By Anita Garner
Here’s a way to ignore calories while enjoying the snacks we love. Change the rules. If you eat it at a different time of day it’s calorie-free. Pie for breakfast or whenever a pie mood strikes.
It’s also calorie-free if you change what you call it and how you cut it. Don’t call it dessert. Don’t cut pie into wedges. When you cut a round pie into squares it has no calories. Or switch to slab pie which was never meant to be cut into triangle shapes in the first place. In addition to having no calories because they’re square, a nice healthy chunk of slab pie can bring on happy memories of potlucks and bake sales.
This Thanksgiving season, I will follow one of my own traditions. Bake an extra pie, cut it into squares and visit it at many non-dessert times.
Stephen King covered a similar topic, his own snacking-without-calories suggestions in an article for Entertainment Weekly magazine years ago. I’m going to go ahead and validate his ideas in advance because Stephen King is smart and occasionally silly.
Stephen King’s Healthy Entertainment Diet
“…A number of people have asked your Uncle Stevie for dieting advice. Me, a guy who never met a fat calorie (preferably deep-fried) he didn’t like. At first I thought giving such advice didn’t fit my job description as a commentator on the pop cult scene, but after further consideration, I decided it does. Because staying current with pop culture is mostly a thing you do sitting down, right? And if you’re watching TV, listening to music, or going to the movies, you want to eat, right? So the question then becomes, Uncle Stevie, how do I maintain my keen pop culture edge without turning into a sumo wrestler who knows every single word to the Brady Bunch theme song?
Luckily for you, I have some tips — stuff that would put Weight Watchers out of business. I’m taking a chance here; the Diet Police will certainly try to smear and discredit me in the press, but for you guys (he said modestly) I’m willing to take the risk.
… fortunately for the devoted snacker, cakes and pies are what nutritional experts call baked goods, and when stuff is baked, the calories shrink from the heat and draw in to the center. When enjoying Bundt cake, cut around the center ring and throw it away. The rest of the cake is calorie-free (except for the frosting, but you can’t have everything). When you serve yourself a nice fat wedge of chocolate pie, just remember to cut off the pointy end, because that’s where the calories are.”
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Now I want pie.
Me too. I’m going for the frozen bake it yourself pumpkin pie today. I don’t care which brand, as long as it smells like pie while it’s cooking and tastes like pie when it’s done. Also my lovely daughter who loves to cook promises to bake a slab pie soon.
How thoughtful of him to write this and you to post it. I do not like cake so I always have pie for my birthday. The morning after, a piece of that pie is my breakfast. My pie preference is razzleberry with a bit of vanilla ice cream on top.
Good Morning and I’m with you – pie is my favorite treat. Razzleberry is wonderful!
Anita, you are not only a excellent writer (broadcast personality, producer, announcer, narrator, musician, singer, etc.), you have a marvelous sense of humor! You made me want pie and your writing has given me the foresight to order larger size pants just in case your science is flawed.
I am so looking forward to your book!
Steve, you make me smile! I’m currently experimenting with two kinds of pie cut into squares (therefore calorie-free) so we can compare results.