Healthy Cooking Tips and Tricks....

It's always great to know how you can make your guilty pleasure foods a bit more innnocent. I thought I'd share some of my healthy cooking substitutions with you guys:

• Instead of using bread crumbs, I use a whole grain cereal and pulse this in my blender to make 'bread crumbs'. Use this to coat chicken or fish, or in place of where ever you would use bread crumbs
• When baking, instead of oil, I use unsweetened apple sauce. This drastically cuts the calories and fat in recipes
• If a recipe calls for sour cream, I use 1/2 low fat sour cream, mixed with non fat Greek yogurt. It has to be Greek because you want the thick consistency, without too much tartness
• When a recipe calls for flour, I use 3/4 of whole wheat flour and 1/4 all purpose flour
• When a recipe calls for heavy cream -try using 1% evaporated milk instead -you will still get the creaminess of the milk with less calories and fat
• Sneak in pureed veggies wherever you can. Making mac n cheese...add some pureed butternut squash. Seriously, no one will know it's there
• Baking a chocolate brownies from a mix: Instead of using oil and water, use a can black beans only. This will give you fudgey brownies, with protein and fiber and no added fat! (I like the Ghiradelli mixes).
• Use sour cream and onion powder mixed in with 2% of Greek yogurt and you have yourself a thick, creamy, low cal, low fat dip!

These are just a few tips and tricks....do you guys have any?