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How To Slim Down Your Holiday Baking

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Bake With Less Sugar And Butter (You Can Really Get Away With It)

Does holiday season mean, among other things, baking lots of cookies:  spritz, rolled, ginger bread men, meringues, pies, biscuits, breads, and whatever other recipe sounds good?  Maybe not fruit cake.

The total number of butter and sugar calories in all of these baked delights would be so staggering it would absolutely spoil the deliciousness.

There are ways to lower the calories in baked goods without drastically affecting the taste or texture.  In most cases, no one will even notice.

Some Baking Substitutions To Try

  • Decrease the amount of fat and sugar called for in your recipe.  Decreasing the amount of sugar by a third doesn’t even really affect the taste – although sometimes you need to experiment to see how it might affect the texture, too.
  • For brownies, fruit breads, and cake-like cookies, use ¼ cup of applesauce and ¼ cup of vegetable oil or butter instead of a half cup of oil or butter – OR — replace half the butter or oil with unsweetened applesauce, pureed pumpkin, or mashed bananas. For every half-cup of oil you replace with pureed pumpkin, you’ll save more than 900 calories and 100 grams of fat  — and pumpkin keeps baked goods moist.
  • Use 2 egg whites or ¼ cup egg substitute for one egg; use 3 egg whites and 1 egg yolk for 2 whole eggs.
  • Decrease the amount of sugar in your recipe by up to a half and add ginger, lemon zest, cinnamon, or cloves to spark the flavor.
  • Substitute nonfat sweetened condensed milk for sweetened condensed milk.
  • Use evaporated skim milk instead of evaporated milk.
  • Instead of sour cream use nonfat or low fat sour cream, pureed low-fat cottage cheese, or low or nonfat Greek yogurt.
  • Substitute low or nonfat cream cheese for full fat cream cheese.
  • Substitute non-fat, 1%, or 2% milk for whole milk and half and half for cream.
  • Substitute 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips, chopped dried fruit, or chopped nuts for 1 cup of chocolate chips.
  • Swap 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder plus 1 tablespoon of oil or water for one ounce of baking chocolate.
  • For frosting use sliced fresh fruit with a dusting of powdered sugar, sweetened and flavored (vanilla, peppermint) nonfat cream cheese, or nonfat whipping cream.
  • Use whole wheat flour (12g of fiber per cup) or ground flax for up to half of your recipe’s white flour. Regular whole wheat flour will make baked goods heavier and denser.  Try using white whole wheat four that is higher in fiber and nutrients than refined flour but is lighter than regular whole wheat flour.
  • For fruit pies, use half the sugar called for in the recipe – a savings of 774 calories for every cup of sugar you don’t use.
  • Substitute part-skim ricotta cheese for cream cheese in cheesecake, which doubles the protein and cuts the fat by about 60 grams for each substituted cup.

Tastes Aren’t Calorie Free

It’s amazing how little tastes and nibbles are so easy to forget in the calorie ledger.  Just remember — the dough from the bowl has the same number of calories as the baked cookie – and they add up pretty quickly!  Dump the bowls and beaters into the sink as soon as you’re finished with them to help resist the temptation of licking the batter off of the beaters and out of the bowls.

For more hints and tips about holiday eating get my book,  The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide: How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.

What’s A Latke – And Is It Always Made From Potatoes?

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Not a fritter and not a flat dough circle hot off the griddle, a latke — commonly called a potato pancake — is traditionally made from potatoes, grated onions, and some form or combination of binders like eggs, flour, and matzoh meal. The potatoes aren’t the fancy kind.  Russets (Idaho potatoes) are commonly used because they brown well and have a high starch content which sops up moisture making for a tender interior.

Potato pancakes are common in many parts of the world.  Why not – they’re easy and inexpensive to make using locally grown vegetables, especially ones that store well like potatoes.

Potato pancakes of all kinds are often flavored with garlic or other seasonings, then shallow-fried in oil in a pan.  Some are made with sweet potatoes, other vegetables, chickpeas, cheese, or whatever else the cook wants to add – and how far he or she wishes to fly in the face of tradition.

Hanukkah Food

Latkes, a Yiddish derivation from the Ukrainian word (oldka) that translates to pancake or fritter, are a favorite Hanukkah food. The Ukranian word is a diminutive of an Old Russian word (olad’ya) that stems way back to elaia, the Ancient Greek word for “olive.” Fast forward many centuries and about five languages and latkes are “little tiny things made of (olive) oil.”

Hanukkah (or Chanukah), the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish celebration that commemorates the second century BC victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians. After the victory Judah called on his followers to cleanse the Second Temple, rebuild its altar, and light its menorah, the gold candelabrum with seven branches representing knowledge and creation.

The Temple needed to be rededicated by lighting the eternal light present in every Jewish house of worship — which shouldn’t be extinguished once lit. There was only one pitcher of untainted sacramental oil, barely enough to burn for one day, but miraculously, the small amount of oil continued to burn for eight days and eight nights.

Fried foods like latkes (also called levivot) and soofganiyot (donuts) are eaten on Hanukkah because they are cooked in oil, a reminder of the miracle of the single pitcher of oil in The Temple, which lasted for eight days instead of one.

Want Crisp — Not Soggy — Latkes?

Latkes should have a deeply browned crust with lacy edges. They don’t have smooth and mashed-potato-like insides – they’re made from shredded or grated potatoes, not mashed.  Potatoes and onions, especially when they’re grated, ooze moisture, so they and other ingredients need to be dried with paper towels or have the moisture squeezed out before frying or they’ll be soggy.

  • Oil doesn’t go into the latkes, but since they’re fried, it’s an essential ingredient. Don’t skimp on the amount you put into the frying pan. You need enough so the latkes will cook evenly. If you use too little, the outsides get too dark before the insides are cooked through. Olive oil might have too low a smoke point for latke frying, so use another kind of oil like canola, grapeseed, or peanut – all of which have high enough smoke points.
  • Oil that isn’t hot enough seeps into food and makes it greasy. If you add oil to the pan when you’ve got batter in it, the oil probably isn’t going to be hot enough. Wait for the oil to get hot enough before adding the food – you’ll end up needing to add little, if any, to finish an entire batch. Test to see if the oil is hot enough by dropping a bit of batter into the pan. If it sizzles and the batter rises to the surface, the oil is hot enough and you’ll end up with crispy, but not greasy, latkes.
  • When you drop the batter into the oil, don’t crowd the pan or you’ll bring down the temperature of the oil. The latkes will be tough to turn and without space they might form one giant pancake.
  • Leave them alone until they get a nice golden crust on the bottom. They’re ready when both sides are deep brown and crusty. They darken as they cool so be careful that they’re not too dark — verging on burned. Remove each latke with two forks or a slotted spatula and fork, briefly holding it vertically over the frying pan to drip. Put them on layers of paper towels, which will sop up any extra oil.

For more hints and tips about holiday eating get my book,  The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide: How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.

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7 Ways Supermarkets Get You To Fill Your Cart

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Supermarkets have your shopping experience down to a science and they arrange and display their merchandise to artfully encourage you to buy more products.

High Shelf Or Low Shelf?

Ever hear something described as “top shelf”? That usually means the really good or the most expensive stuff. In supermarkets, where products are placed can send subtle signals that affect your purchase decision. The most expensive products generally are on the highest or top shelves. Lower shelves house “destination” products — the ones you need, look for, and will buy regardless of price. The bottom shelf has the least popular or generic products (where’s the flour and sugar in your market?).  Eye level shelves, known as “reach,” hold high impulse purchases, products that are competitive, or ones that are the most enticing.

What They Want You To Buy

If you’re used to seeing products in free-standing bins, on shelves, or on end caps (the shelves at the very end of aisles in the market you frequent), you’ll end up usually checking them out for specialties or bargains. The products on or in them are promoted products that probably have the highest profit margin for the store, are items with the lowest price, or they have a big manufacturer’s promotion like a coupon or reduced price. “Dump bins” or “offer bins” usually are a jumble of items being closed-out and seem to uniformly signal “cheap price.”  Can you honestly say that you can easily walk by big bins or specialty displays without at least looking?

A Crazy Quilt Of Fruit and Vegetables

In the produce departments, the displays of green vegetables are usually alternated with brightly colored produce.  The crazy quilt of beautifully colored fruits and vegetables is designed to draw your eye.

In Whole Foods, for instance, you’re instantly hit with what they want you to see/buy/eat.  Produce is right up front, arranged by shades of color, and displayed in black bins so the produce color really stands out and draws your attention.  According to a retail consultant, they’re priming you – giving you the impression that what you see is as fresh as possible – that way you’re prepared to spend more.

Why Are The Milk And Eggs In The Back Of The Store?

People go to the market to buy lots of things – but most frequently for destination purchases like milk, eggs and bread. In many markets those destination purchases are in the farthest corner of the store. Why? The more items you have to walk by to get to the destination purchase – the milk, bread, eggs — the more opportunity and the better the chance you’re going to buy other things that you walk by that suddenly you absolutely must buy. That’s the same reason impulse purchases like magazines, gum, and candy are near the cash register. Wile you wait to pay for the items in your cart the display or impulsive buys may entice you to toss one or two onto the checkout counter (the low level displays also entice kids to grab candy from them and more often than not, to avoid a scene, parents give in).

Is There A Café Up Front?

Some markets now have a cafe or place to sit and eat the food you have purchased.  In many Whole Foods the eating areas are very near the entrance.  A branding design expert says the intent is to get you in the mood for shopping. As soon as you walk in and you see other people enjoying the products that you can buy and then eat, it gives you incentive to purchase and eat them, too.

The Size Of Your Shopping Cart

Have you seen the size of some of the shopping carts – especially in the bigger or newer stores where there are nice wide aisles? Or, how about the stores with kid size carts, too?  You end up filling – and buying – an adult sized (perhaps oversized) cart’s worth of groceries and a kid-sized cart of groceries, too.  How many adults can tell a child that they aren’t going to buy what the child has put into his or her own cart?

A retail consultant’s firm calculated that increasing the size of shopping baskets can boost a store’s revenue by up to 40% — the reason that over the past three years Whole foods has increased the size of its shopping baskets.

Is There Music In The Air?

From a branding design expert:  hearing old favorite songs in a store helps you form a quick emotional bond with the store – the feeling that the store “gets you.”  In Whole Foods you very likely might hear hits from the ‘80s and ‘90s.  Don’t you have a tendency to buy more when you’re relaxed and in a comfortable atmosphere?

A Colorful Bonus Tip

What color are the sales stickers on your merchandise?  Mostly yellow and red? Here’s why: yellow and red signs and stickers elicit the biggest consumer response. So, heads up – especially when you see a nice red or yellow sale sticker stuck on something – it might end up in your cart!

Let’s Talk Turkey – How Long Can It Safely Stay On The Table And In The Fridge?

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Turkey, the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving meals, is a low in fat and high in protein nutritonal star. A 3 and 1/2 ounce serving is about the size and thickness of a new deck of cards. The fat and calorie content varies because white meat has less fat and fewer calories than the dark meat and skin.

Calories in a 3 and 1/2 ounce serving (from a whole roasted turkey):

  • Breast with skin: 194 calories; 8g fat; 29g protein
  • Breast without skin:  161 calories; 4g fat; 30g protein
  • Wing with skin: 238 calories; 13g fat; 27g protein
  • Leg with skin:  213 calories; 11g fat; 28g protein
  • Dark meat with skin:  232 calories; 13g fat; 27g protein
  • Dark meat without skin:  192 calories; 8g fat; 28g protein
  • Skin only:  482 calories; 44g fat; 19g protein

Once The Turkey Is Cooked, Does It Matter How Long It Stays Unrefrigerated?

Yes, yes, yes! According to the Centers for Disease Control the number of reported cases of food borne illness (food poisoning) increases during the holiday season. Food shouldn’t be left out for more than two hours.

If you’re saving turkey leftovers, remove all of the stuffing from inside the turkey, cut the turkey meat off the bone, and refrigerate or freeze all of the leftovers.

The Basic Rules For Leftovers

According to the March 2010 edition of the Nutrition Action Healthletter (Center for Science in the Public Interest) the mantra is: 

2 Hours–2 Inches–4 Days

  • 2 Hours from oven to refrigerator: Refrigerate or freeze your leftovers within 2 hours of cooking. Throw them away if they are out longer than that.
  • 2 Inches thick to cool it quick: Store your food at a shallow depth–about 2 inches–to speed chilling.
  • 4 Days in the refrigerator–otherwise freeze it: Use your leftovers that are stored in the fridge within 4 days. The exceptions are stuffing and gravy.They should be used within 2 days. Reheat solid leftovers to 165 degrees F and liquid leftovers to a rolling boil. Toss what you don’t finish.

How Long Can Leftover Turkey Stay In The Freezer?

Frozen leftover turkey, stuffing, and gravy should be used within one month. To freeze leftovers, package them properly using freezer wrap or freezer containers. Use heavy duty aluminum foil, freezer paper, or freezer bags for best results and don’t leave any air space. Squeeze the excess air from the freezer bags and fill rigid freezer containers to the top with dry food. Without proper packaging, circulating air in the freezer can create freezer burn – those white dried-out patches on the surface of food that make it tough and tasteless. Leave a one-inch head space in containers with liquid and half an inch in containers filled with semi-solids.

10 Turkey Stuffing Tidbits You Want And Need To Know

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Stuffing – most of us love it, eat it, go back for seconds (thirds?), and then eat the leftovers.

But did you ever really think about stuffing – like why it’s called stuffing (or dressing) and what makes it taste so good?

Ten Stuffing Tidbits

  1. There’s some difference of thought about stuffing vs. dressing.  For a lot of people, stuffing is stuffing whether it’s cooked inside the bird or in a separate baking dish. Some people call stuffing the stuff that is stuffed into the bird and they call dressing the stuff that is cooked separately, even if it’s made from the same recipe.  Others go a bit further and maintain that dressing is pourable therefore stuffing is stuffing regardless of how or where it’s cooked.  People in different parts of the country favor different terms. The Amish often call it filling.
  2. Although there are some historical references about the use of stuffing in Ancient Italy, according to Bonappétit.com, stuffing comes from “farce,” which is the word for stuffing in French.  In the 16th century,  the term “stuffing” replaced farce. Farce, the stuffing and farce, the form of comedy, both started out as the Latin farcire, which means “to stuff.” The farce made to be eaten was a filler for a roast. Initially, the theatrical farce was a theatrical improvisational padding of French religious dramas and the actors, for laughs, were expected to ham it up.
  3. Semantics! Cookbook authors favored “dressing,” in the 19th century, but used stuffing and dressing interchangeably or wrote recipes that called for cooked birds with the dressing stuffed inside.
  4. In 1972 when Stove Top introduced an instant stuffing mix that could be made without the bird, was cooked on top of the stove, and was cheap and easy to make, “stuffing” became the go to word.
  5. Stove Top sells 60 million boxes of stuffing every Thanksgiving. When prepared according to box directions and with no additional additives, a ½ serving has: 105 calories, 4.2g fat, 14.7g carbs, 336mg sodium, 2.1g protein.
  6. Stuffing is a seasoned mix of vegetables and starches and sometimes eggs or other protein. Stuffing recipes vary regionally. Southerners usually use cornbread while people from other parts of the country generally use white or wheat bread as the base. Often celery or other vegetables, chestnuts, apples, cranberries, raising, oyster, sausage, turkey giblets, sage, onion, or pecans can be added.
  7. Stuffing is extremely porous. If it is “stuffed” into a turkey, as the turkey cooks the turkey juices that may contain salmonella get into the stuffing. To be safe and prevent salmonella problems, the stuffing must be heated to 165 degrees Farenheit. Cooking the stuffing to 165 degrees usually means the turkey will be overcooked and dry.
  8. If you’re putting the stuffing in the turkey, do it just before roasting – not the night before — so the juices with possible salmonella don’t have all night to soak into the stuffing. Allow 1/2 to 3/4 cup of stuffing per pound and don’t pack it in too tightly which might cause uneven cooking and not all of the stuffing reaching 165 degrees.
  9. If you’re cooking your turkey on an outdoor grill, or in a water smoker, or you’re using a fast-cook method, don’t stuff it because the turkey will be done before the stuffing reaches 165 degrees.
  10. There’s no historical evidence that stuffing was served at the first Thanksgiving.  Stuffing is really thought of mainly as a Thanksgiving food. Before the advent of Stove Top many home cooks wouldn’t have made stuffing for the holidays.  Stove Top, cheap, quick and easy helped stuffing become very popular.

If you’re beginning to get antsy about holiday eating, download my book, The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide: How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009VOFIK8 on Amazon.

Then sign up for a free ½ hour teleseminar on Thanksgiving Eating: Challenges and Solutions, https://eatouteatwell.com/thanksgiving-teleseminar-signup.  It’ll be recorded if you can’t make it, but you still need to sign up so I know where to email the link to the recording.