holidays

Taking A Break? Renting A Holiday Movie? Can You Name Some Famous Ones?

December 16, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Sometimes you just need a break from holiday madness. Sometimes a lot of present wrapping or cookie baking gets done with the TV on and some nice downloads from movies on demand or Netflix .

There are lots of holiday movies for adults and kids alike. There are new ones added every year but these have been around for awhile — some of them for a long, long time!

Here are some famous ones:

Miracle on 34th Street
It’s a Wonderful Life
Holiday Inn
White Christmas
The Lemon Drop Kid
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
The Santa Clause
A Christmas Story
Home Alone
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
A Christmas Carol
Scrooged
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Where’s Frosty the Snowman? Can you add to this list?

For more holiday trivia, eating tips, and a guide to good luck New Year’s foods get Eat Out Eat Well digital magazine from the iTunes store. For a coupon code for a free 3-month subscription, click here.

Holiday Eating Worries? If You’re Going To Indulge, Make It Special

December 9, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Is holiday food everywhere? Are you tempted to eat everything?

Here are a couple of helpful hints:

Say “no thank you” to the rolls, the mashed potatoes, and the ice cream. You can have them any time of the year. Spend your extra calories on something special that’s specific to the holidays. Also say “no thank you” to the food pushers who persist in trying to get you to eat more. Have some polite excuses ready to use.

Keep in mind that a holiday is 24 hours — just like any other day, except that you’ll most likely encounter more food challenges. Be selective. Pass on the muffins at breakfast and save your indulgences for the big meal. Try not to eat a separate meal while you’re preparing “the meal” — it’s all too easy to taste hundreds of calories while you’re cooking (and cleaning up)!

For more helpful hints download my book from Amazon: 30 Ways To Eat Your Holiday Favorites And Still Get Into Your Jeans.

And

New from iTunes: Eat Out Eat Well magazine for iPhones and iPads. Head on over and take a look!

A Holiday Gift

December 7, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Just in time for the crunch of the holiday season —

My new book — 30 Ways to Eat Your Holiday Favorites and Still Get Into Your Jeans — is available as a free download for your kindle or kindle reader this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (12/7 – 12/9).

The book is filled with useful and practical tips and info to help you navigate your way through the holiday season with your waistline intact and your belly happy.

Head on over to Amazon to download your free gift — and please share this info with anyone else who might be interested.

I hope you enjoy the book. I would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a review on Amazon.

Enjoy the holiday season.

12 Ways To Decrease Calories In Your Favorite Holiday Baked Goods – And They’ll Still Taste Great!

December 3, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Does your holiday season mean, among other things, baking lots of cookies: spritz, rolled, ginger bread men, meringues, powdered sugar cookies; savory and sweet breads; and whatever dessert sounds good (maybe even fruit cake – although not in my family).

If you added up the number of butter and sugar calories in all of these baked delights the total would be so staggering it would absolutely spoil their holiday deliciousness.

To lower the calories in baked goods try decreasing the amount of fat and sugar called for in the recipe. Decreasing the amount of sugar by a third doesn’t even really affect the taste – sometimes you need to experiment to see how it might affect the texture, too. Shown below are some other substitutions to try. If you have some other ideas, please head on over to Eat Out Eat Well’s Facebook page to share them.

Some Baking Substitutions To Try

1. 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.

2. Use 2 egg whites or ¼ cup egg substitute for one egg; use 3 egg whites and 1 egg yolk for 2 whole eggs.

3. Decrease the amount of sugar in your recipe by up to a half and add ginger, lemon zest, cinnamon, or cloves for some flavor. Cinnamon, in particular, adds a sweet and warm taste.

4. Substitute nonfat sweetened condensed milk for sweetened condensed milk or evaporated skim milk for evaporated milk.

5. Instead of sour cream use nonfat or reduced fat sour cream, pureed low-fat cottage cheese, or low or nonfat Greek yogurt.

6. Substitute reduced or nonfat cream cheese for cream cheese.

7. Substitute non-fat, 1%, or 2% milk for whole milk and half and half for cream. Or try using buttermilk, which is naturally low in fat. Traditional buttermilk is the liquid left behind after churning the butter out of cream.

8. Substitute 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips, chopped dried fruit, or chopped nuts for 1 cup of chocolate chips.

9. Swap 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder plus 1 tablespoon of oil or water for one ounce of baking chocolate.

10. Instead of frosting use sliced fresh fruit with a dusting of powdered sugar, sweetened and flavored (vanilla, peppermint) nonfat cream cheese, or nonfat whipping cream.

11. For fruit pies, use half the sugar called for in the recipe — this saves 774 calories for every cup of sugar you don’t use.

12. Substitute part-skim ricotta cheese for cream cheese in cheesecake, which will double the protein and cut the fat by about 60 grams for each cup.

Spoon-in-the-mouth-tip: “Tastes” aren’t calorie-free. The dough from the bowl has the same number of calories as the baked cookie, cake, or bread -– and the calories add up pretty quickly. Dump the bowls and beaters into the sink as soon as you’re finished with them to help resist temptation (and constant nibbling).

Remember to head on over to Eat Out Eat Well’s Facebook page if you have other baking substitutions or swaps that you’d like to share.

How Many Calories Are In Typical Thanksgiving And Hanukkah Foods?

November 25, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

What was on the menu for the 50 English colonists and 90 Wampanoag American Indian men at the first Thanksgiving dinner on record (the first official Thanksgiving didn’t happen until two centuries later)? Since it was harvest time in October 1621 in the Plimoth (Plymouth) Colony, in what is now Massachusetts, for the celebration:

the Wampanoag killed five deer
the colonists shot wild fowl — maybe some geese, ducks, or turkeys
some form of Indian corn was served and probably some squash, carrots, and peas
the feast was likely supplemented with fish, lobster, clams, nuts, wheat flour, and pumpkin.

Calories In Today’s Thanksgiving And Hanukkah Foods

Most extra holiday calories don’t come from the “day of” holiday meal but from unrelenting nibbling over the holiday season – and the nibbling isn’t on the same type of food served at the first Thanksgiving dinner.

Guessing at calories can really fool you — being informed can help you to make good choices, food swaps, and trades. A “know before you go” strategy is a big help for making well thought out choices – which will leave room for some of your favorite holiday treats.

Here’s a sampling of the calories in some traditional Thanksgiving and Hanukkah foods. The calories are for an average serving and are estimates. Recipes all vary, these are ballpark numbers.

Appetizers:

Mixed nuts, 1oz: 170 calories

Candied pecans, 1oz: 139 calories

Cheese ball, 1oz: 110 calories

Selection of raw vegetables, 8 ounces: 75 calories

Sour cream and onion dip, 2 tablespoons: 60 calories

Deviled egg, ½ of an egg: 59 calories

Stuffed mushrooms, 6 small: 386 calories

Shrimp with cocktail sauce, 3 shrimp: 30 calories

Jell-O mold salad, ½ cup: 103 calories

Pigs in blankets, one homemade: 46 calories

Triscuit, 6 crackers: 120 calories

Main Course:

Turkey, 3.5 ounce serving (about the size and thickness of a new deck of cards):

Breast with skin: 194 calories
Breast without skin: 161 calories
Wing with skin: 238 calories
Leg with skin: 213 calories
Dark meat with skin: 232 calories
Dark meat without skin: 192 calories
Skin only: 482 calories; 44g fat

Smithfield ham, center slice, 4 ounces: 180 calories

Prime Rib roast: 8oz: 450 calories

Roasted Brussels sprouts with olive oil, 10 half sprouts: 80 calories

Dinner roll, 1 small: 87

Butter, 1 pat: 36

Cheesy corn bread, 2″ X 2″: 96

Turkey, white meat, 4 ounces: 180

Turkey, dark meat, 4 ounces: 323

Turkey gravy, 1/4 cup: 50

Stuffing, 1/2 cup: 190

Mashed potatoes, 1 cup: 190

Candied Yams, 1/2 cup: 210

Sweet potato casserole, 3/4 cup: 624

Honey glazed carrots, 1/2 cup: 45

Green beans almandine, 1/2 cup: 220

Green bean casserole, 1/2 cup: 75

Peas and pearl onions, 1/2 cup: 40

Jellied Cranberry Sauce, 1/4 cup: 110

Cranberry relish, 1/2 cup: 76

Dessert: 

Pumpkin pie, 1/8 of a 9″ pie: 316

Apple pie, 1/8 of a 9″ pie: 411

Pecan pie, 1/8 of a 9″ pie: 503

Vanilla ice cream, 1/2 cup: 145

Chocolate cream pie, 1 large slice: 535

Baked apple, 1 apple: 182

Tea, brewed, 8 ounces: 2

Coffee, black: 10 ounces: 5

Coffee with cream and sugar, 10 ounces: 120

Coffee with Baileys Irish Cream and sugar, 10 ounces: 186

Calories In Typical Hanukkah Foods

Applesauce, sweetened, ½ cup: 95

Applesauce (unsweetened), ½ cup: 50

Fried potato latke, 2oz: 200

Fried, cheese-filled blintz, 1 medium: 340

Baked jelly-filled sufganiyot, 2 inches: 115

Fried jelly-filled sufganiyot, 2 inches: 300

Almond Mandelbrot, ¼ inch slice: 45

Rugelach, 1 cookie: 100