Trim Mom

Healthy Thanksgiving Recipe - Sweet Potato Triangles

Here’s a great Thanksgiving holiday recipe for you to try this year!

Spiced Sweet Potato Triangles

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
2 tablespoons brown sugar substitute
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon sugar substitute
1/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup nonfat buttermilk
3/4 cup cooked sweet potatoes, mashed

Instructions:

Sift together the flour, brown sugar substitute, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and sugar substitute in a large mixing bowl.  In a separate bowl carefully stir together the oil, buttermilk and mashed sweet potatoes.  Transfer to the dry ingredients.  Stir just until moistened.  The mixture should be very dry.  Set the oven on 425 degrees.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.  Place some flour on a flat surface.  Place the dough on the flour and knead four or five times.  Roll the dough out in a rectangle about 1 inch thick.  Cut the dough into thirds.  Cut each third into 6 triangles.  Place the triangles on the cookie sheet.  Bake 10 minutes or a golden brown.

Nutritional Information (Approximate Values):

104 calories, 2 g protein, 3 g total fat, 0.4 g saturated, 16 g carbohydrate, 1 g dietary fiber, 0 g cholesterol and 204 mg sodium per triangle.

Technorati Tags: healthy recipe, thanksgiving, thanksgiving recipe

How to Have a Healthier Thanksgiving

Of course, WeightLoss quests during the holiday season can be TOUGH! The holiday season is notorious for packing on the pounds, but eating a good Thanksgiving meal doesn’t mean you have to eat fattening foods. By the same token, eating a healthy meal doesn’t mean you have to forego your Thanksgiving favorites. With Thanksgiving coming up, I just wanted to give you a few ideas on Healthy Cooking For Thanksgiving.

Here are some easy ways to tweak the classics to be a bit healthier for you and your family.

Spices
As long as you use tasting and add them in small increments, adding extra spices to your foods is a great way to cut back on calories. If the food is well seasoned, you won’t need to add butter or gravy to make it taste good. Plus, if food is hot or spicy, you tend to eat less of it!

Evaporated milk
Evaporated milk is great for adding to recipes like pies or gravy. It adds flavor without all the calories of cream. Just remember to use a product made from skim milk.

Ditch the fat
When it comes to turkey, it’s pretty easy to cut back on the greasy fat. Cook the turkey in a drip pan instead of one that collects the fat at the bottom. Before you eat the turkey, be sure to remove the skin because this is where hidden fat and extra calories can be found.

Don’t stuff your turkey
Stuffing absorbs most of the fat and calories you’d rather keep out. Don’t worry, I’m not saying you can’t have stuffing. I love stuffing too and don’t think I could eliminate it from my Thanksgiving celebration. However, you can have more healthy stuffing by cooking it in a separate pan instead of inside your turkey. If you use the drippings to make gravy, skim the fat off first. You can add broth to these dishes to keep the moisture without adding the bad stuff.

Lose the butter
Butter is a big offender on Thanksgiving. You can put it on almost anything and it adds lots of fat and calories. Instead, try using chicken broth and evaporated milk to add flavor to dishes like mashed potatoes without all the fat.

Watch the drinks
You may not realize it, but Thanksgiving calories can come from what you drink as well as what you eat. Try having water or juice with your meal rather than high-calorie drinks like eggnog, soda, shakes, or alcoholic beverages.

Salad for side dishes
A lot of what we eat on Thanksgiving comes in the form of side dishes rather than the main course. Why not skip the stuffing or the rolls and start with a salad instead? This is a healthy option to help fill you up before the meal so you eat less of the fatty offenders with your turkey. Just remember that salads can be bad for you too, depending what you put in them. Personally, I tend to drown salad in dressing which is not the best idea for trying to get or stay trim.

Even Carrots Can Make You Fat
Just one last thought…Remember that no matter how good something is for you, if you eat thousands of calories, you’re probably going to gain weight. Even healthy food should be enjoyed in moderation, so watch your portions as well as the kind of food you’re eating.

Use these tips for a healthier, trimmer Thanksgiving celebration. Enjoy your holiday!

Technorati Tags: diet, holiday cooking, holiday diet, holiday food, thanksgiving, thanksgiving meal, WeightLoss Tips

Green Tea Really Does Have Health Benefits

My husband keeps telling me that Green Tea is good for him. That’s why every time I go to the store to by drinks for the park or for a party we’re hosting, I have to buy him his green tea. Not only because he wants it, but because he insists that it’s good for him.

Well, after digging around on the internet for a bit, I’m finding out that he may be right? Yes, I’m admitting that my husband is right about something ;P.

Here are some of the health benefits I came across while reading about Green Tea:

According to HealthMad.com, green tea:
1. It is used to treat multiple sclerosis.
2. It is used for treatment and prevention of cancer.
3. It is used to stop Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
4. It is used to raise the metabolism and increase fat oxidation.
5. It reduces the risk of heart diseases and heart attacks by reducing the risk of trombosis.
6. It reduces the risk of esophageal cancer.
7. Drinking green tea inhibits the growth of certain cancer cells, reduces the level of cholesterol in blood, improves the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol.
8. It is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and cardiovascular diseases
9. It is used to treat impaired immune function. .
10. Some researches show that, drinking green tea regularly may help prevent tooth decay by killing the bacteria which causes the dental plaque.

According to green-tea-expert.com, the benefits of green tea in a body are “so remarkable that it is believed that the key to a longer and healthier life may just be brewing in your cup!”

Guess what? Green-tea-expert.com also goes on to talk about a WeightLoss study involving green tea. This WeightLoss study was done on 60 obese middle-aged women. Turns out, after two weeks, the women who were taking green tea lost twice as much as the other women in the group. Read the full story, HERE

Now if you’d like to discover how amazing green tea really is to your good health, check this out. Green Tea is known to:

• Promote good heart health
• Lower your cholesterol
• Reduce your chance of heart attacks
• Aid in your weight loss efforts
  
• Prevent damage to your skin
• Improve your circulation
• Help with your digestive health
• Soothe your stress (remember what I said about stress in this post)
• Is antibacterial
• Help protect you against diabetes
• and a whole bunch more

For a Complete Guide to Green Tea, click here

You can also sign up for a FREE Mini Course that tells you why people all over the world are raving about Green Tea, Click Here.

Technorati Tags: green tea, healthy drinks, Healthy Foods, weightloss

10 Easy Awesome and Healthy Breakfast Ideas

So, I’m sure you’ve read articles about how important breakfast is for you. However, as a busy mother, we don’t always have the time to make an elaborate meal in the morning. So, I dug up this cool article which includes 10 Tasty, Easy and Healthy Breakfast Ideas.

Here’s a familiar scenario:

“You get up in the morning, you rush to get ready for work, you rush out the door without a breakfast. Perhaps you grab a bagel and cream cheese, perhaps a muffin, perhaps an Egg McMuffin. If you’re lucky, you get a pastry, a hearty breakfast of pancakes and sausage and eggs, or an English fry-up.

Unfortunately, when it comes to being healthy, none of these options is a great way to start your day.”

Read the rest of the article and get those 10 Great Breakfast Ideas HERE

Technorati Tags: breakfast ideas, healthy breakfast