Recipes

Good for you eats

Delicious recipes you can prepare that are healthy, too

by Heather Berry

We’ve all heard it before — eat a well-balanced diet to stay healthy. Exercise daily. Eat your fruits and vegetables.

So you try to choose a salad once in a while as a meal and say you’re eating healthier. And many people have started getting more exercise even if that means parking their car farther from the door at the mall or taking walks during work breaks.

These days nearly everyone seems to run at break-neck speed to cram more and more into a 24-hour day — working, taking care of family, going to school — and often, the last person we take care of is ourselves.
We can all make little changes that affect our health in a positive way, and many times those changes start in the kitchen.

Here are a few tips to help make healthy eating a higher priority in a hurried life:

• What you bring home is what you’re going to eat, so make it healthy. Create a shopping list and stick to it when you go to the store. A list helps prevent unplanned forays into the candy and chip aisles.

• When you get home from the store, take a few minutes to prepare a few healthy snacks for later. Wash and trim vegetable sticks; measure out pretzels, cookies, etc., into snack-size baggies; put fruit out in a bowl. Next time hunger strikes, you’ll be ready with a healthy snack.

• Whenever you can, opt for lower-fat ingredients in recipes: skim milk instead of 2 percent or whole, ground turkey instead of ground beef, fat-free cream instead of regular. You also can reduce the sugar and fatty ingredients a recipe calls for by one-quarter without affecting the taste or texture of your dish.
Rediscover how fun it is to cook at home by trying some of these healthy recipes the next time it’s your turn to cook.