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The Food Enthusiast Blog: cooking tips and tasty recipes
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My Weekly Trinity: Soup, Muffin and a SweetI have to admit that I can live on soup all year long. It's a perfect food. Cheap, nutritious and comes in as many varieties as you can think of. Store bought has tons of salt and unneeded fat. You can make a soup that tastes much better and you'll be happy with what your family is eating. Try making some lentil or split pea soup - depending on how hard it would be to get your kids to eat green food. Of course, there is everyone's favorite, potato soup. Make it healthier by using skim milk or unsweetened soy milk, and low fat sour cream. No one will notice the difference if you puree the soup. In fact, you can puree a potato in with other veggies like broccoli to make a cream-less of broccoli that is still as creamy as the original. The more hectic my week is the more I seem to crave something sweet. I've found that if I make it at my house it's lower in fat and calories than something I can just pick up. I also add ground flax and use whole wheat pastry flour. Every Sunday I make a muffin of the week - this week it was apple almond strudel and they were amazing. Muffins really take less than an hour to make, and that includes baking time when you can be doing another chore on your list. Don't get in a muffin rut. Make sure to use seasonal ingredients and try a new flavor combination. The apple almond muffins I made had 2 tablespoons of Amaretto in them, which created a really big almond flavor I had never had in a muffin before. Later this month I'll be making sweet potato pecan, cranberry pear, or possibly gingerbread muffins with candied orange peel. Cookies are the easiest sweet to make and anything with chocolate chips keeps my household happy. Bar cookies can be a better choice when you are short on time, since you don't have to take the time to make each cookie. Either way, substitute whole wheat pastry flour for white flour and your crowd won't even notice. Whole wheat pastry flour is ground finer and made with a softer wheat. It's much closer to the texture of white flour, but still includes the bran and germ of the wheat. Experiment with less sugar in your favorite recipe, you may find you don't miss it at all. Don't forget you eat with your eyes too, so serve everything up on your sengWare plates, the colors make any soup fun to eat. About the author: Kathy Hester loves to cook healthy, throw parties, and eat homemade food as much as possible. Posted: Thursday 18th March 2010, 1:14 AM Back To Food Enthusiast Blog |
