Sassy Sexy Shapely

MSNBC has published yet another list of ways to cut 100 calories from your daily diet.  Many of the tips are commonsense and well known.

1. Flavor your coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg instead of flavored syrup.
2. Enjoy your salad without the croutons.
3. Order pizza with grilled chicken instead of pepperoni.
4. Leave 3 or 4 bites on your plate.
5. Season steamed vegetables with fresh lemon and herbs instead of butter.
6. Choose your piece of sheet cake from the middle, where there’s less icing.
7. Add a splash of 100 percent fruit juice to sweeten fresh brewed iced tea in place of sugar.
8. Control your portions by pouring an individual serving of pretzels or chips into a bowl instead of eating from the bag.
9. Ask for the bread basket to be removed from the table.
10. Dip fruit into fat-free yogurt, and veggies into bean dip or salsa.

#1 is especially interesting.  My first thought after reading it was to suggest using sugar-free syrup instead of regular syrup.  That’s what I do when I go skinny at Starbucks.  I also season my latte with both cinnamon and nutmeg.

There’ve been a lot of reports lately about the newly discovered health benefits of cofee, but cinnamon is a nutritional star, too.  Cinnamon is celebrated for its ability to improve blood sugar control and soothing an upset tummy.  Nutmeg is no slouch either.  It ”…appears to have some beneficial effects on mood, possibly enhancing serotonin’s activity.”

Even if you don’t swap out your regular syrup, you may want to use cinnamon and nutmeg in your coffee anyway!

I’ve been looking into alternative eating plans, including vegan and raw.  I’ve done vegan meals before and raw ones, too, but I’ve never gone gourmet with either.  How fortunate that my city offers a raw restaurant with locations on each side of town!  My BF has lots of great qualities, but, as I’ve mentioned before, adventurous eating is not one of them.  So, while he was out of town on business, I hooked up with his brother and his brother’s new GF, and we all went out for a raw dinner.

Wow!!  It was SO good!  Unbelievably, outrageously, amazingly good!! 

 My BF’s brother started with a fruit smoothie topped with granola.  Interestingly, it came in a bowl, rather than a glass, and looked like a chilled soup.  He chose the Ora-Bana flavor, which was a mix of oranges, bananas and dates.  Ooo… it was tasty.  Cool, creamy, tropical goodness with a satisfying crunch.

We each picked a meal and then shared bites with each other.  My BF’s brother chose the Mexicali Sampler, which included a Mexi Wrap with a collard green “tortilla”, Enchiladas, Flax Crax and Mexi Toast.  It was served with yam rice, “beans”, guacamole and salsa.  It had some heat, probably because of the spicy red sauce.

My BF’s brother’s new GF chose the Purple Burrito.  She’s allergic to tomatoes and corn, so she skipped the salsa and guacamole, which was made with tomatoes.  The Purple Burrito was beautiful to look at because of all the vibrant colors.  Regrettably, the pic I took doesn’t capture it as well as I’d hoped because you can’t see the deep purple cabbage.  The cabbage “cup” was filled with Mexi pate, veggies and greens topped with sour “dream” and “yam yumm”.  It also came with flax crackers.

I thought it’d be a hoot to have the raw version of a traditionally bad food, so I selected the “Burger and Fries”.  It was a veggie burger made with beets, carrots, sunflower seeds and parsley, served on living bread with hand prepared catsup, mustard, mayo, onion tomato, lettuce, sprouts, avocado and almond cheese.  The “fries” were “breaded” avocado slices. It did not taste anything like a burger and fries, but that was okay with me.  The flavors and textures were lusciously palate-pleasing.  Every bite was fresh and clean, like capturing the crisp springtime air on your tastebuds.

We finished the meal by sharing three flavors of “cheesecake”: strawberry, apple, and yam.  They, too, were very good, especially the strawberry.  It had the tang of cream cheese, but there wasn’t a bit of it in the reicpe.  I found out the filling was actually made with cashews.  So, so good!

We were all astounded by how delicious everything tasted, so flavorful, and how filling it was.  I could easily eat this way all the time, except that the prep is daunting to me.  I talked about this with the proprietress of the restaurant.  She insisted that it really wasn’t that complicated or hard to do.  I was am still skeptical, though.  I think I need hands-on experience, so my BF’s brother’s new GF and I are going to take a 2-hour raw cooking class on a Sunday in late July.  My BF joked that a raw cooking class is an oxymoron.  Goofball!  (But he does have a point, doesn’t he?!?! J)

You never know.  Maybe ‘rich and raw’ will become a new addition to the Sassy Chef’s cooking repertoire!

 I was so excited back in March when I discovered Mexican Shrimp Cocktail.  It was such a thrill to stumble across a clean-eating, low-calorie fast food that I really enjoyed.  Well, it got even better this weekend when I tried my first Mexican Mixed Seafood Cocktail.

My BF and I were on our way back to town after a fun day of off-roading when we grabbed lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place en route.  Imagine my delight when I saw this exotic seafood blend on the menu!

The ‘Campechana’, described in English as “cocktail mixed”, was made with shrimp, octopus, abalone and oysters with chopped red onions, tomatoes, cilantro, cucumbers, avocado and cocktail juice.  It was delicious!  It was a refreshing and filling meal, perfect after a hot day on the dusty trail, and it was totally in keeping with my diet plan, providing lots of quality protein and other nutrients while still satisfying my tastebuds.  Exciting!

 Ross is one of my favorite stores.  They carry clothing, shoes, handbags, small furniture and other household items.  They also carry food, but I don’t usually buy foodstuffs when I’m there.  Tonight, though, while looking for a gift for a colleague, I stumbled on a Lemon Poppy Scone & Muffin Mix with no preservatives or artificial flavors.  The ingredients looked good; the calories were reasonable; each serving offered a decent amount of fiber and was low sodium.  The package called for one up of water, but I decided to go with unsweetened vanilla almond milk.  I enjoyed my warm muffin with a spritz or two of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray.  Delish!  Sometimes simple - and pre-packaged - is really quite good.

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Ingredients

• 1 package Country Gourmet Lemon Poppy Scone & Muffin Mix
• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees and mist a muffin pan with non-stick spray.
• Place mix in bowl, add almond milk and stir until just blended.
• Spoon batter into prepared muffin tin.
• Bake 18-20 minutes or until golden.

Makes 8 servings.

Per muffin: 155 calories, 1.5g fat, 4g fiber, 3g protein

 Isn’t this a super darn hoot of an idea?!?!  Kudos to Sycamore Stirrings for this bit of maternal brilliance: filling a muffin tin with small amounts of your kids’ favorite foods.  This one has Goldfish, blueberry bagel chunks, cucumber sticks, strawberry yogurt, Gorilla Munch cereal, blueberries, pretzels, string cheese, dried apricots, red pepper, cheddar cheese cubes, peaches. 

It’s geared for kids.  Perhaps because I’m more of a kid at heart than most, but I love the idea for me.  It would make eating a lot more fun for me… much more entertaining.  And, the built-in portion control rocks!  I would fill mine with almonds, apple slices, fat-free ricotta cheese, Kashi GO LEAN Original cereal, Hormel turkey pepperoni slices, light string cheese cut into discs, grape tomatoes, Smart Balance Omega Natural peanut butter, cranberries, sugar-free preserves, Zbar chunks, and edamame.

I often find that stuff designed for kids, at least as far as food is concerned, is actually just right for adults.  For instance, ZBars are a staple in my pantry.  They are organic energy bars made for kids; yet they’re perfect for me in terms of calories (120-150 per bar) and even price ($0.59-$0.69 each).

Consider the McDonald’s Happy Meal.  It’s a “right sized” fast food combo that now comes with healthier options like, and it’s ideal for adult women who want to treat themselves to the taste and convenience of the drive-thru without blowing their diets.

So, when you see something nifty for kids, think about how you can use it for yourself.  You might be surprised.  J

“If we grew thinner, exercised regularly, avoided diets rich in red meat (substituting poultry, fish or vegetable sources of protein) and ate diets rich in fruits and vegetables, and stopped using tobacco, we would prevent 70 percent of all cancers.”

Wow!  That’s one bold statement in the first paragraph of Newsweek’s Your Lifestyle, Your Genes and Cancer.  It’s the kind of statement that requires one to pause and absorb.  Seventy percent… think about that: preventing seventy percent of all cancers is a BIG deal.

Research just keeps confirming that the American lifestyle is harmful to our collective health - especially when you consider that healthy populations moving here and adopting our habits see their rates of illness increase to match ours.

The bottomline is that our dietary choices and lack of activity are killing us.  We’ve finally accepted that when it comes to tobacco, but we’re only just now recognizing it in relation to weight and exercise.

I’ve never quite understood how this works but apparently:

“Lifestyle influences a person’s risk for cancer by generating growth-promoting signals that affect cells primed to become cancerous, or that already are cancerous. What primes those cells to become cancerous in the first place are changes in their genes.”

“…most of us are born with good genes that succeed in flawlessly organizing our growth and development. After all, our genes have been optimized by more than 600 million years of evolution; they ought to work well. During the course of our lifetimes, though, genes are damaged in various cells throughout the body. It is these mutated genes that drive most cancers.”

The article explores the science of this thoroughly, beyond what I can comprehend, but much of it seems to come down to minimizing inflammation through a healthy diet and mitigating the by-products of inflammation by exercising.

I exercise regularly already (although I could always do more), so I feel pretty solid on that score.  But, my diet continues to need significant refinement.  I’ve been reasonably focused on clean eating, but I think it’s time to revist my Ultra Prevention and Ultrametabolism books.  These books focus intensively on inflammation and ways to avoid it.  The authors have also published a cookbook to help with recipe prep.  I was impressed when I first read Ultra Prevention, but I was also overwhelmed.  I’ve done much more cooking now and gone more in-depth into clean eating, so I think I might be better able to tackle it this time around.

 I love all things cheesy.  To me, anything with warm cheese equals comfort food.  So, I “healthify” cheesy classics or develop new faves whenever I can.  I just found this flatbread at the Walmart Neighborhood Market, and it’s now a permanent addition to my grocery list.  I came up with this dish while heating soup for my BF, whose stomach has been bothering him.  Prep-to-table took no time at all, so we were able to eat together.  This wrap satisfies my craving for ooey gooey cheesy goodness and fills me up with lots of tummy-taming fiber.

Cheesy Chicken & Veggie Flatbread Wrap

Ingredients

• 1 Italian Herb Light Flat Out Wrap
• 1 package Green Giant HEALTHY VISION frozen vegetables
• 1 2-oz. package of diced chicken from a South Beach Wrap kit (or 2 ounces of pre-cooked diced chicken breast)
• 4 slices Kraft Singles Sharp Cheddar Fat Free Slices

Directions

This makes a very full wrap.  Don’t worry if some of the filling falls out.  Just scoop it up and ladle it over the top!

Serves 1

Approximately 390 calories and 13g fiber

 For some reason, I got a bit crazy one day at the grocery store and filled the fridge with fat-free ricotta cheese.  Even though the cheese doesn’t expire until July, it seemed like a good time to whip up something delish with a couple of the containers.  I had some ginger preserves left over from my PB&J party, and voila… a subtly sweet, delicately flavored - yet healthy - dessert was born!

Low-Fat Ginger Ricotta Pie

Ingredients

• 2 15-ounce containers Fat-Free Ricotta Cheese
• 1/2 cup Egg Beaters (equivalent to 2 eggs)
• 9 tablespoons Splenda Granulated
• 3/4 cup Ginger Preserves
• 1 Refrigerated Pie Crust

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
• Roll out crust into 9-inch pie plate.
• In a large bowl, blend ricotta, Egg Beaters, Splenda and preserves.
• Pour into pie crust.
• Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour to 1 hour, 15 minutes, depending on oven temperature.
• Let cool and, if desired, garnish with thinned ginger preserves and ginger snap halves.
• Cut into 16 thin slices.

I woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago with another recipe in my head.  Nutty!  The Sassy Chef is in a particularly creative cooking mode lately!  It’s weird but welcome.  This recipe came out extra yummy and was surprisingly filling.  Cut into quarters, it was one of my entrees at the PB&J party.

 Clean Eating Naan Pizza with Chicken & Veggies

Ingredients

• 1 Whole Foods Market 365 Whole Wheat Tandoori Naan bread
• 1 package Green Giant HEALTHY VISION frozen vegetables
• 1 2-oz. package of diced chicken from a South Beach Wrap kit (or 2 ounces of pre-cooked diced chicken breast)
• 2 T Smart Balance Omega Natural Peanut Butter, super-duper chunky
• 2 T sugar-free Apricot Preserves

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees and mist a pizza pan with olive oil cooking spray.
• Heat veggies in microwave for 4 1/2 minutes, following package instructions, and empty into dish.
• Mix diced chicken with veggies and microwave for 30 seconds.  Stir to blend.
• Pour butter sauce from veggies into separate microwavable bowl and mix peanut butter into it.  Microwave for 15 seconds and stir to blend fully.
• Thin apricot preserves with water and warm for 15 seconds in the microwave.
• Spoon peanut butter sauce on Naan.
• Spoon veggies and chicken on peanut butter-topped Naan.
• Drizzle thinned apricot preserves over veggies.
• Bake for 15 minutes.

Serves 1 | Approximately 490 calories with over 7g fiber for entire pizza

“Why does it cost more to eat less?” After asking this question, Weetabix rails against the 100-calorie packs that are fast becoming ubiquitous. I agree with her assertion that our laziness is costing us millions of dollars a year. But, the title of her article, “The reason why healthy foods cost so much,” is misleading.

100-calorie packs are not made up of healthy food. They are nicely portioned packages of low-calorie food, but that doesn’t mean the food is healthy. The food is typically highly processed with little nutritional value. Only the pre-portioning keeps it from being off the charts in terms of sugar and salt.

Truly healthy food is still relatively cheap. Fresh produce, eggs, cans of beans, potatoes, and whole grain rice remain fairly inexpensive. Get ‘em at the warehouse store or a try a neighborhood farmers’ market. Even a roasted chicken can be picked up for fairly short money at your local grocery store. We pay for convenience for sure, but convenience isn’t always healthy.

So, don’t read Weetabix’s headline and bemoan the fact that your attempts to eat healthy are breaking the bank. Remember that healthy options are most definitely available on a budget if you’re willing to make a little effort, for example, as Weetabix suggests, using your own baggies to create homemade 100-calorie packs.

Need more tips on how to eat healthy on the cheap? Visit Healthy Hillbilly Housewife for recipes, tips on dieting on a budget, and other terrific information.