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Community Corner

Favorite Fall Foods Made Healthy

Five comfort meals and their healthy, twisted alternative recipes.

Summer is almost over and fall is just about to make it's annual debut. We're lucky here in San Diego County though.  Our fall is what the rest of the country is wishes their summers were like. Nonetheless, the nights are headed for cooler temperatures and you know what that means – time for some good ol' comfort food.  You know what I'm talking about; Grandma's meatloaf. Mom's homemade macaroni and cheese. Dad's famous threee-cheese lasagna. Man, I can feel my hips growing just writing about this stuff. 

Fortunately, there is a way to have your hot delicious pizza and eat it too. I take a lot of pride in teaching others how to turn a seemingly unhealthy meal, like all those mentioned above and put a nutritionally-packed twist on it.  Below are five comfort-turned-healthy meals that are guaranteed to help keep you in skinny jeans this season instead of frumpy sweat pants.

Jaime's Twisted Comfort Foods

1. Pizza 

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Typical: Made with white flour, too much cheese, high fructose corn syrup infused tomato sauce and enough fatty processed meat to kill a T-Rex. 

Twist: Use a whole wheat pita, brown rice tortilla or portabella mushroom as your "crust." Top with a fresh tomatoes or tomato paste as your sauce. Add Italian seasoning. Add a sprinkle of mozzarella, parmesean and romano cheese.  Add chopped veggies and lean meat of your choice.  That's it!

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2. Meatloaf 

Typical: Fatty ground beef, ketchup, salt, white processed breadcrumbs.

Twist: Use either lean turkey or lean ground beef (grass fed for added omega 3's).  Throw in a bowl and mix in 2 eggs, 1/2 cup almond meal, chopped peppers, tomato paste and onion. Any seasoning you prefer, but light on the salt.  Try baking them in muffin tins for a quick protein snack.  

3. Lasagna

Typical:  White pasta, tons of cheese, lots of fatty meat.

Twist:  Two ways.  If you must use pasta, try whole wheat or brown rice. If you don't need the pasta (which will save you hundreds of calories), use long strips of zucchini in it's place.  Start layering as usual, but try using ricotta, mozzarella and cottage cheese sparingly. A little goes a long way. Then pack in veggies like spinach, squash, eggplant, peppers etc.  Use lean beef, turkey and lean Italian chicken sausage. If using the zucchini strips, it will be harder to serve up, but well worth it.

4. Casserole

Typical:  When you think of casserole, it's white rice or pasta spirals, white potatoes, lots of cheese, creamy sauce, starchy veggies etc., right? Done right, they can be pretty awesome.

Twist:  Take a large bowl and add together chopped cooked chicken or tuna, brown rice, 1 can of low sodium mushroom soup, milk, green beans, broccoli, carrots and a bit of cheddar cheese.  Add seasonings to taste. Pour into baking dish and pop in the oven.  So simple and you'll have leftovers for days.

5. Pot Roast

Typical:  A super fatty chunk of beef. White potatoes and salt.

Twist:  In a crock pot, add lean stew beef chunks.  has some good stuff.  Then add carrots, purple potatoes, celery and carrots. Season with whatever, add water and let sit for 6 hours or so. The best part of soups and stews is that the vitamins/nutrition that happens to leak out, stays in the juice which you ultimately consume. Hooray!

Simple. Healthy. Yummy. Comforting. Enjoy!

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