Healthy Cooking For Thanksgiving
The holiday season is notorious for packing on the pounds, but eating a good Thanksgiving meal doesn’t mean you have to eat fattening foods. And eating a healthy meal doesn’t mean you have to forego your Thanksgiving favorites. Here are some easy ways to tweak the classics to be a bit healthier for you and your family.
Spices - As long as you use tasting and add them in small increments, adding extra spices to your foods is a great way to cut back on calories. If the food is well seasoned, you won’t need to add butter or gravy to make it taste good. Plus, if food is hot or spicy, you tend to eat less of it.
Evaporated milk - This is great for adding to recipes like pies or gravy. It adds flavor without all the calories of cream. Just remember to use a product made from skim milk.
Ditch the fat - When it comes to turkey, it’s pretty easy to cut back on the greasy fat. Cook the turkey in a drip pan instead of one that collects the fat at the bottom. Before you eat the turkey, be sure to remove the skin because this is where hidden fat and extra calories can be found.
Also, don’t stuff your turkey - This absorbs most of the fat and calories you’d rather keep out. Cook the stuffing in a separate pan. If you use the drippings to make gravy, skim the fat off first. You can add broth to these dishes to keep the moisture without adding the bad stuff.
Lose the butter - Butter is a big offender on Thanksgiving. You can put it on almost anything and it adds lots of fat and calories. Instead, try using chicken broth and evaporated milk to add flavor to dishes like mashed potatoes without all the fat.
Watch the drinks - Thanksgiving calories can come from what you drink as well as what you eat. Try having water or juice with your meal rather than high-calorie drinks like eggnog, soda, or alcoholic beverages.
* Salad for side dishes. A lot of what we eat on Thanksgiving comes in the form of side dishes rather than the main course. Why not skip the stuffing or the rolls and start with a salad instead? This is a healthy option to help fill you up before the meal so you eat less of the fatty offenders with your turkey. Just remember that salads can be bad for you too, depending what you put in them.
Remember that no matter how good something is for you, if you eat thousands of calories, you’re probably going to gain weight. Even healthy food should be enjoyed in moderation, so watch your portions as well as the kind of food you’re eating.
Efficient Kitchen Decorating
The kitchen is a place of hustle and bustle. The no-nonsense work of mixing, stirring, slicing, chopping, and dicing all have to combine in a flurry of activity to create the savory sustenance that your family so craves; and of course, everything has to be ready in time for dinner. Considering the hectic work that goes on in this location, it is essential that your decorating choices are efficient and streamlined. However, as long as you are careful not to get in your own way, there are a lot of wonderful decorating choices you can make to personalize and beautify this space.
Decorative Choices
In the kitchen the walls are your canvas. While there are a lot of horizontal surfaces in this area, tables, counters, etc. these are all necessary for the actual work of the room, and so must be left clear for the chef. However the walls are vertical, and so serve no utilitarian purpose. That is why they are perfect for adding personalized decorative choices.
You do have to be a little careful about the decorative pieces that you actually hang from the walls, because the kitchen can be a fairly violent space. Sauce can splatter, heat waves will rise, and batter will fly on an almost daily basis, so you don’t want to put anything very delicate or fragile on the walls. Stay away from portraits, documents, posters, and photos unless they are encased in some water proof glass.
Hardy decorative pieces such as those made from wrought iron, wicker, and hardwood are very popular in kitchens because you simply don’t have to worry about them; they are very resilient to anything the room can throw at them.
The rest of the kitchen should be mostly dominated by functional accessories. However, these work items can be considered decorative pieces in their own right. Many kitchen decorators are proud to show off sets of knives, bowls, spoons, and mixers all made in matched stainless steal. For a less modern / corporate look, hardwood utensils and accessories can bring to mind the rustic beauty of simplicity in the kitchen.
You should also be aware of other more subtle items, which still serve a functional use.
Drink coasters, trivets and ash trays are always useful to have around, and can allow you to splash color throughout a space without being obtrusive. Other items such as hand towels, oven mitts, and aprons can serve a similar purpose.
Layout Choices
Beauty isn’t the only important factor in creating an efficient kitchen. You also have to arrange the room in such a way that it flows naturally, allowing you to move through the space seamlessly and unhindered.
If you are working in a cramped kitchen then a minimalist approach is best. Remove all free standing items such as dining tables, buffets, and kitchen islands. Some of these can either be stored in a closet space, or left just outside of the kitchen sharing a wall, or even in the dining room.
Setting up various stations where you can do your chopping, stirring, cooking, and mixing, will allow you to keep chaos at bay when dealing with cramped spaces. If you don’t have the room for separate stations, at least keep appliances and utensils grouped according to reciprocal use.
If you have a larger kitchen, then you want to maximize the useful space by bringing the tables and other surfaces back into the room. Arrange them along walls, so that the center of the room is empty. From the center, you can easily move to any part of the space, in order to take care of whatever is necessary at the moment. If you try to create pathways through the space using island, buffets, tables etc. you will end up bumping into things over and over, and will needlessly frustrate yourself.
Conclusion
An efficient kitchen is an absolute necessity. The successful preparation of food that is both healthy and actually tastes good can be a difficult multitasking process that can have you running in eight different directions at once. In such an environment, there is no time to get tripped up on your own decorative taste choices. However, through the use of wall space, layout, and strategic design, it is possible to create a kitchen which will not only be comfortable and efficient, but attractive and inspiring as well.
Did you know that peanuts are a smart choice?
For a time, it was considered wise to avoid peanuts because of their fat content. Times have changed. Health conscious people now know that peanuts hold no damaging cholesterol. Their high protein content makes them a good choice for anyone, particularly for vegetarians.
Technically, peanuts belong to the legume family as do peas and green beans, but some people wonder whether peanuts should be in a food group of their own. In addition to protein, they contain vitamin E, niacin, riboflavin, and important minerals.
A study published in the International Journal of Obesity shows that eating peanuts is a valuable way to control hunger without weight gain.
Once considered only fit for animal feed, scientist George Washington Carver spent his life finding better uses for peanuts.
Try this easy recipe.
Peanut-Crusted Chicken
This is a variation of a popular Oriental dish, peanut pork. Peanut-encrusted chicken is high in protein, low in fat and has all natural ingredients.
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast fillets
1 cup salted peanuts
2 tablespoons Canola oil
4 tablespoons honey
Using a blender or coffee grinder, reduce the peanuts to a coarse mixture. Do not over grind or you will end up with dry peanut butter.
Lightly salt and pepper the chicken breast fillets and brush on a coating of honey for binding and flavor. Roll in the coarsely chopped peanuts and press the coating into the chicken with the back of a tablespoon.
Coat a deep frying pan with Canola oil and bring heat to high. Place the chicken in the skillet, reduce heat to half, and cook until golden brown, or about half an hour to 45 minutes.
This dish can also be baked, eliminating the use of the Canola oil. Bake the fillets at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until crusty brown on top. The dish can be sliced and served piping hot as an entree or it can be served with your favorite dipping sauce as an appetizer.
