of butter is 100 calories. A tablespoon of Margarine is 100 calories.

3. Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study-Truth! But Updated!
We didn't find the "53%" study, but Harvard School of Public Health has published a report on this. It says that more than 30 years ago research indicated that saturated fat (such as in butter) was bad for the heart and people were told to switch to margarine. A Harvard study of women between 1980 and 1994 found a significant reduction of heart disease risk by reducing smoking, hormone treatment, and dietary improvements including reducing or eliminating saturated fat (such as in butter.) Further research has shown, however, that some margarines contained trans fat, which was even worse for the heart than saturated fat. The report cautions us not to make decisions as a result of just one study but to consider the body of recent research about an issue like butter versus margarine.
4. Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 Grams-Truth!
A tablespoon of butter is 7g of saturated fat. A tablespoon of margarine is 2g of saturated fat.

5. Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other Foods-Unproven!
We could not find anything definitive about this.

6. Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few only because they are added!
It depends on what you are measuring. The advantage of butter is that it is a more natural product than margarine and does have more vitamin content. But butter is high in saturated fat, which is associated with increased heart attack risk. Saturated fats are the ones that are solid at room temperature and increase the "bad" cholesterol (LDL) as well as the "good" cholesterol (HDL). The disadvantage of true margarine is the trans fat level. The more solid a margarine is at room temperature, the more trans fat it contains, as much as 3 grams per tablespoon. Margarine makers have responded to that by releasing tub or liquid products that have either reduced or eliminated trans fats. Watch for the labels. Heart doctors recommend butter over normal margarine but recommend trans fat free margarines over butter. It all gets very confusing. There are even margarine products now that say they actually lower cholesterol.

7. Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods-A Matter of Personal Taste!

8. Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for Less than 100 years-Truth!

9. Margarine is high in trans fatty acids-Truth!

10. Margarine triples the risk of coronary heart disease-Unproven!
Although trans fats are to be avoided, we did not find any research that says that the use of margarine triples the risk of heart disease.

11. Margarine ncreases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)-Truth!

12. Increases the risk of cancers up to five fold-Fiction!
We could not find any substantiation of this claim.

13. Margarine lowers quality of breast milk-Truth!
We didn't find any research on this but there are studies on how a mother's eating of trans fats affects the level of trans fats in her milk. One study, for example, comparing Canadian breast milk to Chinese breast milk found that Canadian mothers had 33 more trans fats in their milk than the Chinese mothers. So the quality of the breast milk can be affected by the consumption of trans fats.

14. Margarine decreases immune response-Truth!
We found several references to this including an article by nutritionist Dr. Mary Enig that said that consuming trans fatty acids "Affects immune response by lowering effeciency of B cell response and increasing proliferation of T cells."

15. Decreases insulin response-Truth!
Actually the trans fat can increase blood insulin levels, which increases the risk for diabetes.

16. Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC-Fiction!
We found no support for this. Perhaps whoever wrote this heard a discussion about the "plasticity" of margarine. It is "plastic" at room temperature meaning that the shape of it can be changed when pressure is applied. That doesn't mean it is composed of what we normally think of as plastic. It was originally made of animal fats but increasingly now is made from vegetable oils.

Updated 3/29/07


A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:

Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten
turkeys. When it killed The turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a Payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this Product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food Appeal so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in Place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever New flavorings.

DO YOU KNOW... The difference between margarine and
butter?

; Read on to the end...gets very interesting!

Both have the same amount of calories.



Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women
by Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8
grams compared to 5
Grams.
53% over eating the same amount of butter, according
to a recent Harvard
Medical Study.

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other
nutrients in other
Foods.

Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine
has a few only
Because they are added!

Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can
enhance the flavors
Of other foods.

Butter has been around for centuries where margarine
has been around for
Less than 100 years.

And now, for Margarine..

Very high in Trans fatty acids.

Triple risk of coronary heart disease.

Increases t otal cholesterol and LDL (this is the
bad cholesterol) and
Lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)

Increases the risk of cancers up to five fold.

Lowers quality of breast milk.

Decreases immune response.

Decreases insulin response.

And here's the most disturbing fact.... HERE IS THE
PART THAT IS VERY
INTERESTING!

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being
PLASTIC..

This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding
margarine for life and
Anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing The molecular structure of the substance).

You can try this yourself:

Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your
garage or shaded area.
Within a couple of days you will note a couple of
things:

* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go
near it (that
Should tell you something)

* it does not rot or smell differently because it
has no nutritional
Value; nothing will grow on it Even those teeny
weeny microorganisms will
Not a find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic. Would you Melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

Share This With Your Friends.....(If you want to
"butter them up")!

Chinese Proverb: "When someone shares something of
value with you and
You benefit from it, you have a moral obligation to share it with others."
 
Anyway, back on topic...

Probably the #1 thing I am grateful for (currently!) is my family. My wife and children are the best thing in my life.
 
Butter -vs- Margarine

:) Hi everyone, Thanks for all the info on butter & margarine. I guess everything in moderation. I do use butter in cookies recipes mostly. Thanksgiving was nice, stayed Home this year. I'm all decorated for Christmas! Cookie :)
 
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