It’s a Valentine’s Day tradition at our house, every year for dessert we have chocolate fondue.  It started out as me trying to make chocolate covered strawberries.  They didn’t turn out and the whole time I was making them I kept thinking how good other things would be dipped in chocolate.  The next year (seven years ago) I found a recipe that is quick, easy and delicious.

1 bag milk chocolate chips (I prefer semi-sweet but the kids don’t like it)

1/2 cup half and half (I used skim milk this year to cut down on the fat and it worked okay)

If you have a fondue pot you can just throw the chocolate chips in and let them melt.  When the chips are melted, stir in the half and half.   If you don’t have a fondue pot, you can melt the chocolate chips in the microwave for one minute and then stir in the half and half.  You could also melt the chocolate in a double boiler and add the cream, or you could bring the half and half  just to a simmer on the stove top, remove from heat and add the chips, stir until well mixed.   You can also add a dash of liquor, a pinch of sea salt,  a spoonful of peanut butter, or whatever other flavoring sounds good to you.

Now for the fun part, dipping.  Here’s a list of things we like to dip,

bananas

strawberries

dried apricots

Oreos

Nutter Butters

marshmallows

Nilla Wafers

maraschino cherries

pretzels

Yeah, it is very messy and not extremely nutritious but we only have it once a year and this is one tradition each of us treasures.  I also hope that we will be giving our kids many happy memories.

I don’t know about your Super Bowl party but mine is always filled with loads of yummy but fatty foods;  burgers, brats, chips, dips, brownies, cookies, and mayo-laden salads.  I did not know how I was going to make it through the game without getting sick.  (Sometimes even a couple of bites of fatty foods make my gallbladder act up.)  So, I thought I’d bring one of my all time favorite snacks, fruit salsa with cinnamon chips.  This is quick and easy to make.  I usually use fresh strawberries but my grocery store didn’t have any so I used frozen today.  Here’s what you’ll need.

Salsa

2 quarts strawberries

1 pineapple

6 kiwi

Cinnamon Chips

20 small tortillas (flour or whole grain)

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 cup cinnamon sugar (1/2 c sugar and 1 tablespoon cinnamon)

Just throw your fruit chunks into a food processor and pulse until almost smooth.  Mix all the chopped fruit together.  If the fruit is in season, I just call the salsa good, but if it is not, I add a little sugar.

For the cinnamon chips, brush the tortillas with olive oil and then sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.  Cut the tortillas into triangles and bake.  Bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes.  Cool and serve.

After more than a month of clean (enough) eating I am getting pretty sick of eating salads and plates of veggies.  Don’t get me wrong, I have always liked and eaten my veggies but thinking that is all I can eat is making me rebel.  I want to eat normal food again.  So I have been busy tweaking all of my old standbys so I can have my cake and eat it too .

For this recipe you’ll need:

1 lb. extra lean ground beef

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/3 cup red wine

1 tablespoon flour

1/2 cup skim milk

1/2 cup low-fat sour cream

sliced mushrooms (pint or about 2 cups)

2-3 teaspoons beef bouillon granules

4-6 cups cooked egg noodles

Cook the onions and garlic until tender in the olive oil.  Add the ground beef and brown.  Drain off any fat.  Stir in flour and beef bouillon granules.  Add washed mushrooms and wine.  Cook until the mushrooms are tender and mix is thick.  Mix in skim milk and sour cream.  Mixture should be thick but if it’s too thick you can thin it down with a bit of water.

Let the stroganoff simmer.   In the meantime, cook the egg noodles according to package directions.

I like to drain the noodles and then rinse them over the pot they were cooked in.  The pot fills with a little hot water and keeps the noodles warm.  I also like to stir a little drizzle of olive oil over the noodles so they don’t stick together.  I didn’t tell my family that I fiddled with the original recipe before they ate it.  I asked them if they could tell the difference when they were finished and everyone said it tasted the same as the full fat version.

      It has been a full month of healthy eating for our family.   So far everything is going pretty well.  We are however missing some of our favorites, like Poptarts.  Who doesn’t love Poptarts?  They are warm, yummy, and quick to fix.  The only thing holding me back from buying cases of these is one, the price and two, they aren’t “clean enough” eating.  I think I found a way to make everyone pretty happy with this recipe.

     This first thing I did to make my homemade poptarts ”clean enough”  was to find an oil pie crust recipe.  You can click on the link for the recipe.  I used olive oil for the oil in this crust.  I put the oil in the freezer for 20 minutes before I mixed up the dough.  I also sifted the flour before measuring it.  Before I rolled out the dough, I refrigerated it for 15 minutes.  To make it easier to roll out and clean up I rolled the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap.

      I made my own template for the poptarts but you could just wing it too.  I used my fancy new wheeled cutter/crimper.

 Pumpkin poptarts.  I used store-bought pumpkin.

 Cherry poptarts.  I used canned cherry pie filling.

      Add a top.  You will have to seal the edges to keep the insides in.  I just wet the lower edge with water and pushed the top down into the bottom.  I poked a little hole in the middle for venting.  I baked these at 400 degrees for fifteen minutes.

      I finished these with a bit of glaze (store-bought, I’m all for easy if it’s not too unhealthy).  I know these aren’t really picture worthy but hey, they taste a lot better than they look (and better than the real thing, if I say so myself).  These poptarts did take some time to make.  I usually make a batch Sunday morning when we aren’t rushed.  But they are fairly guilt free and they are a heck of a lot cheaper than the real version.  The best thing though is you can make any kind of poptarts you can dream up.

       Okay, it’s been about three weeks since I started my new way of eating.  I can not tell you how much better I am feeling.  And you know what else?  The effects of my new way of eating were immediate.  The last day of normal eating was misery for me.  The next morning I decided I could not live with the nausea, stomach distress and sheer exhaustion that had become my constant companions.  I started that day off with my new way of eating.  All my symptoms ceased and have not returned.  I am hopeful that I will not have to have my gall bladder removed because I think I can keep up this way of eating.  Let me take a minute and explain my new way of eating.  I can only tolerate a tiny bit of fat in my diet so I have nixed most meats, cream, cheese, butter, ice cream, fries, donuts and most of the things that I used to eat.  I can tolerate fat-free dairy products like cottage cheese, yogurt and milk.  These are a good source of proteins.  I can also tolerate lean chicken and turkey.  So, I can eat some animal products which means I am not I’m not vegan or even vegetarian.  I thought maybe then I would fall into the clean eating category.  I tried and found clean eating to be healthy yes, but expensive and kinda a pain.  I’m just a real person trying to be healthy and well while keeping my family healthy and happy (Mom, I don’t like vegetables!).  Well, I’ve come up with clean enough eating.  It’s basically the USDA guidelines, lots of fresh fruits and veggies, lean meats, non-fat dairy, whole grains and healthy fats (olive oil mostly). 

      So, I’ve come up with some clean enough recipes.  These make me happy because they are healthy (not perfectly healthy but good enough) and they make my family happy because they are basically just adaptations of their fast food and grocery store favorites.  These fajitas for example, are a snap to throw together and they have to be healthier than what we’ve been buying at Taco Bell (if their isn’t enough beef in their beef to be called beef, than what exactly am I eating?)  Anyway, I bought the chicken and beef already prepared.  All I had to do was throw it into a pan with a bit of olive oil and throw in some onions and peppers sliced up.  You can buy frozen pre-sliced veggies, or even get ready to cook veggies in the produce department.  After the meat is cooked through and the veggies are tender-crisp, you are ready for step two.  Lightly butter or brush a tortilla with olive oil, place buttered side down on the griddle.  Add the fajita mixture on top.  Add a little cheese to help glue everything together.  Add a top, lightly buttered side up.  Wait a few minutes for the cheese to melt, then carefully flip (I didn’t use cheese on mine and the filling went everywhere when I flipped it, yes I am a messy cook) and brown the other side.

      Cut into wedges and serve.  I like to serve these with salsa, guacamole (avocados are an excellent source of healthy fats) and sour cream (nobody has even noticed the switch to light sour cream).  Start to finish this meal took about 30 minutes.  Even with buying the frozen, prepared beef and chicken this meal was about half the cost of take out.