Making Favorite Comfort Foods Fit a Healthy Lifestyle

Try these strategies for lightening up your favorite recipes:

For General Recipes
Invest in a food scale so that you can weigh foods until you get a feel for what typical serving sizes are.
Use the leanest cuts of meat; skinless poultry, white meat poultry, beef with "loin" or "round" in the name and pork with "loin" in the name.
Consider 4 ounces of uncooked meat to be a serving.
Cut back on adding high-calorie and fatty ingredients like cheese, olives, avocado and nuts.
Watch how many high-sodium foods you're including such as anything canned or packaged, box mixes, olives, cheese, and savory seasoning mixes. Can you find a low-sodium /no sodium alternative? Perhaps one of the canned products in the recipe can be changed to fresh or frozen (corn, green beans, sliced mushrooms, etc.).
Watch portion sizes when serving rice and pasta. Pastas are usually 1-1/2 ounces uncooked per serving. Cooked rice is typically 1/2 or 2/3 cup per serving.
Use 8 or 6-inch tortillas instead of 10-inch. The 10-inch tortillas have 213 calories before any fillings are even added.

For Baked Items:
Replace 1/4 or 1/2 of the butter or oil with unsweetened applesauce. Keep in mind that applesauce is a better replacement for oil than it is for butter.
If you're substituting a substantial amount (1/2 to 1 cup) of applesauce for fat, you can cut down on sugar a bit because of the natural sweetness of the applesauce.
Remember that sugar packs on calories. One tablespoon equals 48 calories.
Sugar can often be decreased slightly without any substitute, especially with recipes that are 40 or more years old since they tend to be disproportionately high in sugar.
Confectioners' sugar can almost always be decreased in a frosting without missing the sweetness. One tablespoon of confectioners' sugar equals 29 calories.
If you have trouble with a tough, dense texture in a tightened up baked good, by substituting cake flour for all-purpose flour, the next time you prepare it.
Decrease the amount of chopped mix-ins, such as nuts, chips (use mini-chips), raisins, coconut, etc.
Toast nuts and coconut so smaller amounts have stronger flavor.
Reduce the amount of frosting. You can usually cut that amount by 1/4 or 1/3 without missing it.
Reduced fat cream cheese and reduced fat butter work well in p;lace of their full fat varieties in frosting, but since the lighter products tend to be more soft set, the recipe may need less liquid.
Keep in mind that it's very difficult to successfully lighten cookie recipes and still keep the original texture and shape. The better option is to prepare cookies as usual and savor a single serving. ~ Aunt Millie