Dana Carpender shares her recipe for Low Carb Mockahlua, as well as ways to fit alcohol into your low carb holiday celebrations. 'Tis the season to make merry! Seems to me that there are more parties crammed into the month of December than all the rest of the year put together. For many of us, parties mean downing cocktail or two. So how does drinking alcohol fit into a low carb diet?

Niacin is a water-soluble B vitamin with good sources including lean meat, especially organ meats, white meat poultry, fish, eggs, peanuts, avocados, and wheat germ.

Thanksgiving was Thursday. Maybe you took an Indulgence Day, maybe - like a growing (or, more accurately, shrinking) group of low carbers, you kept on low carbing right through the feast. I heard from a lot of people who had fauxtatoes and sugar-free pumpkin pie. Regardless, you probably have some leftovers kicking around. You're not going to be eating turkey sandwiches, or at least I hope you're not. So what to do with your leftover bird?

I have had very low carb stuffing that was remarkably like cornbread stuffing, made from - of all things - crushed pork rinds. The recipe comes from my erstwhile friend Trish Z. who very kindly let me use it in 500 More! Low-Carb Recipes. Here it is!

Less traditionally, you can make this great Low-Carb Apple Walnut Dressing with no bread at all. Try this quick-and-simple skillet recipe.

Call it stuffing, or call it dressing, it's just not a holiday turkey without it! For me, stuffing is an essential part of holiday dinners. Indeed, I used to have what I like to call an "indulgence" (a term I prefer to "cheat") on holidays largely so I could have stuffing! Since then, however, I've learned to cut back on the carb count of my turkey stuffing. Here are some ideas:

Dana Carpender's Low-Carb Gravy Recipe. The holiday season is here! That means lots of big family dinners, flocks of roasted turkeys - and gallons of gravy. This last gives many people pause. I learned this at age twenty one, when a group of young and broke friends bought a couple of whole chickens on sale, and roasted them for a budget dinner party. When the chickens came out of the oven, I said, "Look at those nice drippings. Would anyone like it if I made gravy?"

Here's another in my off-and-on series about specific vitamins and minerals. Since I last covered vitamin B1, aka thiamin, the next logical subject is vitamin B2, called riboflavin.

It wasn't vitamin C. Although it was known for centuries that a lack of fresh food would cause scurvy, and that certain foods, especially citrus fruits, cabbage, and sauerkraut, could prevent it, the factor responsible wasn't identified until a few years after our front-runner.

Autumn is leaf season, deer season, Halloween season, and - Brussels sprouts season! However, Brussels sprouts are one of those vegetables that are often invoked as evidence that vegetables in general are loathsome, nowhere near as tasty as some other categories of foods. I, too, once disliked Brussels sprouts, yet I have come not only to like them, but to love them, and so has my formerly Brussels-sprout-phobic husband.

I have a new dietary discovery that has me more excited than anything since low carb itself. I have, for two weeks, been taking gelatin as a supplement. Just plain gelatin, the stuff you'd find in a box labeled "Knox" or similar at your grocery store. (Gelatin is available from CarbSmart here.)