Healthy cooking tips, recipes, food facts and more from a Registered Dietitian!
Archive for October, 2007
Candied Pumpkin
Oct 31st
(DOCE de ABO’BORA)The next recipe is not quite as healthy, but it is a delicious treat! This recipe came from Ruth Hammond and is from Brazil. It is sooo delicious served on biscuits or with rolls. It’s great for breakfast or as a snack, or anytime. The flavors are perfect for fall.
Peel the pumpkin (with a knife to get the outer skin off)
Cut into pieces.
Weigh the pumpkin pieces.
Measure same amount of sugar (i.e. 3 pounds pumpkin = 3 pounds sugar)
Put pumpkin and 1/2 c. water in pan, boil 5-10 min to release pumpkin juices
Pour sugar in and cinnamon and cloves (I use 1 tsp ground cloves and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon for 3 pounds)
Simmer about 2 hrs.
Yield for 3# is 2 1/2 pints
Note: If making a large batch for gifts, use 10# of cut up pumpkin and 7# sugar
Joeann says: “I have sent this to my husband’s co-workers to snack on and given as gifts in decorative jars. Sometimes we use leaf cookie cutters to make the biscuits with~~~ fun and festive.”
Thanks so much to Mrs. Joeann Foster from Sturgis, Mississippi for sending me these great recipes!
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...Dinner in a Pumpkin
Oct 31st
This week I have 2 favorite & unique recipes to use with pumpkin submitted by Mrs. Joeann Foster. Dinner in a Pumpkin is a pretty neat main dish to serve for company.1 medium pumpkin
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. oil
1 lb. ground lean beef
1 lb. ground turkey sausage (or you could use 1 1/2 pounds ground lean beef with 1/2 pound lean sausage)
2 Tbsp. soy sauce (can use Liquid Aminos)
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 (4 oz) can sliced mushrooms, drained
1 (10 3/4 oz) can 98% fat-free cream of chicken soup
1 c. cooked rice
1 (8 oz) can sliced water chestnuts, drained
1/2 t. pepper
1 t. salt
Cut off top of the pumpkin and thoroughly clean out seeds and pulp. Oil and salt inside of the pumpkin. Rub seasoning in well. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet saute onion in oil until tender. Add meats and brown. Drain. Add soy sauce or liquid Aminos, brown sugar, mushrooms and soup. Simmer 10 min, stirring occasionally.
Add cooked rice, water chestnuts, pepper and salt. Spoon mixture into clean pumpkin shell, replace pumpkin top and place entire pumpkin with filling on a baking sheet.
Bake 1 1/2 hours or until inside “meat” of the pumpkin is tender. Put pumpkin on plate. Remove pumpkin lid to serve the meal. Scoop some of the pumpkin out when you are serving.
Thanks so much to Mrs. Joeann Foster from Sturgis, Mississippi for sending me these great recipes!
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...Healthy Holiday Recipe Substitution Tip of the Week
Oct 27th
With more than one holiday ahead of us, it’s important to begin thinking of healthy ways to prepare your favorite Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s dishes. For most of us (especially in the Southern U.S.), food is a symbol of hospitality and good times. This month’s Today’s Diet and Nutrition magazine had a very good article entitled “Low-fat Baking: Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too” with suggestions for making healthy substitutions to your favorite recipes. I’ve decided to highlight some of those suggestions along with some of my own for a newsletter section from now through the end of the year. Feel free to send me your favorite healthy substitution and I’ll try to add it into my list!
Here’s this week’s Healthy Holiday Cooking Tip:
Experiment - Don’t make too many substitutions all at once or your dish may not turn out as planned. Try making one or two changes and, if the recipe tastes good, try another change next time. The idea is to have healthy foods that taste good so you’ll enjoy your holiday dining! When making a recipe substitution, French Culinary Institute Pastry Chef Instructor Dianne Rossomando tells Today’s Diet and Nutrition that the two most important things to consider with a substitution are weight and water. Make sure your substitution ingredients are about the same weight as the original ingredient would be. Also, keep in mind that many low-fat foods are higher in water than the full-fat alternative (such as fat-free sour cream and fat-free milk). This means you might need to use less liquid to avoid a runny baked good.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...My Weekend Camping Trip
Oct 26th
This past weekend I went camping with my family and many of our good friends at a small campground in Dixon, Mississippi. My family enjoys tent camping so we packed all our camping supplies and headed to Dixon for the annual Mississippi Home Educators Association Camping Retreat. We enjoyed great times with our friends and even concocted a new recipe while camping…
Camp-Stove French Fries
After marinating chicken breasts in fat-free Italian dressing, we put the chicken on our small hibachi-style grill to cook. While dad cooked the chicken, mom came up with the idea that we could use the fat-free Italian dressing to cook our fries in. We put a few tablespoons of Italian dressing in the skillet on the camp-stove and placed a bag of sliced potatoes in. After cooking long enough to get them hot we had a low-calorie, low-fat alternative to French fries (with a lot less clean-up, too!).
Other Camping Meals & Ideas
Enjoying meals while camping is fun but it takes some preparation work. Here are some meal ideas we’ve used while camping:
- Grilled Chicken (Marinated in fat-free Italian dressing and cooked on the hibachi-style grill we took) with Camp-Stove French Fries, a salad, and French bread
- Hamburgers (Cooked on the hibachi-style grill we took)
- Taco Soup
- Chili
- Sandwiches (Sometimes we’ll make ours on hoagie buns or make wraps with tortillas)
- Taco Salad
- Cook meat and vegetables in a pocket of aluminum foil (example: chicken breast with carrots, beans, etc) over fire or campstove – make sure you take a thermometer so that you know your food got hot enough (160 degrees for beef, 170 degrees for chicken)
NOTE: Do NOT use the same dressing you marinated the chicken in to cook the fries. Use part of the bottle for one and the other part of the bottle for the other. Using the same marinade could make you very sick!
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Resist Alzheimer’s with Curry
Oct 25th
Curcumin is an antioxidant found in turmeric, a spice often used in pickles. Turmeric is the yellow-colored spice flavoring curry powder which is found in many Indian and Oriental dishes. Recent studies have shown that this compound may help strengthen certain immune cells called macrophages. These macrophages fight bad compounds characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. Science hasn’t shown whether diet alone can provide enough benefits to stave off Alzheimer’s but eating more curcumin may be a good way to help you prevent Alzheimer’s disease. As an added benefit, individuals with high intakes of this compound appear to have a decreased cancer risk. So, add some turmeric or curry to your favorite chicken dish, rice, or dip.
Information from: Today’s Diet and Nutrition
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