Seven 100-calorie snacking options

I’m always wary of stories with headlines like 7 Foods Under 100 Calories You’ll Love. Normally those lists involve mostly foods I don’t like to eat, such as nuts.

Eating watermelon doesn't fill me up, although it's high in water content. — *A fun snack, although I don’t find it filling at all given its high water content.*

But this list from LoseIt! actually has six things I do like to snack on — six out of seven, not bad. The only loser for me is hard-boiled eggs.

The rest — cherry tomatoes, yogurt, edamame, oranges, popcorn and watermelon, are all items I turn to when I don’t want to eat junk food.

Watch for them on sale at your local supermarket and then try them. Pints of cherry tomatoes and watermelon cups tend to be on sale regularly where I live, for example.

May 9, 2025 0

Some timely tips for keeping your tomatoes fresh longer

*A fun salad for July 4th, or any meal where you want fresh ingredients.*

Anyone who has read my No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal knows I love tomatoes. Just check out some of my fav tomato recipes, like this one for a tomato salad, or this one for a tomato sauce. I buy tomatoes every week and grow my own in summer, so I’m always interested in keeping them for as long as possible. So I enjoyed this piece, How to Store Tomatoes So They Stay Fresh For Longer.

The piece’s advice:

On the counter, they stay good for about a week
Two weeks if you put them in a refrigerator
Two to three months in a freezer

I’ve never tried freezing a fresh tomato but will and will post about it here. The article notes, “frozen tomatoes probably shouldn’t be used in recipes that call for fresh ones because freezing will definitely change how they taste and feel in your mouth.”

Let me know if you freeze tomatoes.

June 29, 2022 1

Another recipe for tomato lovers — roasted tomatoes

If you’re like me, you’re growing tomatoes in your backyard this summer. Here’s a recipe to turn them into a tasty side dish — roasted tomatoes. I’ve written about making a roasted tomato sauce in the past, if that interests you, click here to read about it.

The roasted tomato recipe comes from the Food Network site and chef Ina Garten. While the recipe details roasting in an oven, you could easily do this on an outside grill as well.

Ingredients

12 plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise, cores and seeds removed

4 tablespoons good olive oil

1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 large garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt (leave this out or substitute Mrs. Dash salt substitute)

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
Arrange the tomatoes on a sheet pan, cut sides up, in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle the garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper over the tomatoes.
Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, until the tomatoes are concentrated and beginning to caramelize.
Serve warm or at room temperature.

August 2, 2021 2

Tomatoes are a summer gift, even during a pandemic

During this summer like no other, there is one thing to be thankful for — fresh tomatoes are here, whether you grow your own as I do, or buy them from farm stands or in farmers’ markets. When you taste a fresh tomato, you quickly realize those things we buy in the supermarkets are just pretenders to being real tomatoes.

A quick tomato salad I made recently with mozzarella and basil from our garden.

So if, like me, you stock up on tomatoes every summer, here’s just what you need from Cooking Light magazine — 100 Ways to Use Fresh Tomatoes This Summer.

The article is from 2018, but the recipes are largely timeless, so enjoy. Some that caught my eye as I scrolled through them —

Greek Tomato Salad

Cherry Tomato Confit

Red Snapper With Chunky Tomato-Watermelon Salsa

Seared Salmon with Balsamic-Blistered Tomatoes

Bruschetta with Warm Tomatoes

August 3, 2020 0

Tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions…gotta love it

July 4th was a cookout day for us, as it was for many, many Americans. In addition to grilling salmon and extra-lean beef burgers, we made a variety of cold salads that I thought I’d blog about so you can enjoy them too. The first involved tomatoes, cucumbers and red onions along with cheese. Here’s a link to the the original recipe my wife found.

I write often here about my love of tomatoes, so how could I not love this salad? We did make one major modification however to cut the fat in it. Continue reading “Tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions…gotta love it” →

July 12, 2016 0

Stunning tomato recipes — maybe not stunning but worth checking

As a former online news editor, I’m always amused at the subject lines publications use in their emails to increase their open rates. I recently got one from Cooking Light, for example, that had the subject line “Stunning Tomato Recipes.”

MY cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet, ready for roasting — Given my love of tomatoes how could I not open an emailed with the subject line Stunning Tomato Recipes?

How could I not open that, given my professed love of tomatoes? Needless to say, I didn’t really find the recipes stunning. And several likely have more fat, salt or sugar than I want to eat, but there were some I may try and recommend to others to check out.

The tomato and cucumber salad looks tasty and I was intrigued by what “sweet peach dressing” was. Clicking through to that recipe, I founds it included sugar, which I would leave out. The peach should be sweet and vinegar fools our taste buds into tasting sweet, so the sugar is not needed. I’d also leave off the salt in the recipe for the salad itself. Continue reading “Stunning tomato recipes — maybe not stunning but worth checking” →

June 28, 2016 1

A different option for low-salt, canned tomatoes

I’m a big fan of making my own tomato sauce (we called it gravy in my Italian-American family) to have with whole wheat pasta. Almost any prepared sauce from a store, be it jarred or canned, will be loaded with salt.

Something new to me, extra heavy tomatoes.

Look for the low-salt canned tomatoes when making your own, though, usually any San Marzano tomato will be lower in salt than no-name varieties, as I’ve written before. That said, I was surprised to find a new variation on canned tomatoes at our local Valli Produce.

As you can see, the can calls them “Extra Heavy Crushed Tomatoes.” I thought that was just marketing hype until I opened them. They were really thick, more like a tomato paste than crushed tomatoes. Continue reading “A different option for low-salt, canned tomatoes” →

April 22, 2016 2

Walmart, Aldi’s, others making fresh and organic food moves

Consumer desire to buy more unprocessed fresh and organic foods has definitely gotten the attention of the mainstream food retailing world. Three articles crossed my email recently confirming that.If you want to eat low-salt, low-fat and low-sugar, fresh is certainly the way to go for most of your meals, as I’ve been advocating here since having an angioplasty in 2012.

Mondelez has to compete with fruit for the healthy snack trade, can it? — Fresh is increasingly where it’s at for today’s food retailers.

Bare-bones food retailer Aldi, which specializes in featuring sore brands to hold costs down, is making several moves in fresh foods, according to Forbes and other media reports.

“The retailer is expanding the number of fresh foods offered, placing an emphasis on the perimeter rather than the packaged and processed foods in the center of the store. It’s making sure that dairy products are free from artificial growth hormones and all private label products—90% of the store—are now free from synthetic colors, partially hydrogenated oils and added MSG.

“Checkout lanes are being reconfigured to replace chocolates and candy with single-serve packages of nuts, trail mixes, dried fruits and granola bars,” Forbes reports. Continue reading “Walmart, Aldi’s, others making fresh and organic food moves” →

February 22, 2016 0

Another tasty-looking tomato sauce recipe from Recipe Rehab

Recipe Rehab is a TV show I have recommended here. It takes grossly unhealthy recipes from American families and asks tow chefs to reimagine them in healthier ways.

Recipe Rehab's Chef Richard and show host Evette Rios watching him make this tomato sauce. — Recipe Rehab’s Chef Richard and show host Evette Rios watching him make this tomato sauce.

It doesn’t always get enough salt out, in my opinion, but at least it tries. And in the process hopefully it gets viewers to think about eating healthier foods. I’ve blogged about a roasted cherry tomato sauce (we call it gravy) recipe I tried from the show. Recently, I saw another tomato sauce recipe there I plan to try as well. Continue reading “Another tasty-looking tomato sauce recipe from Recipe Rehab” →

September 18, 2015 0

Roasted cherry tomato sauce – a great quick gravy for any Italian dish

Tomato sauce, called gravy in my Italian-American family, is something I simply do not want to live without. I now make it with only the lowest salt-content tomatoes available and have even found low-salt tomato paste. Cooking it, or rather simmering it down to its rich, luscious thickness, is an all-day process, which means when I make it I make a lot and freeze it for future use.

But I recently saw a quick version of tomato sauce on Recipe Rehab and decided to give it a try. I couldn’t get the recipe used on the show because it’s from the shows first season and those recipe aren’t on its website. But I found several variations of the same recipe for using cherry tomatoes and roasting them in an oven to start the process.

MYy cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet, ready for roasting — My cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet, ready for roasting

I went with a version of this one, using real garlic and real onions instead of powder and leaving out the salt entirely. You cut the cherry tomatoes in half and roast them in the oven. Rather than add the oil and spices on top as the recipe suggests, I mix them all in a bowl to coat the tomatoes first. Continue reading “Roasted cherry tomato sauce – a great quick gravy for any Italian dish” →

July 21, 2015 2

Tag: tomatoes