Healthy Party Foods

Nothing can blow a healthy diet like going to a party, or worse yet, hosting a party. Tables are laden with rich, buttery, sugary treats and people are encouraging us to indulge in them. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some tips, tricks, and dish ideas to help you have a great time without regretting it in the morning. If necessary, find recipes online or in cookbooks.

• Fruit Tray. Delicious, healthy, always a party favorite, and not very difficult. Many people don’t take the time to peel or cut fruit for themselves, but love it when someone does it for them. If you are in a hurry or have to pick up your ingredients on the run, just mixing canned pineapple chunks, grapes, and whole strawberries in a bowl or on a tray will do the trick. If you have more time, use a large round tray or pan and arrange fruit slices in a pleasing way. Pile grapes or strawberries in the middle and surround them with layered slices of apple, oranges, pears, kiwi, or other fruits of your choice. If you want to add a dip, try mixing plain yogurt with a little lime juice and honey.
• Vegetable Tray. If time is short, buy these pre-cut. The old standby is carrot and celery sticks, broccoli and cauliflower flowerets. Make it more interesting with lightly blanched asparagus stalks, cherry tomatoes, or snow peas.
• Mediterranean Tray. This can include cut-up vegetables of your choice, various kinds of olives, and grape tomatoes, along with pita bread cut into triangles and hummus or baba ghanouj for dips or spreads. A jar of giardiniera (Italian-style marinated vegetables) is a quick addition.
• Stuffed mushrooms. These don’t have to be cheesy and rich. They are just as delicious with fillings like pesto, crabmeat, spiced brown rice, chopped onions and mushrooms . . . use your imagination—no butter or mayonnaise required. If the party is not at your house, it is best to prepare them and have the tray ready to pop in the oven when you arrive.
• Dips. Yes, you can dip something into something without it being unhealthy! Bean dips of any type are great. Add salsa to refried black or pinto beans. Mix white beans such as cannellini in the food processor with thyme, garlic powder, oregano, and a little olive oli for a white bean dip. Thick Greek-style fat-free yogurt makes a great dip with the additional flavoring such as garlic or dill. Artichoke dip is incredibly tasty made with no mayonnaise-- just blend canned artichoke hearts with olive oil, garlic powder, and a little parmesan cheese. Homemade guacamole with added tomatoes is another possibility. Dippers can include carrot and celery sticks, snow peas, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, whole wheat crackers, or pretzel sticks.
• Shrimp. If budget allows, fill a bowl with ice and cover it with boiled shrimp. It’s popular, relatively healthy, and easier to keep your quantity in check since peeling requires effort!
• Chicken. Cut chicken into small cubes, or buy it pre-cut. Saute in teriyaki sauce, and serve with toothpicks inserted into each cube. Add fresh pineapple chunks if you wish. This is also delicious with crispy tofu chunks instead of chicken.

Party Diet Tips

• If you are attending a potluck type of event, bring the dish you want to indulge in, and make it a healthy—yet delicious—one. You can’t control the presence of junky food temptations, but you can make sure that there will be at least one thing you can fill up on and still stick to your personal healthy eating plan.
• If you are trying not to indulge in foods that won’t be good for you, don’t stand by the food table. Lower the temptation level by moving around and sitting far from the food. If you need to eat, fix a small plate and move away rather than standing there gnoshing!
• Eat at home before you go to a party or event. Going into a food-temptation situation hungry is never a good idea.
• Watch the alcohol intake. Lowered inhibitions may leave you unable to resist the iced chocolate-chip brownies just like Grandma used to make!
• Politely decline. When people say “You have GOT to try the [whatever],” either just say no or simply smile and say, “That DOES look great, maybe later.” No need to engage in any heated discussions about food or dietary preferences unless you want to.

 

 

Homemade But Simple: 3 Things that Will Change your (food) Life

Make your own salad dressing

There seems to be a mystique about making your own salad dressing—that it is some kind of arcane and difficult process. And there also is a misperception that all homemade salad dressing is a tasteless mix of oil and vinegar. Nothing could be further from the truth, and all you have to do is ask someone who is a “convert”—we will never go back to boring, fat-filled, bottled dressings. True, many salad dressing recipes begin with oil and vinegar, but that is just the base, It's the added ingredients that give it flavor, texture, and individuality.

The process can be as simple as this: Mix 1/4 cup olive oil and 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar and whisk in 1 teaspoon of dijon mustard and 1 teaspoon of honey. It takes about one minute. Try that for starters.

Many kinds of oil can be used: olive, canola, vegetable, peanut, sesame. Many flavors of vinegar are available, including balsamic, red or white wine vinegars, apple cider vinegar, tarragon vinegar, rice wine vinegar. Other optional ingredients include lemon or lime juice, fruit juice, minced garlic or onion, pepper, basil, oregano, Italian seasoning mix, hot sauce, soy sauce, yogurt, or anything that sounds good to you. Hundreds of recipes can be found online or in cookbooks.

Sure, you can get the food processor involved if you want, and do the drizzling-in-oil thing. But you can also just throw everything in a bowl and whisk it, with quite yummy results. You can't make too much ahead, however, most homemade dressings don't keep too well.

Once you start making your own, it opens up a whole new world of flavors and may lead to a newfound love of salads and the health benefits that can bring.

Make our own pizza

Sending out for pizza may soon be a thing of the past for you, because homemade pizzas can be far more delicious than any you can order. It can be pretty hard to get a good healthy pizza delivered anyway. A few places do offer some good veggie combos with a few more "exotic" ingredients than black olives and mushrooms, but they still can't compare to a completely personalized homemade version. And as a bonus, it's very easy to customize parts of the pizza for different people. The pizza place doesn’t take kindly to “a lot of onion on 1/2 of the pizza, a little bit of onion on 1/4, and no onion on the other 1/4,” but you can certainly do that at home.

Vegetable ingredients can include artichoke hearts, spinach, onions, tomato, garlic, peppers, olives, zucchini, mushrooms, and anything else you like. Cheese can be mozzarella, parmesan, feta, cheddar, soy cheese, or none at all. Proteins can be chicken, seafood, turkey sausage, tofu, tempeh, garden burgers, etc. Sauce can be tomato, pesto, alfredo, salsa, or none at all. Sauce and crust can be homemade or store bought.

Try a Mexican variation with beans, salsa, green onions and cheddar. Or a Greek variation with Kalamata olives, spinach, and feta. Or even a vegan pizza with tempeh, garlic, spinach, and tomatoes. The possibilities are as open-ended as your imagination. It doesn't have to take much longer than ordering out, unless you are making your own crust from scratch. And everyone gets EXACTLY the pizza they want. With healthier ingredients!

Make your own soup

Homemade soup can’t even be thought of in the same category as canned soup, there is just no comparison. When you think of homemade soup you may imagine slaving over a boiling pot all day, but that doesn't have to be the case at all. You can make a 20-minute soup that is quite tasty, make a large pot ahead of time for the whole week, or throw some ingredients in the slow cooker and come home to a delicious and ready-to-eat soup. You can control the amount of sodium and other ingredients, and keep it as healthy as you like. And yet, there is hardly any food more satisfying then a nice steamy bowl of soup!

Start with a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot, and saute onions, garlic, celery, and carrots for a few minutes until they are softening. Then add liquids, vegetable broth or chicken broth or tomato sauce are some options. Then add other ingredients such as beans, other vegetables that just need a boil like cauliflower or potatoes. If you like, add a handful of pasta or rice. Many soups will be plenty thick on their own, but if it does need thickening there are a couple of tricks that don't involve dairy products or canned soups. Remove a portion of the soup and blend it in the blender then return it to the pot and stir. Or mix just a little cornstarch with cold water and add it to the pot. Or add some grated potato and let it cook in.

Thousands of recipes are available online—just search for the words "soup recipe" and your favorite ingredient and you will get many ideas. And many healthy delicious meals with not too much effort.

 

 

Creating Healthy Meals is Easier with Better Ideas, Tools, and Resources

Gather your resources and organize them to make your meal ideas easy to find and use. We all come across good ideas all the time, but we are so bombarded with information that we tend to forget them.

You can save time and eat a healthier diet by taking control of all those good ideas and translating them into a realistic day-to-day plan. Start by thinking of the foods you really want to have in your diet, and go from there to creating a master list of meal ideas. Then find recipes in cookbooks or online.

How we choose our meals is crucial to our diet and health. Yet it's easy to just leave it up to circumstance, and not really give it much thought. We can all benefit from spending a little time thinking about how we choose what is in our everyday diet and what to eat for any given meal. Do you wait until the last minute? Do you choose solely by what sounds good at the moment? Do you choose whatever is quickest? What if we planned our meals as thoughtfully as we plan some other areas of our lives or work, and made sure we had the tools and resources to accomplish the task well?

Here are some areas to examine:

• How do I decide what is in my diet? Conscious choice? Availability? Easiest and quickest?
• What guidelines do I use to choose what to buy when shopping for food? Price? Health? Taste? Do I need to prioritize my guidelines?
• Do members of my household agree on meal choices? How can we be more compatible?
• How do I organize my meal ideas? Keep lists? Mental notes?
• How do I organize my recipes? Box? Notebook? Drawer? Computer? Not at all?
• Is grocery shopping stressful for me? How do I organize my shopping list?
• Is it easy to find things in my pantry and refrigerator? Are they stocked with the foods I really want in my diet?
• Is preparing a meal a relaxed and enjoyable, or frantic and stressful? What can I change to make my choices and the process better and easier?

You might find that answering some of these questions can lead you not only to a consistently healthier diet, but to a more relaxed and efficient way of shopping and preparing meals.

 

 

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