A taco primer: tacos can be low-salt, low-fat, if you watch the ingredients you use

Taco Tuesday has become a regular thing, especially during the pandemic, when members of various online food groups were all posting pictures of their latest taco creations. But like most ethnic foods, tacos also can be quite unhealthy for you — high in salt (in the shells) and fat (in the meats used).

But you can control all that in tacos you make at home. This piece, Are Tacos Healthy? Ingredients, Calories, and Serving Sizes, provides a great overview of tacos and the ingredients you should be using. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include salt content for some of the options it provides, but it does warn against high salt, high-fat shells.

I’ve written about how you should seek out low-salt and no-salt corn soft tortillas for your tacos. I’ve also highlighted using Mrs. Dash salt-free taco spice mix, a fixture in my kitchen.

Simple ingredients like red peppers, reduced-fat cheese, low-salt black olives and shrimp went into my shrimp tacos.

I normally make tacos with ground turkey to get a lean protein option. Recently, though, I used shrimp for a change pf pace. The shrimp I bought were precooked, so they jsut needed some warm in a frying pan with Mrs Dash taco spices mixed with water. I had first made some peppers and onions in the same pan to flavor it, eventually cooking everything together.

We did splurge that night with some hard taco shells I found which were low in salt. They remain relatively high in fat (7 grams each), so most of the time, I’d opt for the soft ones instead.

May 26, 2021 0

The ‘Cookbook of Healthy Living & No Regrets’ — handy for those cutting sugar

Jayne J. Jones went through a harrowing health crisis before being diagnosed with diabetes. It prompted her to change how she eats and to create the Cookbook of Healthy Living & No Regrets and to dub herself the No Sugar Baker.

If you can’t eat sugar but crave baked goods of all sorts, this book will interest you. The baking section is extensive. Actually, you could say two sections are devoted to baking — one for brunch baking and another just to baked goods.

As someone who doesn’t bake, I was most interested in the sections entitles Salads, Sides & Soups and Family Dinner Time Treats.

Those sections are a reminder of how difficult it is to cut, salt, fat and sugar from recipes you love and still have something you love. The recipes in those sections cut the sugar, but include butter, bacon, pork rinds and other ingredients that are high in salt and fat (specifically bad fat).

So if you need to cut sugar, this could be a cooking guide for you (I’m actually sending my copy to a friend who was recently diagnosed with diabetes and is scrambling to change how he eats). If you want to cut sugar, fat and salt, check my recipe page as a start, and also look at some of the other recipe sites I have here.

May 24, 2021 0

One-Pot Garlicky Shrimp & Spinach — leave out the salt and enjoy

Shrimp recipes are a favorite of mine but I have to keep in mind that shrimp are high in salt, 111mgs per 100 grams of shrimp, or about a fifth of a pound. Few people will sit down and eat a pound of shrimp, but half a pound isn’t all that much and it has about 244 mgs of salt.

So with that in mind, you don’t need to add salt to a shrimp recipe. Take this one, called One-Pot Garlicky Shrimp & Spinach. It’s ingredients are fairly straight-forward:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
6 medium cloves garlic, sliced, divided
1 pound spinach
¼ teaspoon salt plus 1/8 teaspoon, divided
1 ½ teaspoons lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 pound shrimp (21-30 count), peeled and deveined
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley

You can easily leave out the salt and still have a very tasty dish. For the entire recipe, click here.

The nutrition info for this, with the salt added is:

Serving Size: 1 Cup Per Serving: 226 calories; protein 26.4g; carbohydrates 6.1g; dietary fiber 2.7g; sugars 0.7g; fat 11.6g; saturated fat 1.7g; cholesterol 182.6mg; vitamin a iu 10760.1IU; vitamin c 37mg; folate 222.5mcg; calcium 195.8mg; iron 3.8mg; magnesium 131.4mg; potassium 962.8mg; sodium 444mg. Exchanges:
3 Lean Protein, 2 Fat, 1 Vegetable

May 14, 2021 0

Make these chicken tenders a little healthier with some ingredient swaps

Americans eat way too much breaded, fried food, probably because we find it the tastiest food out there. But when you’re trying to eat healthier, you can modify some old recipes to get the worst of the worst out of them while not forsaking everything you love.

Seeing this BBQ Chicken Tenders recipe reminded me of that.

Ingredients for my barbecue garlic chicken.

It calls for lots of barbecue sauce, which is normally high in salt and sugar, as well as seasoned bread crumbs which are also normally high in salt. These are barbecued, not fried, so they have that going for them.

I’d suggest you use Localfolks salt-free barbecue sauce, or another low-salt, low-sugar brand if you can find one, and panko breadcrumbs low in salt (check the package, not all panko is created equal when it comes to salt.

May 8, 2021 0

Salmon is a must-have for health eating, so treat it right. Here are some tips

Salmon has replaced red meat to a large extent in my diet since my first angioplasty in 2012 brought about a radical rethinking to my eating habits. My recipe page has a hot of salmon recipes you can try.

In another sheet of aluminum foil, place your four pieces of salmon and separate with aluminum foil. Then rub in marinades for each. — Grilling salmon is a luscious experience.

But like any food, salmon not cooked properly can be a disaster, so I was interested in reading This One Mistake Can Completely Ruin Baked Salmon on myrecipes.,com

The headline is a bit misleading because while the piece does say don’t overcook or undercook salmon (that’s the worst mistake), it also lays out some important details to cook salmon properly such as:

Don’t cook it cold, let it reach room temperature first.
Cook it in an oven at 400 degrees
Use a shallow dish or a shallow oven-proof skillet to cook it to allow for good airflow around the fish.
Let it rest before cutting/serving.

Remembering those should help you to become a salmon master in no time.

May 6, 2021 0

Cucumbers everywhere — here’s 34 recipes to use them

Cucumbers have been on sale a lt lately at my local food stores, which is great since I love putting them in my daily salads. But you can do so much more with them too, as this piece, 34 Recipes to Use Up All Your Fresh Cucumbers shows.

It’s slide show of recipes, so it will take some time to scroll through them all, but you’re bound to find ones you can enjoy.

Chicken and cucumber lettuce wraps sounds good to me, for example. although I would leave out the penaut sauce, I can’t stand the taste of peanuts and many people are allergic to them.

You can find some of my favorite cucumber recipes on our recipe page, just click here.

April 7, 2021 1

A different take of making your own pizza

I was recently contacted about a new cookbook coming out, the No Sugar Baker Cookbook of Healthy Living and No Regrets. I just received a review copy and will be writing about it soon.

In the meantime, the author sent me a recipe to share. Recipes in the book are geared to diabetics and others watching their sugar/glucose intake. So I was interested to see if the sample recipe also would be low-salt, low-fat. Well, not exactly, I need to modify it a bit, as I often do. But I am intrigued about the idea of using almond flour for the crust. I usually buy a low-salt, super thin crust for mine, you can see that recipe by clicking here.

See my modifications in italic below

No Sugar Baker’s Sausage and Broccoli Pizza To Die For!

Ingredients for Dough:

1 and 3/4 Cs. Almond Flour

½ C. Pasta Sauce (Low Carb) — look for no-salt-added pasta sauce; Trader Joe’s sells one, as does Hunt’s

½ t. Xanthun Gum or Corn Starch

1 t. Baking Powder

2 Eggs — I tend to only use the whites of eggs, or low-salt egg-white substitutes

1 T. Melted Butter — try a lower-fat butter alternative or olive oil

Splash of Seasonings: Salt, Garlic Powder, Italian Seasonings, Onion Powder — leave out the sale and use salt-free versions of the others

Combine all ingredients in food processer into dough ball. Refrigerate for at least one hour. Using parchment paper, roll out dough to desired thickness. Place dough on sprayed baking sheet. Prick dough with fork. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes. Flip dough and repeat.

Ingredients for Topping:

1 Lb. Cooked Bulk Sausage — omit, too much fat. If you must add meat, try extra lean ground turkey

2 C. Fresh Broccoli

1 C. =Pasta Sauce (Low Carb) — see above

2 Cups Mozzarella Cheese – use reduced-fat or fat-free Mozzarella, Kraft makes both but the fat-free is difficult to find in most stores.

Fresh Arugula or Basil

Olive Oil

Spread pasta sauce onto crust. Top crust with sausage and broccoli! Finish by topping with mozzarella cheese. Bake for another 10-12 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes. Cut fresh arugula or basil to the top and lightly add a glaze of olive oil! Cut and enjoy!

April 2, 2021 0

Beware false claims, like this story promising 20 healthy Easter side dishes

Always beware of any claims that a meal, or a dish, is healthy. Healthy is a relative term. A high-salt dish isn’t healthy to me, yet main cooking sites routinely include them in lists of healthy meals, for example. I was wary when I saw this piece, 20 Healthy Easter Side Dishes, and rightly so as it turned out.

As I scrolled through the list, I saw many with potatoes (to be avoided if you’re worried about glucose levels, salt and creams/fat. Several also ahve nuts, which I can’t eat, so those are also out for me, though they may be ok for you.

Simple grilled veggies work as a side dish.

What did that leave for me? Maybe Asparagus and Tomato Skewers with Honey Mustard-Horseradish Sauce but a quarter of a cup of honey seems like a lot of sugar. The recipe did not include nutrition information, so I’m not sure.

The basic and always tasty steamed artichoke works, if you omit the melted butter to dip it in. The sautéed wild mushrooms with spinach will work if I substitute Mrs. Dash salt-free teriyaki for the soy sauce in the original recipe.

Eating truly healthy is always a challenge, try your best and don’t fall for healthy claims. And for truly low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar sides, check my recipe page.

March 31, 2021 0

If you love the Mediterranean Diet, this post will make your day

While I never get overly excited about claims for eating and how it impacts our bodies, I do try to follow the current favorite when it comes to so-called healthy eating plans, namely the Mediterranean Diet. I’ve written about it before and likely will again.

Veggie plates are common in Italy, why can’t U.S. places offer the same?

So when I came across this post, 23 Mediterranean Diet Recipes That Support Healthy Aging, I thought I’d share it with all of you.

The post includes a slide show, which I tend to find tedious especially when many of the slide recipes, like Mediterranean Lentil and Kale Salad, don’t appeal to me.

But take a look, with 23 to choose from I’m guessing some, like one-pot garlicy shrimp and spinach, might strike your fancy.

March 24, 2021 1

Pandemic Cooking: Slow-cooker chicken recipes

Here’s some help if you’ve become stuck in a recipe rut while cooking at home so much during the pandemic, 12 Slow Cooker Chicken Dinners Under 370 Calories. But beware, low-calorie doesn;t necessarily mean low-salt, low-fat and low-sugar. As always, look at the details before trying these and substittue when necessary.

Low sodium broths are not created equal, always read the nutrition panels.

For Slow-Cooker Lemon Greek Chicken, for example, substitute chicken breasts for the fatty thighs in the recipe. You also can use fat-free feta. The cheese is likely where a lot of the salt is as well, leave it off to cut salt considerably.

The Slow Cooker Chicken and Barley Soup does recommend low-sodium broth. Compare packages to see which low-sodium broth really is low-sodium. Read my post on that here.

March 17, 2021 0

Category: recipes