Healthy Recipes on Formula Easy Recipes

The web author here at Formula Easy Recipes is in the mood to spew forth healthy recipes for we are on a mission to slenderize - a not uncommon situation.

Keep on Hand - List and Discussion

Pam or some other brand of spray oil
Brown rice, instant or steam-in-a-pouch
Potatoes
Tzatziki
Lemons
Limes
Low calorie dressings
Flavored vinegars
Olive oil
Garlic
Whole-grain and/or rye bread - in freezer
Water packed tuna
Canned salmon
Dijon mustard
Healthy canned soups
Unsugared fruit juices on hand
Orange juice and/or ruby red grapefruit juice
Capers
Olives
No yolk egg products
Soy sauce
Cabbage
Lettuce
Spinach
Organic roasted red pepper and tomato soup
Cauliflower

You should have Pam or some other brand of spray oil and it is particularly good to use when you're cooking eggs. A good supply of olive oil, the lighter the better, and if you can find organic that's a plus to make healthy recipes.

Brown rice is carbohydrate and is much better for you than the white variety. I never could warm up to brown rice before because I found the texture when cooked chewy and disagreeable. However, there is a new product or two on the market that you may not have seen for preparing healthy recipes. The instant brown rice is not chewy and it is fast and it's a good alternative to the white rice.

Having said that, there is an even better new product that has lately come to the stores. Birdseye is putting out a steam pressure brown rice in the freezer section. It couldn't be any easier than this: grab the bag from the freezer, turn it upside down, throw it in the microwave, and turn on the oven for 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 minutes. You don't even have to pierce the bag. The taste and texture of the product is excellent - thank you Birdseye.

Healthy recipes for healthy dinners can include potato as a side dish. Potato is actually a very nutritional food, is cheap, keeps a long time, cooks well in the microwave, and is the type of carbohydrate that is slowly metabolized. Your body has to waste a lot of calories taking it apart at the molecular level (and we want to waste calories in the land of plenty, don't we? - shame on us). Taking a teaspoon of table sugar (sucrose) is like mainlining carbs for your body.

The problem, of course, is the butter or sour cream we slather on top of the potato. In Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt there is a product called Tzatziki. Tzatziki is yogurt based with cucumber and garlic. When I make it, I add fresh minced dill as well. Having run out of sour cream the other day I reached for this Tzatziki and we put it on the potato. Imagine our surprise when we found that we liked it even better than the sour cream or butter. Add this to your arsenal of healthy recipes.

Another ingredient that you must have on hand for making healthy recipes is lemons or limes either fresh or in the juice concentrate. It's amazing how citrus can perk up an otherwise bland meal. Use the grated peel wherever you can.

If you like the low calorie dressings you're in luck, personally I don't care for them. I would prefer to mix olive oil and vinegar together. I used my favorite flavored vinegar in proportion to acid such that instead of three parts oil to one part acid, I use a 50/50 ratio. Then I add minced garlic (lots) and whatever fresh herbs I might have around.

If you're making a sandwich avoid white flour completely and choose either whole-wheat, whole-grain, or rye bread. Oddly enough I find that for breakfast I really enjoy mixing a small can of water packed tuna with a dollop of Dijon mustard and putting it bread. Sometimes I even add pickles or jalapeno peppers to make it more flavorful.

Fish is a necessary ingredient in the recipe for good health. We all need to include more omega three fatty acids in our diet. Fish for breakfast seems a bit odd, but then so is the teen and young adult who has leftover pizza and cola for breakfast - don't knock it till you've tried it.

By the way, if you don't have a toaster oven, stick that pizza slice in the toaster - I've tried this, and it works fine. You might think the toppings would fall off but they usually don't.

Keep a selection of the excellent healthy canned soups that are now available and completely ready to go. There is nothing like time pressures to ruin your best efforts. Convenience planning is the best healthy recipe for success in dieting that there is.

There is a new product on the market that is a good substitute mayonnaise if you must have it. It is olive oil based.

It's a very good idea to keep unsugared fruit juices on hand. Most people like orange juice but try the ruby red grapefruit juice for a change. As a plus, these citrus juices can go into sauces and be reduced to add a nice citrus tang to your healthiest recipes.

Keep capers on hand to add a subtle flavor to fish. Capers have a strong flavor and because of that, they dress up healthy recipes remarkably. Olives, too, go in many dishes, look festive and provide a lot of flavor and eye appeal for tiny calories.

There is a egg product that comes either without the yoke or with a very low proportion of egg yolk which not only tastes delicious but it's so much less of a hassle to prepare in the morning because you just pour out of the same container that you might see for milk. Actually, one morning, half awake, I poured it into my coffee. The result looked like a dark Chinese egg drop soup.

Though it is high in salt, soy sauce packs a big bang of flavor per tablespoonful to add to most anything on the table that needs a condiment. There are low-salt versions.

Thinly slivered lettuce makes a nice bed for many healthy recipes instead of rice and you can use it in many cases as large leave to wrap fillings, thereby getting rid of the bread if you choose a lo-carb diet.

Of course, cabbage. cored and plunged into boiling water until the leaves show signs of separating and are somewhat tender. It makes a wonderful substitute for flour products in which to wrap many healthy fillings that previously went into a sandwich.

Wilted spinach goes agreeably underneath chicken or fish with a roasted bell pepper sauce and many other meat or fish items. One HUGE bag condenses down to about two portions. Top that with a sauce based upon organic roasted red pepper and tomato soup (the kind in a cardboard pour pouch), add some herbs and reduce to a consistency you like.

Here's a trick I saw a while back while on a mission to do a ridiculously lo-carb diet. Core a cauliflower, run it through grating disc on your food processor, and cook it in the minimal amount of organic chicken broth with a little turmeric for color and miraculously, you have something that looks and functions just like rice without any of the drawbacks.

Here's some recipes for cooked, leftover carrots for carrot haters.

Leave healthy recipes and browse healthy food snacks.

A word about beverages in sabotaging the best effort to eat healthy, low fat meals

The fastest way to lose weight - guaranteed!

Here's a recipe using ground turkey - leftover or uncooked.

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