Holiday Dinners: Cut Fat & 1,500 Calories!

You better watch out, you better not cry... you better not pig out, we're telling you why! Why? Well, for starters, the high-cal dieting heartaches are coming to town in the form of our traditional holiday meals.

But we're not going to to play Scrooge and tell you to eat lettuce leaves and celery sticks for the Holidays. You can party hearty and still shave up to 1,500 calories off your day's intake if you take dietitian Susan Burke's advice to heart.

Her advice, and a one-pot holiday dinner, courtesy of Elizabeth Yarnell of gloriousonepotmeals.com, are below.

Christmas/ New Year's Dinner: Cut Fat & 1,500 Calories!
by Susan Burke MS, RD, LD/N, CDE

How can you stay healthy throughout the holidays? It's easy, when you're a little creative, and a little disciplined too. I have come up with holiday suggestions that can save you almost 1,500 calories through a few simple substitutions.

Whether dining out at restaurants and holiday buffets, or serving holiday dinners at home, you are the captain of your ship, so to speak, when it comes to what you eat.

Stay the Main Course: Calorie and fat-wise, all lean meats are perfect... as long as you keep it healthy by not adding fat to the naturally low-fat meal. You may run into trouble if faced with pre-sauced and dressed entrees. Even vegetarian entrees can be hard on your diet if they’re heavily sauced and cheesed.

But as long as you trim the portion size, you’ll be okay. Just say "no" to gravy on the meats and potatoes, (save 100 calories, 7 grams of fat) and instead of the traditional broccoli casserole made with creamy mushroom soup and butter (267 calories and 16 grams of fat), enjoy steamed broccoli topped with slivered almonds and a sprinkle of dehydrated butter granules (60 calories, 0 grams of fat).

Baked sweet potatoes are succulent (55 calories, 0 grams of fat) instead of mashed white potatoes with butter and cream (236 calories and 9 grams of fat). Save 488 calories, 32 grams of fat.

Sweet Endings: Desserts are like appetizers -- they can make or break a holiday meal, calorie-wise. You can gorge on something laden with sugar and fat, or be sensibly satisfied with a sweet-yet-safe dessert. Don’t deprive yourself of dessert, but make it smarter.

Instead of Aunt Nelly's traditional pumpkin pie, made with whole eggs, two kinds of sugar and heavy cream (one-eighth slice has 346 calories, 17 grams of fat) try a deliciously modified recipe from Splenda.com. The website has lots of good information on baking and cooking with SPLENDA Sugar Blend for Baking (a mix of sugar (sucrose) and sucralose) and SPLENDA Brand Sweetener (sucralose). This reduced-fat pie doesn’t sacrifice taste or texture, and has only 150 calories and 7 grams of fat per slice. Save 196 calories, 10 grams of fat.
Drum roll please, Little Drummer Boy. Follow Susan's advice and your total savings for your holiday meal comes to 1,460 calories and 93 grams of fat!

Enjoy your holidays by making them healthy for everyone. Start with one of our favorite holiday recipes.

Reduced-Fat Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients:
1 prepared pie crust

Filling
1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin puree
3/4 cup SPLENDA No Calorie Sweetener, Granular
2 Tbsp. corn starch
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup fat-free half-and-half
1/2 cup egg substitute
3 Tbsp. heavy cream
1 Tbsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Blend pumpkin puree, SPLENDA Granular, corn starch, spices, and salt in a medium bowl. Mix until all ingredients are well blended. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Pour into prepared pie crust. Bake in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until set in the center and the crust is golden brown. ---

A One-Pot holiday Dinner for 2

Here is a great solution to getting the meal with all the trimmings without spending hours and hours in the kitchen or facing a week of leftovers. Because it is an "infused one-pot meal," each ingredient maintains its integrity during the cooking process and emerges separate, intact and infused with flavor, rather than merged into a stew or slab as with more familiar types of one-pot meals.

Best yet, you can spend a pleasant half hour or less in the kitchen with your dining companion while you wash, chop and layer the ingredients into the pot. Preparing food offers a great opportunity to chat across the cutting board and gives you each ownership for the holiday dinner success.

Just 45 minutes later, when sitting down to eat together, toast each other, toast the holiday and toast the easy answer to holiday dining: an infused one-pot meal.

Ingredients

1/2-3/4 lb. turkey tenderloin or boneless breast filets
1/3 cup whole cranberries, fresh or frozen
1/3 cup orange marmalade
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 dash white pepper
1/3 cup shelled walnuts
8-10 pearl onions, peeled, halved
1 med. sweet potato or yam, scrubbed, 1/4" slices
2 cups broccoli flore

You can view sample page at: http://app.mediaplex.com/adserver/ui_rotation_test.list?rotation_id_in=559455227353210

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray inside of 2-quart cast iron Dutch oven and lid with canola oil.
Set turkey pieces into base in a single layer, trying not to overlap pieces as much as possible. Lightly sprinkle with salt.

In a food processor or blender, pulse cranberries using chopping blade (shaped like a backwards "S") until berries are in large chunks. Add marmalade, lemon juice and white pepper and pulse two or three times to mix together. Pour in walnuts and continue to pulse until walnuts are roughly chopped and you have a thick, rocky paste.

Drop spoonfuls of cranberry paste onto turkey pieces until only about half is left. Toss in onions and layer in sweet potato slices. Again, lightly salt. Cover with rest of cranberry paste. Top with broccoli florets.

Cover and bake for about 40 minutes. You'll know it's ready three minutes after the aroma of a finished meal escapes your oven.

Notes
In a pinch, substitute pulpy orange juice for the orange marmalade. You'll just end up with more "gravy" at the bottom of the pot to spoon over the food when serving. 1/4 cup broth added to the cranberry-walnut paste will also increase the amount of gravy.

The turkey, cranberries and broccoli can all be used fresh or frozen (without thawing), and it won't change your cooking time or most things about your meal, though realize that frozen broccoli tends to emerge softer than fresh. The larger the broccoli pieces, the crisper they will turn out at the end. ---

Add a kick to your meal with one fresh or roasted jalapeño pepper, de-stemmed, seeded and chopped.

HAPPY, HEALTHY, TASTY HOLIDAYS TO YOU AND YOURS!

Love,

Jacques