Sprinkles for chest hair! Now all my cooking problems are solved! Thanks Tom Selleck (and Emma, you lucky lucky girl)!
Coffee cake is one of life’s nicest niceties. Not only does it have crunchy brown sugar streusel layered with moist cake and topped with icing but it also evokes images of tea parties and twee hats and gloves and dresses with nipped-in waists and Peter-Pan collars. Fun! So when Gym Buddy Lisseth waxed rhapsodic about the best coffee cake ever, which she had made the night before and eaten for breakfast this morning, you will understand why my mouth began to water.
The Gym Buddies and I have an interesting post-workout tradition. After we get good and sweaty together and bounce some iron around (and grunt and scratch ourselves), we sit on the stretching mats… and talk about food. No matter how hard we try, every post-workout conversation eventually comes back to food. What new restaurant Krista tried, the new recipe Megan found, the number of chicken wings Allison can eat in one sitting (her record thus far – with husband – 120. In her defense it was a serious pregnancy craving!) – it’s all fair game. By the end, each of us is drooling, starving and usually armed with a resolution to cook something when we get home.
This day it was coffee cake, courtesy of Lisseth. While I didn’t have her recipe, I do have a perfectly wonderful Betty Crocker cookbook that has served me well many a time and so I hauled that out. Turning the oven on to preheat, I checked to make sure I had all the ingredients. For something so tasty, coffee cake is amazingly simple. And also amazingly bad for you! How have I never known what is in coffee cake?! My heart pounded a little faster as I looked at the white flour, oil, butter, salt and all that sugar. I knew I couldn’t make it. What would be the point of that grueling workout I just finished if I were to eat half a coffee cake afterward? Sure Intuitive Eating says to eat what you really want but it also tells me that eating half a coffee cake will make me feel like crap both physically and mentally afterward.
Sighing, I started to put the book away. But then a thought came to my mind – I could healthify it! Happily, I got out my mixer and bowl and set about substituting every ingredient. I used whole wheat flour for the white flour, replaced the fat with a banana, the sugar with applesauce and so forth. Excitedly I poured the batter into a casserole dish (like I own a bundt pan – please, you’re talking to the girl who only owns one grown-up sharp knife). The kitchen filled with yummy smells and 60 minutes later I had… banana bread. And not even good banana bread! Healthified banana bread. That was most definitely not what I was craving. In fact it was so nasty that it sat on our kitchen counter for a week until my husband finally threw it away.
This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, you could say I have a reputation for ruining perfectly good food. The ingredients all start out fine but in the process of trying to healthify the recipe, I usually ruin it. It’s gotten to the point where my cooking has become a punchline among our friends. (“We’re picking up the rocks to landscape our yard this weekend.” “Oh, so you got invited to dinner at Charlotte’s too?” Ha ha ha.)
The problem stems from having my cake and wanting to eat it too. Some healthy living ascetics can give up sugar, fat and every other vice with nary a backward glance (I’m looking at you, Dr. J!). But for me a life without brownies is just too depressing to contemplate. My compromise is to make substitutions.
There is also the other end of the spectrum: the just-eat-the-cake-already people like Bethenney Frankel and all the Intuitive Eaters. If you want coffee cake, the reasoning goes, eat a little of the best coffee cake you can find, don’t deprive yourself and you’ll be sated. However, I have a rather addictive personality or perhaps my tastebuds are just slow to catch on but if I eat only three bites of a really yummy dessert I’m going to feel deprived. I will want more than three bites and telling me to stop there will only make me want to eat more. So we’re back to the substitutions.
Lest you think I’m brilliant – I hate to disillusion you but really you should know better by now – I am not the first person to come up with this idea. There are whole books and websites dedicated to making healthy, yummy food. They also happen to be run by people who are much better cooks than I am. Now the key for me is to hone my mad kitch skillz to the point that I don’t wreck their recipes. It might also help if I got some real cooking equipment.
What’s your food philosophy: have a little bit of what you really crave or focus on healthifying the decadent recipes? Any other chronic food ruiners in the house? Anyone else still cooking with the utensils they got at the thrift store in college?
I have major discipline (or perhaps, addictive issues, as you put it) when it comes to foods with sugar/flour/butter. I’ve been known to eat more than half of a pan of cookies, brownies, cakes, frostings, etc. One small bite leads to two, two to four and it just keeps doubling. I try to keep it out of the house (even though I *love* to bake!!). If I do indulge, I will have to make the conscious choice to purchase the food, and there is only so much of it. I even overeat on the health-ified stuff, and it tastes horrid, so then I eat other stuff instead of just stopping.
Oh and I totally use utensils I’ve had since college.
I totally get this: “I even overeat on the health-ified stuff, and it tastes horrid, so then I eat other stuff instead of just stopping.”! If it doesn’t fill the craving then what’s the point?
With cookies I healthify, because I know I’m going to eat several. But with other stuff – cakes, muffins, anything for other people, I go all out. I don’t want to subject others to my “experients”. I think I’ve gotten pretty good, but 1) I could be just fooling myself, or 2) I may have ruined (trained?) my taste buds. But there is a point of no return with healthifying. You can only make so many subsititutions.
I also had no idea what was in coffee cake until I made one about 6 months ago. Imagine my shock and horror when I discovered there wasn’t coffee in it! Dude, serious misnomer!
No coffee in coffee cake?? I think you’re doing it wrong!
I know, right?? I was similarly shocked! And the funny thing is there are cakes made with coffee in them but they’re not called coffee cake (like tiramisu, mud slide pie etc)
I *try* to make things healthier when I can because I can’t trust myself to eat just a little bit of the good stuff. Unfortunately right now I’m just eating a lot of everything 🙂
Its funny that you guys talk about food while you’re stretching – my running partners and I do the same thing the moment the run starts to get difficult. Planning breakfast and detailing exactly what we want. I carried myself through a disastrous half marathon talking only about all the juice I was going to drink afterward 🙂
Hahah – glad to know we’re not the only ones! I’ve noticed there are tons of people on the treadmills that are watching cooking show, lol.
i also like to healthify recipes, and mostly they taste amazing! (a friend of my boyfriend still wants to marry me because of my flour-oil-egg-free-triple-chocolate-muffins ;-)) if you are interested you can find a lot of these recipes on my blog!!
Um, YES please!! Going to check out your blog (and those muffins) right now! If they’re that good I’ll get in line to marry you too;)
oh, i forgot: the blog is in german language, but google translate does a pretty good job – and if you have troubles understanding anything i would love to help you out!!just contact me!
I found the recipe and google translate seems to have got it all! Can’t wait to try them!
I refuse to make healthy recipes, because I think they’re less tasty than the original. The only thing I healthify are cookies, because I’m too lazy to find the white flour. I’ve yet to get complaints/leftovers from the kiddies at the temple, so that’s always nice. I only pull out the white flour for cake, and that’s only on B-Days. (100% Whole wheat banana bread is yummy, though. The butter makes up for the fiber.)
Funny, but when I’m baking, I don’t crave the food I’m making, I crave the healthy stuff instead. It happened when I made cookies while my aunt visited (she and family went for the cookies, I was craving the mixed veggies), and it happened when I baked a cake for my mom’s B-Day (I was craving the quinoa, family went for the cake). It usually takes 2 weeks of cravings before I’ll bake, and then I don’t want the thing I JUST baked. (*mom did a you’re crazy sign and shook her head* She thinks she failed as a mom.)
I did a big post last week on healthifying desserts, putting beans in dessert recipes, and all kinds of other trends I see around the sphere.
I am more into having my one, ridic decadent dessert full of sugar, fat, butter, etc and call it good. I’d rather use the real deal ingredients b/c the finished product will leave me more satisfied and happy…but to each her own, of course! Do what works for you and some readers of mine were very into healthifying things and others weren’t at all. Which is great!
Well whatever you do works because all of your desserts are aMAYzing!
which all makes me wonder if youve read the book eat cake?
it’s fluffy fiction…and yet makes a few great healthy living points.
I should probably learn MORE of that Averie does as my daughter gets older…we’ll see. we’ll see.
I have read it! (I think I picked it up after you recommended it to me…) Right now it’s mostly the sugar struggle… hard to serve it to my kids without feeling guilty and worried but hard to make any good desserts without it.
I am now learning German so I can make Ulli’s cookies and get myself a husband! I healthify savoury stuff like dinners, even pizza and lasagna- but for sweets I have to go the whole hog. I made Oreo cheesecake and then cut it into little pieces and froze it so I couldn’t eat the whole lot in one go (like my boyfriend does).
Good idea about the freezing individual pieces!
I do both. I healthify desserts sometimes but I would never give up truly decadent desserts!
Oh, Charlotte, I thought I was the only fitness freak eating a whole row of the Rice Krispies bars instead of just one. I did that 2 days ago and thought, “Have I taught myself NOTHING about resisting treats?” I do much better when my kids pick treats that are a little bit off my favorites. For example, I can resist strawberry ice cream, but chocolate caramel brownie chunked ice cream with little chocolate bunnies in it? Not a chance!
I found a store with little dark chocolate candy bars that are 140 calories per bar. So I enjoy them 100% with no guilt.
🙂 Marion
I do the same thing with my kids! I won’t touch a circus peanut for anything. Or candy corn. So for Halloween and Easter I pick candies I know they like and I don’t.
I try to find healthier recipes, but rarely try to do my own substitutions in baking. I will sub in half ww flour for white, but otherwise I tend to let the experts do the baking recipes and follow their lead.
Sweets I’m pretty good at limiting myself, I generally just don’t want a lot of it. I usually don’t keep it in the house and generally go with Michael Pollon’s philosophy that if you want it that much, you have to make it yourself. Unfortunately this is rhubarb season and my garden has tons of it. That means lots of Rhubarb crisps and Rhubarb cakes. I’ve had to call in my friends to use my rhubarb up so that I don’t go overboard with it. I love rhubarb and just can’t resist having more rhubarb crisp!
My downfall is always salty food, particularly chips. I try not to buy it on a regular basis. If I really want it, I’ll go out and buy it and then enjoy eating as much of it as I’m craving. That generally only happens every month or two, so I refuse to feel guilty about it. If I only buy mostly healthy food, then I’ll only eat mostly healthy food.
Yeah, I think I should just find healthier recipes rather than trying to “fix” them myself! Gym Buddy Allison recently brought me homemade rhubarb cake… it was amazing!
OMG, I LOVE COFFEE CAKE!!! When I was little, those snack cinnamon crumb ones – well, I was fat as a kid!
So:: have a little bit of what you really crave or focus on healthifying the decadent recipes?
Me, I like a little of what I crave & that is why I have my weekend cookie treats! Now saying that, sometimes I try to healthify things but I am a bad cook too so.. well….
I used to LOVE those little Hostess cinnamon crumb cakes too!!
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/ and the primal blueprint got me over my fat phobia. That “healthification” *might* have worked if you hadn’t tried to sub a banana for the butter!
I am, however, always looking for sugar substitutes.
Yes, these days I find myself more worried about the sugar content than the fat for sure.
I think that to effectively healthify a dish, you can only replace half an ingredient component with a healthier substitute. So, half the butter with bananas or apple sauce, half the sugar with another sweetner, half the white flour with whole wheat. It’s better for you and still almost as tasty.
I’ll have to try that next time – thanks for the tip!
If I am going to eat coffee cake, then I want to eat good coffee cake. To me, it’s just too disappointing to eat the healthified versions. I aim to eat healthy most of the time, but if I’m going to have a treat then I want it to be a real treat. If it doesn’t taste good then it’s just a waste of calories anyway.
Last summer (in an effort to use up a bunch of homemade jam) I started baking jam thumbprint cookies, which I hadn’t made in years. I like to bake, but mostly I don’t because then I would eat it. That’s what happened here. I made cookies. Then I ate cookies until they were gone. So I started baking them and then freezing them. Turned out to be the perfect solution for us – if we want tea/coffee & cookies after dinner, we defrost a couple of cookies. We eat our cookies and then we’re done. Genius. 🙂
yeah, I do the freezing treats thing too until my family and I decided that we’ll eat them stone cold frozen, too so it ended up not being a deterrent at all. In fact, it’s more like…let’s make some more cookies so we can freeze them and eat them like cold!
Frozen sugar cookies are one of my faves!
Yep – I usually prefer frozen cookies to thawed too!
I have done what you describe — make a food healthy and it doesn’t even taste that good. I’d rather have a really really good piece of cake/brownie/cookie/etc but I too struggle with portion control. Lately I make what I want, have a piece (or whatever portion I choose!) and then I give the rest to Jason or I bring it to work and get rid of it. I’m not sure if that is the best solution, but it works for me for now — that way I get what I want but I don’t have a cake calling my name as I’m sitting at home.
Yeah, I try the same thing by pushing it on my kids. But then I feel guilty for being their sugar dealer;)
Hi Charlotte- I’ve been known to healthify to the point of brick-making. But I will totally and unabashedly pimp out and whore out this recipe b/c so many ‘normal’ people actually like it and it’s so easy. Do it. Make it. It’s like chocolate fudge cake and it’s ready in 3 minutes.
http://smoothiegirleatstoo.blogspot.com/2010/11/moist-low-calorie-microwave-protein.html
I’m one of the lucky ones who can have maybe 4 bites and be good (3 is too little- I’ll grant you that!). To me, intuitive eating seems like it should be about having some, but not too much, but I guess it works better in theory for some people who will want more than is ‘enough’ for a ‘normal’ person. And if I use “quotation marks” one more “time” I’m gonna “kill” myself!
ROFL – you crack me up Deb! I remember I tried your protein muffin before but I’d forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder and the link! And “thanks” for “making” me “giggle” 😉
We have a specialty in our house called Chocolate Cook Cakies, Basically, they are Toll House cookies, but with baking powder instead of baking soda. I once was tasked with making cookies for a work function. While mixing wet with dry, I realized I was out of baking soda, which the recipe called for. “No problem!” I thought. “Baking powder is the same thing!” No, no it is not. As evidenced by my very dry, not-at-all-chewy chocolate chip cakies.
Hahhah – oh that sounds exactly like something I would do!
I almost never cook un-healthified food… pretty much the only exception is Christmas cookies. I find that baking recipes are much harder to healthify with good results, because they rely on chemical reactions and unless you are a really good baker, it’s hard to know how to make it healthier without changing those. However, I am the queen of COOKING healthy recipes. I modify pretty much every recipe I make and it’s really not hard to do at all. I used to post some meals on my blog and include how I altered them. They were pretty popular with search engines/etc, but I didn’t feel like actual readers really enjoyed them, and I didn’t have fun writing them, so I haven’t done those in a while.
For non-meal recipes, I recently discovered Chocolate Covered Katie’s blog and have been loving her recipes – she does a really good job healthifying desserts without them tasting healthified. I love her banana creme brulee oatmeal (though that’s not a dessert), and her blondies are great too. I’m not a big dessert person, but I like that I have a source of already-modified recipes so I don’t have to stress about them.
I get frustrated when people/restaurants cook and DON’T healthify. It is so easy to do and I wish more people would learn that you don’t need tons of oil/butter/flour/sugar etc for something to taste good.
Thanks for the suggestions – I’ll go check out her blog! And this: “I get frustrated when people/restaurants cook and DON’T healthify. It is so easy to do and I wish more people would learn that you don’t need tons of oil/butter/flour/sugar etc for something to taste good.” I agree! Now if only you could teach me how:)
This made me laugh out loud, for I am a big time recipe ruiner, too! In fact, a good friend recently sent me the recipe for her amazing homemade brownies (to make for my brownie loving husband), and in caps at the bottom she wrote “DO NOT alter this recipe to make it healthier. Brownies are not meant to be healthy!!!” She knows me so well.
If you’re looking for a good sub for coffee cake, try the cinnamon roll muffins at Elana’s Pantry. It should totally scratch your itch for coffee cake. http://www.elanaspantry.com/cinnamon-bun-muffins/
OOoh Thanks for the recipe! I have friends who will tell me the same thing – stop trying to make everything healthy!
I am so glad I am not the only one that will go thru a grueling workout and then devour half a pan of brownies. I finally accepted I have no self control and try to limit desserts around me. This can be difficult at times with children and a husband. I love to bake and have found some really good dessert recipes on the Eating Well and Eat Better America website. My worst experience at trying a ‘healthified’ brownie recipe was one I got from a Paleo website. When I opened the oven to remove the brownies they were covered in white foam-I could only guess maybe from the coconut milk? Not sure what I did wrong with that one.
Hahah – I think I might have tried that recipe too! They didn’t even resemble brownies at the end… Gym Buddy Allison loves the Eat Better America site, I need to check that one out!
Oh my – I just read a good post about this very topic!
http://www.canyoustayfordinner.com/2011/06/08/eating-light-and-getting-heavy/
Thanks for the link – I’ll go check out her post!!
Oh my – I just read a good post about this very topic!
http://www.canyoustayfordinner.com/2011/06/08/eating-light-and-getting-heavy/
Andrea just did a good post about this very type of topic:
http://www.canyoustayfordinner.com/2011/06/08/eating-light-and-getting-heavy/
Andrea just did a good post about this very type of topic:
http://www.canyoustayfordinner.com/2011/06/08/eating-light-and-getting-heavy/
I personally healthify every thing I eat – I’ve done it so long that it is normal for me.
Andrea just did a good post about this very type of topic!
http://tinyurl.com/43u4xrq
I personally healthify every thing I eat – I’ve done it so long that it is normal for me.
Gosh sorry for multiple posts – please delete them! It kept saying comment failed to publish and try again! How embarrassing!
No worries! I’ll take care of it!
I switch whole wheat flour in cookies. Usually applesauce for oil in cakes. That’s about it. Oh I use butter instead of crisco or margarine.
I don’t make treats very often, so I don’t worry too much about it when I do make them.
I sorta go half way on this sort of thing. I worked as a cook/baker for a while, so I learned a lot of little tricks….as well as what you can’t get away with without tasting the difference. In my attempt to be more healthy I do swap out for healthy things…you can do a lot with fat free sour cream, applesauce and buttermilk. Some thigns, like pancakes will take healthifying well. Others…not so much. The rule for me is it has to taste the same, or equally good or I leave it as is and jsut eat less. I’ve developed a lot of healthy reasonably good for you baked goods, but when I want coffee cake/…I have some coffee cake. I jsut make one for work or a gathering and have my piece and thoroughly enjoy it and leave it at that.
(I still use the sheets I bought in grad school…in 1994. I think they’ve gone from cheapo 50 thread-count to hanging-by-a-thread-count. Badda-boom-chi! Thank you, I’ll be here all week; don’t forget to tip your wait staff!)
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Babycakes NYC Bakery now has TWO healthy baking cookbooks out! All the goodies are SO yummy, and quite healthy (vegan, gluten-free, and no refined sugars). I’d be happy to send along a couple of recipes if you want to try.
And, yeah, sometimes I’ll just eat the regular coffee cake, lol!
Oh, and I, too, worship at the altar of Chocolate-Covered Katie!!!!
I checked out their first cookbook and made two recipes from it but they didn’t turn out well. I also had a really hard time finding all the ingredients as some of them were kind of exotic. My new goal is to find a Babycakes and eat theirs!! Loved your pun by the way:)
SUGAR IS CRACK. One bite and I’m hooked for half or in another day the whole pan of whatever it is…I’m serious.
With my health issues I do better to not take the first bite and generally try to keep a lot of it out of the house. Although I do eat some chocolate here and there………….still sugar is a highly addictive drug. That’s where intuitive eating can really backfire…..intuitive drugging? Seriously drug addicts can’t do it intuitively!
I have had this EXACT same question about IE. The thing is, if you read Roth’s stuff closely she says she doesn’t eat sugar really either. The key, I think, is changing the mentality from “I love sugar but I can NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN!!” (cue the binge) to “I love sugar but I know that I’ll feel like crap both physically and mentally if I eat this. So I’m choosing not to eat this because I don’t want to feel awful.” It sounds like splitting hairs I know but I’ve found it helpful.
I love Roth’s books and I do agree that we can listen to most of our bodies cries for real good food. I think the sticky part comes when because of a yeast overgrowth or just plain addiction our bodies are screaming for sugar and we have to stay off of it or even one bite will lead to semi binge. I think sometimes starving the sugar bug actually helps us realize what our bodies are actually craving. But it does take the will power to say no.
Something I’m working on a ton right now just so I have energy to take care of my babies and keep up with friends and try to exercise. 🙂 I ordered that book by Roth you rec. about eating at the fridge and pulling up a chair. LOVE it. It made me go out and read several of her other books I just lent that book to a friend. What a great book to focus on enjoying life and not going crazy over my jean size! Thanks!
Most of my utensils and dishes are family hand-me-downs or Walmart purchases — I hate cutting up raw meat with crappy knives. I’m dog- and house-sitting for my in-laws for the summer, and it’s SO nice to have access to expensive cutlery. Serrated knives, oh my!
If I’m going to eat cookies and cake, it’s already too late for health. Might as well indulge a little. :p
“serrated knives, oh my!” – love it!!
Why make it complicated? Turn them into muffins (which works perfectly fine without modifying recipe) and then freeze most of them.(minus icing). They freeze extremely well.
Well, if I’d been trying to make muffins I wouldn’t have been dissappointed;) Also, I miss your cooking! You are still one of the best bakers I have ever had the pleasure of knowing!
I am physically incapable of healthifying baked goods. Cooking substitutions are one thing, but baking requires enough precision as it is that substituting without totally messing up never happens for me. I take advantage of people who are better cooks than I am and use their pre-healthified recipes. So much easier.
Oh, and what about this: http://www.cookinglight.com/food/recipe-finder/cooking-light-best-recipes-2010-00400000062166/page5.html
Great blog post Tracey. That’s the truth, our friends and I keep finding over and over again that husbands too really do care about personality even more so than size. My husband tells me when I lament wanting to lose those last pounds…”does it REALLY matter that much?!” He tells me eat healthy and relax about it! 🙂 Gotta love that philosophy, it does make life much more pleasant, He wants a wife to enjoy life with not to obsess over body size.
Thanks Jessica!
Most men I’ve asked say they don’t find very thin women as attractive as women with curves. Enjoying life without obsessing sounds nice. Your husband’s a smart man!
Good point! Why do the hard work when someone else already has? That Cooking Light version looks delish!
I kind of mix up what I do. Sometimes I’ll healthify things — I have some great whole wheat/ pumpkin/ cranberry/ flaxseed/ whitechocolatechipspaynoattentiontothisitem that I love — and other times I just go with the recipe as it stands. I’ll have a whole piece of cake, and make sure I count it in with my food intake. Same for chess pie, or whatever. Neither of those are adjusted for calories. I just go for it. Shoot, I brought it into existence and the least I can do is help take it out!
And then there are days like today where I’m worried my chocolate supply is low. Ah, hormones…
Oh, that long thing I wrote about first? Those are cookies. I was editing my comment before I posted and erased the pertinent information. Brilliance, thy name is Amanda *headdesk*
OHMYGOODNESS I love this! I am such a food ruiner, because I’m always trying to substitute things…like you, I too have that addictive personality and can’t just have the “half a tablespoon” serving that some people promote…really? I mean, I’d rather have 2 cups of fro-yo than the quarter cup of the blue bell…but that’s just me…
oh, and as far as cooking? let’s just say during my last year of college I used my oven as storage for shoes…’nough said. 🙂
We typically don’t eat any baked goods… they just aren’t good without the sugar, and I don’t use sugar. That being said, we do make the occasional pancakes, muffins, etc with coconut flour, pureed fruit or applesauce, and lot of eggs and coconut oil. In most cases, the “healthy” versions definitely rival the “regular” ones and they are much, much more filling, so no chance of eating a whole batch!
Random Through: I’ll bet Tom Selleck would let you (the royal “you”) snuggle into his chest hair. I wonder if it smells like chocolate?
My family made the mistake of putting me in charge of making the Christmas cookie dough a couple of years ago, and there was an all out revolt of revulsion when my brothers discovered I had used pumpkin instead of butter and Splenda instead of sugar. A lifetime ban was imposed, and I’m now relegated to punching out shapes with cookie cutters after someone more responsible has made the dough. :/
You can’t ruin a good coffee cake like that! 😉 When it comes to tweaking recipes for health, I usually start with a recipe that doesn’t use many processed ingredients, then tweak it only a little bit at a time. Like I wouldn’t have substituted all the white for whole wheat. I probably would have substituted half of it for whole wheat pastry flour (which I keep on hand for one of my favorite bran muffin recipes).
Some things just aren’t worth it IMO. Like with cookies, it’s REAL BUTTER or bust! But I don’t make cookies that often, so it’s ok I suppose!
I don’t healthify desserts because I will then eat twice as much since its “healthy” If I really want a healthy dessert I will eat fruit.
I would go for going out for the best piece of coffee cake I can find, or maybe making the cake, and brining it somewhere else
Ah, you remembered my birthday and my favorite hairy chested man after my own husband, of course. How sweet of you.
I eat a little of the best I can get my hands on, and if it happens to be a substitute version so much the better. I’m not a bad cook, but I could be a lot better if I didn’t have to cook healthy most of the time. Who wouldn’t be if we could cook like our grandmas with real butter, cream, and bacon fat?!
I told my husband the other day if I had to do my cooking equipment all over again, I would repeat buy my giant stainless steel dutch oven (All-Clad baby!), and the large saucier. Those about the only 2 pans I ever use. For a skillet a nice cast-iron one that I scrub out with salt, steel wool, then douse with non-stick spray to prevent rusting is the best thing ever. So those 3 things are not expensive. If you’re into chopping a lot of veggies, not that I’m into it, but I have to for the whole healthy eating thing, a solid wood cutting board and forged, not cast, chef’s knife is irreplaceable. I have the Wusthof-Trident set with several sizes and a long serrated blade for bread and meat.
Add some heavy duty stainless steel utensils (no Teflon here to scratch!) like ladle, spatula, silicone rubber spatula and silicone brush (doesn’t gunk up in the dishwasher like bristle brushes), and you’re set for life! Of course gadgets come into play, and you’ll need a griddle for pancakes if you’re allowed to eat that much grain in one sitting!
Spend a few mother’s day gifts to get it a few pieces at a time, start with the pans, then the knives.
I don’t know if I’m any better a chef now, but having good tools makes the job more enjoyable, and I guess makes me more likely to get in there and tackle it!
And to answer your final question, I don’t have any of my college cooking gear, but I did just unpack all my mementos and old letters from my college pots and pans box! That thing lasted longer than what came in it!
You know I’m all for healthifying, and in my opinion, no I don’t ruin the food, I simply HEABify. However, I think my taste buds are a bit wonky compared to others. For instance, the last time we had friends over for dinner, I made a chocolate coconut cream pie with dark chocolate, tapioca starch, and no dairy or gluten. My husband and I thought it was delicious…our guests told us it tasted “very natural”. I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not. 😉
I once made a pumpkin mousse pudding once that had tofu instead of dairy, and agave nectar instead of sugar, and served it to my family…. They loved it and swore it was the best thing ever, until I told them what was in it! Then they were like, “Yuck! Health food!”
As long as I keep quiet about it, I find that reducing/substituting sugar or replacing white flour with whole wheat pastry flour usually turns out well, as long as I keep the fat. I hate low-fat anything.
So funny that I postponed reading your blog until this morning. Last night I was busy trying to make healthy ice cream! You might remember that I write low calorie cookbooks ‘n stuff. Main dishes and side dishes are easy, but trying to healthy up desserts gives me a mighty case of splodey-head. I’ve done it for many recipes (the new cookbook is almost DONE!), but this ice cream recipe – specifically, Guinness Ice Cream – just might kill me. I tried everything – all the healthy milks, all the healthy fats, Truvia, blah, blah, blah – but guess what? I’m back to whole milk and sugar. Some stuff you simply shouldn’t tamper with. And my lemon bars have real butter AND real sugar. And they’re low calorie.
My philosophy is eating real food with an eye toward portion control. I eat moderate amounts of more decadent fare on an occasional basis (which, if I’m being honest, probably means most days) but the stuff I don’t care about, I healthify. That’s actually how I started Lazy Low Cal Lifestyle … my daughter was in her first apartment and wanted me to send her the “recipes from her youth.” I took one look at them and said, “No way!” realizing I was a horrible mother, stuffing my kids to the gills with so much cheese.
And because I’m much older than you, I finally purged my house of all the 30-year-old wedding presents – we fondly refer to them as ‘dustables.’ I hope Goodwill was happy to have forty-leven wine decanters. Wine decanters. Seriously.
I used to be with Dr. J – these days, since I’ve been having some emotional eating issues (for like the past year), I’m more with the intuitive eaters… and yes, I have definitely ruined good food many times! It’s very difficult to NOT try to healthify every recipe I get my hands on 🙂 Luckily I’ve gotten pretty decent at it!
I went thru a low-fat/no-fat phase. replacece oil with applesauce or fat-free mayo. even did ff cheese for a while( we now refer to it as plastic cheese) Oh and during this phase I maintained 30-40 extra pounds on my body. finally discovered the wonders of exercise and portion size and ditched the fake food.( and 40 pounds) I eat good 90( okay really 80) % of the time and I use real butter and sugar and nuts and all that yummy bad for you stuff on my splurge foods. I’ll gladly run 3 miles and then cancel out he calories burned with a scrumptious brownie
I rather the real stuff! I went through a phase of substituting and most things didnt satisfy my cravings! One day a thought popped in my head! I thought back to when i was a kid and would eat half a pop tart and just put the rest away without thinking about gobbling down the other half. I listened to my body, gave it what i wanted, then went on with life. I didnt worry about how rotten it was for me or any of that! So thsts what ive been practicing for about 2 years now and im super happy and maintained my size 0-2 frame with no prob!
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My compromise is to only 1/2 healthify it –
For cakes:
Replace 1/2 the flour with whole wheat (this is important so it isn’t too dense)
Cut the fat by 1/3, then replace another 1/3 with egg white (so you don’t get the banana taste) For example, if the recipe says 1 c oil, use 2 egg whites and 1/3 cup oil. Both oil and egg white make the cake tender, soft. Whip the egg whites if you want to add extra volume (air) to make it fluffier.
Cut the sugar by 1/3, then replace another 1/3 with applesauce. For example, if the recipe says 1 c granulated sugar, use 1/3 c natural, unsweetened applesauce and 1/3 c granulated sugar
Trust me – this will be MUCH closer to the taste you are seeking, but still also MUCH healthier than the original recipe.