For a lot of people, vacations and family meetings are a time for jubilation. These festivities often contain foods that have extra fat, sugar and calories and are short on nutrients. With a little change, though, party foods can be both tasty and healthful.
Dairy Products
Most holiday meals involve dairy items. Get pleasure from these nutrients throughout your festivities, but use skimmed milk (from which cream has been skimmed) and other low or no fat dairy products in your items whenever feasible. Search the growing variety of low fat cheeses, cheese slices and cheese spreads that are now offered in your supermarket. For instance, purchase light or ultra-light cream cheese or cheddar cheese, as these are just 7 percent fat. If you use the items that are high in fat, for example butter, mayonnaise, sour cream, spread them very lightly or take just a small quantity.
Meat
Pick thinner cuts of meat for your holiday get-together. Turkey is one of the leanest kinds of meat, so it’s always a good choice. In general, white meat is leaner than red - so select the breast meat of a chicken or turkey in spite of the drumstick.
-Other Ideas -
- Get rid of skin from poultry.
- Select fish. Cold water fatty fish such as tuna and salmon have ‘heart healthy’ types of fat in them.
- Prepare meats in manners that lower the fat amount, such as grilling and boiling.
- Drain the extra fat off of meats after preparing.
- Cook meats on a stand so that extra fat can drip away.
- Cool soups, gravies, stews, and so on before offering them… and then take out the hardened fat that has gathered at the top.
- When making a roast, cover with low fat stock rather than the drippings from the pan.
Vegetables
Stay away from smothering your vegetables with solid buttery sauces or butter. Potatoes, for instance, have no fat. They also has very little salt, and are excellent origins of Vitamins B & C and Potassium. Potato peelings are a good origin of fiber (it helps in lowering cholesterol levels, and also lowers the danger of colon cancer). If you choose to mash your potatoes, instead of butter or soured cream, whip the potatoes with cream or 1 percent milk or sour cream having low fat or with a yogurt.
Also, add plenty of vegetables to your food. Extra flavor can be obtained by using flavorings like spices and herbs. Deep green vegetables (for example broccoli) and bright orange vegetables (for example carrots and potatoes) contain high antioxidant vitamins, folic acid and fiber. Antioxidants (such as Vitamins A, C, and E) are the defensive agents for the heart disease and cancer. When selecting vegetables use those, which are the deepest in color, for they offer greater health benefits.
Salads are also a great item. Select a low fat dressing.
Cooking Tip: To stop loss of taste and vitamins during cooking vegetables, steam vegetables in water or make use of a steaming stand. If you boil vegetables in water, it doesn’t waste water and you can use it for the gravy?
Stuffing
If you have stuffing with your meat dish, use dried fruits - like berries, dried grapes or apricots. This makes a tasty recipe and a colorful seasonal dish.
Cooking Tip: Instead of cooking stuffing in fowl or a roast, cook the stuffing in a casserole in the microwave oven, this will lessen the amount of fat present in the stuffing. Stuffing acts as a natural sponge, so if you don’t cook it outside the bird or roast, it naturally catches all the fat drippings.
Gravy
Preparing gravy from a low fat stock instead of the drippings from fowl or a roast is a perfect method to reduce fat. If the gravy recipe includes milk, then use skimmed milk.
Cooking Tip: If you opted to use drippings for the preparation of the gravy, remove fat from the top before preparing the gravy. Let the drippings cool and when the fat becomes hard, remove it with a spoon.
Cranberry Sauce
Cranberries are no doubt the perfect source of Vitamin C. Unfortunately most of the Vitamin C is lost during the canning process. Using home-made cranberry sauce is an easy and more nutritious way to enjoy this holiday favorite. For a really healthy alternative, use fresh cranberry sauce on your turkey instead of gravy.
Cooking Tip: While preparing the cranberry sauce, put sugar on after cooking the cranberries to sustain the gentleness of the skin.
Dessert
Dinner might be very heavy, but what is a holiday food without all of the lavish desserts? These tips can help your waistline, while leaving you to enjoy your favorites.
- Angel food cake has little or no fat. It can be a great sweet dish when offered with fruits like strawberries, raspberries or peaches.
- When preparing pumpkin pie – Always use skimmed milk and top with low fat or fat free ice-cream, frozen yogurt, or whipped topping.
- Try some holiday trail mix by mixing dried fruits, nuts, and chocolate chips. A great holiday choice for the fruits would be dried cranberries.
Popularity: 3% [?]
