Don't Eat Crap

I love to cook (and bake). But when you eat healthier, it takes some serious creativity sometimes to cook healthy. When I look for cooking inspiration, I don’t always look at healthy recipes or healthy websites. You can take regular old full-fat recipes and make them simpler and healthier for your nutritional needs.

Here are a few of the substitutions we make in our house:

• Instead of oil for baking, I use unsweetened applesauce or a mashed banana.
• Instead of sugar, I use either packets of Truvia, omit the sugar, decrease the sugar, or substitute in maple syrup.
• Instead of eggs, you can mix ground flax seeds with water. This comes in handy when you run out of eggs.
• For frosting – I mix powdered sugar-free fat-free pudding mix with fat-free cool whip.
• For all-purpose flour, I use either whole wheat flour or ground oat flour.
• Instead of rice, shred up cauliflower in the food processes so it resembles rice. Steam it in the microwave for 3-4 minutes with a little water. We also use quinoa as a rice substitute.
• Instead of croutons on a salad, go for nuts. Still high in calories, they are full of nutrients vs. oil soaked bread.
• We use more vinaigrette on salads than creamy dressings – I haven’t gotten to the point of making my own salad dressing yet. I like Kraft’s new dressings.
• Instead of ice cream, Garrett has been purifying frozen bananas with chocolate syrup. We often hit up Cherry Berry (just remember to use mostly fresh fruit toppings! I have a hard time with that.)
• To saute vegetables, I use coconut oil rather than olive oil.
• We have switched our pasta to either the whole wheat or durum wheat pasta.
• I have substituted Greek yogurt for ricotta and mascarpone cheese.
• I also substitute ground turkey in for ground beef. We purchase our ground beef very lean from a butcher, who happens to be in my family which makes that easier. I am very much a beef girl. I love my beef. Ok I’ll stop…you get it.

So these are just a few ways we try to make our recipes healthier. What types of substitutions or changes do you make to recipes?

Remember when you look at recipes, look hard at the ingredients and see what is substitutable or you can omit? Does it really need that much sugar, cheese, butter? Baking is different, so experiment with that. But cooking can be very subjective.

But see what can you substitute? What can you change? Make it your own. Give it your own flare!

I hope you all have a great Sunday. It’s time to announce the winner of the Camelbak Giveaway! Thanks to all who participated.

The winner was: KATE from Kate is Eating…

Thanks to all who played!

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