Too Many Holiday Treats to Eat Dinner?!

With a day of baking sugar cookies and making holiday fudge and other treats, some people find themselves in the late afternoon having sampled too many of the goodies along the way. (My Mom used to call spatulas “child cheaters” since it left less in the bowl for us to lick.)

Come 5-6-7 pm, it is time for dinner and with having sampled ones way through the day we: a) don’t NEED any more calories, and b) just aren’t HUNGRY!

But before writing off dinner altogether, we have to have a strategy that will prevent us from venturing back to the kitchen to nibble on another “tiny” bite of fudge or just a small cookie before bed.

It’s a tough thing, and this tends go against some conventional dietitian wisdom, but we want to make sure things start out “right” tomorrow. We need to eat a balanced “dinner” or light snack tonight, and do it at a reasonable hour.

If you have eaten too much sugar today, you will likely not feel your best tomorrow to start out right. Tomorrow will be the day to start all over (not next week, or New Years Day, tomorrow), so to head off any sugar hangover or headache, we need to make sure it is balanced out today.

To help out, have some protein and whole grains for dinner. If your calories went too high from the snacking, definitely go with something “light,” but balanced – between 250 – 400 calories.

Remember too many calories today won’t lead to overall weight gain. It is too many calories over many days, consistently, that will lead to weight gain.

Even though this dinner or snack is going to put you over your daily calories some more, keep this in mind over the next couple of days, and don’t over sugar yourself again – and really watch the calories over the next several days. Keep the calories in line for you and a bit under (exercise helps here).

Here are some ideas for the light snack/dinner:

• Light or nonfat yogurt with a tablespoon each of wheat germ and chopped nuts (you can add fruit if you wish).


• Half to whole sandwich: peanut butter (1-2 Tb.) and jelly/honey or lean turkey (1 oz.) with mustard on whole wheat bread.


• Any kind of bean soup and toast – if you are lucky enough to have any leftover homemade have that! I do so love the classic Campbell’s Bean with Bacon Soup. However, there are so many soups out there now that is easy to keep in the pantry – any of them are good. I just recommend the bean soups since they are full of healthy protein. Choose the lower sodium versions when available (since sodium will aid in fluid retention).

These are a few small suggestions to balance the baking binges, should you find yourself a “victim” – whether they are light baking recipes or not…

Eat Well, Live Well, Be Well. And balance the unintentional sugar binges with light healthy foods too!

Holiday Baking at My House

For some of us it is part of the holiday tradition to bake. Fudge and sugar cookies and pies – which can easily add up to a LOT of calories if the baking is for just you and your family.

I have two rules when it comes to making my holiday treats:

1. I give my baking treats away as gifts, in small amounts (about 5 cookies per person).


2. I use mostly Cooking Light recipes for my cookies, bars, pies and cakes.

There are two exceptions to this rule: a family fudge recipe (which I have switched to non-fat evaporated milk) and sugar cookies. My family insists on them, and I love them too.

Using the Cooking Light recipes doesn’t mean we can get away with eating more cookies and treats, but it helps me ensure that the cookies are at least a bit healthier than their original counterparts, by being either lower in calories or lower in saturated fat from what the “traditional” recipe would be.

When it comes to making the recipes, another thing we must remember is the serving sizes! One (new) recipe I made yesterday was Chocolate, Cherry and Hazelnut Biscotti. The recipe made 2-dozen cookies/biscotto. When it can to cutting the dough into the 24 pieces the cookies come out smaller than what we are used to. Once they were all finished, I could tell why they needed to come out that size: they are rich and the small size is just right.

This years baking day I made four different cookies and a batch of bars! The above mentioned biscotti (94 calories), Chocolate Shortbread, Lemon Shortbread, Brown Sugar Shortbread (each of which are ~75 calories per cookie), and some Cranberry-Oatmeal Bars (135 calories). Each of these recipes made 24 pieces, and if I give my 10 friends/co-workers two pieces of each item (to share with her family), then really, there is very little left in my home!

This is how the baking at my house works – I bake it to go!

Eat Well, Live Well, Be Well and share!

Super Fast and Super Good Dinner Tonight: “Barbecued” Chicken-and-Black Bean Burritos

Tonight I had to make dinner super fast. I got home at 5:20 and my kiddo needed to be in bed, or heading to bed, by 6:00 – 6:30. He works for UPS loading the package cars, and is currently starting work at 3 am, meaning he is up at 2:30 so he can eat breakfast before work. Yes, he CAN make dinner on his own, but he had arrived home at only 5:15 himself, and we like to eat together at least a few times a week.

Anyhow, this dinner is one of my favorites, and in my mind, a Cooking Light Classic. I use Cooking Light recipes almost exclusively. I’m not creative enough to make my own recipes, so I trust Cooking Light to do the “work” for me. I’ve been a subscriber to the magazine for 10 years, and have the Annual Recipes cookbooks since 2000, along with a few others.

This recipe, "Barbecue" Chicken-and-Black Bean Burritos, which can be accessed from the Cooking Light website, makes four servings and has 460 calories per serving when made as directed. Add a serving fruit as a side and it is a perfect meal in my opinion. But then, any meal that is done in 30 minutes and is filling, healthy AND tastes good is “perfect” in my book.

It does call for four 10-inch flour tortillas; it is a burrito after all. Despite being from New Mexico, I choose the Mission brand 96% fat free “heart healthy” whole wheat tortillas. These have 140 calories per tortilla, 2 g fat, 0.5 g sat fat (compared to 210 calories, 5 g fat, and 2 g sat fat in their regular 10-inch flour tortillas). Any place that we can cut calories and fat and add some whole grain is great!

Sometimes we have just three burritos and have some leftover “barbecue” chicken-and-black beans. It’s a great lunch the next day without the tortilla too, and even more calorie savings.

Hope you enjoy the recipe and you Eat Well, Live Well, and Be Well.

Rinse and Drain – Please!

Of all the “talks” I had as a parent to a child, I though we had covered everything with our 18 year old son:

• No drinking and driving, it is illegal, and you are underage. Check.
• Don’t do drugs, they are illegal. Check.
• Don’t have unprotected sex, always use a condom. Check.
• Don’t get those credit cards at school, they could ruin your credit. Check.
  

What did I miss? It seems that Dad and I covered it all the "important" things in life.

Nope - missed one! And I discovered it tonight. For dinner tonight he made one of the perennial favorites of a first year college student: spaghetti with meat sauce. And he had started it before I left work and it was nearly ready upon my arrival home.

Unfortunately, as I check in at the kitchen I could tell right away I had failed miserably in one of my parenting-teaching-cooking tasks when I looked at the skillet that held the meat sauce. To my horror I could see the oil slick – the ever so slight layer of fat on the top of that otherwise healthy tomato sauce. And there was nothing I could do! I grabbed a paper towel in an attempt to blot the oil, but was just absorbing the lycopene and wasting paper towels!

Luckily, I had, as always, purchased the extra lean ground beef, the 93% kind. Some people believe that anything less is acceptable – 85%? 90%? Not in my house! At least not when I’m doing the shopping!

But still there was that 7% fat and I just couldn’t have that saturated fat invading my body or be responsible for it corrupting the body of my family! You see, I always drain the meat, place it in a colander and rinse it with hot water, and squeeze it dry with paper towels. I also wipe the skillet with another paper towel before returning the ground beef to the pan warming it back up and adding the sauce.

How much does this help our health? I don't know for sure, but it is less fat, and less saturated fat, and allows us to have a little more in other places another time. Or not.

The men in my household don’t see the point of this ritual. My husband will at least drain (at least when I’m around). Unfortunately my son has not been taught. My son cooks the meat (at least until there is no pink), and then adds the sauce! No draining! No rinsing! If he had at least drained! If he had skipped the rinsing, I could bear it, but definitely drain!

I must implore parents to teach their children, don’t drink, no drugs, use condoms, beware of the credit cards – and if you are going to eat ground beef, go with the lean stuff and please, please drain it! Buy your child a good colander for college!

Eat Well, Live Well and Be Well and drain well too...