Make Your Favorite Foods Calorie Friendly

Americans are always hungry for tips that take the mystery out of cooking healthy versions of their favorite indulgence foods. That's the idea behind a new television series that lets viewers in on the secrets of making mouthwatering, calorie-friendly favorites.

Devin Alexander, the host of "Healthy Decadence With Devin Alexander," believes you don't have to deprive yourself to be fit and healthy. She has maintained a 55-pound weight loss for over 15 years by making small adjustments when cooking her favorite foods. For instance, did you know you can transform a low-fat tortilla into a thin and crispy pizza crust very similar to the ones you find at your favorite local pizza place? Or that adding instant coffee to brownie batter provides a richer chocolate taste without the unnecessary fat or calories?

Here are some more of Devin's tips that will help you have fun preparing healthy and delicious foods:

• An olive oil sprayer-one that you fill yourself-is essential in healthy cooking. You can use it for so much more than spraying pans. For instance, make faux-fried chicken by breading chicken, baking it, then spraying it with a light mist of olive oil spray. You only need a light coating, but it will register much stronger in your brain because the oil will be the first thing to hit your tongue.

• When cooking burgers, never smash them down with a spatula-this will eliminate all of the juice along with only a tiny bit of the fat, particularly if you've started with a lean cut of beef, guaranteeing a dry burger.

• Instead of buying meats from your local deli counter, most of which are chock-full of sodium, try making your own top round roast or turkey roast, then using the leftovers as deli meat. Not only is it likely to be much leaner, you'll save tons of sodium. Plus, you'll also save money.

• A lot of people think turkey burgers or other dishes made with ground turkey are inferior in texture and flavor to their beef counterparts. This is often because people simply swap turkey for beef in recipes that were developed for beef. Because the moisture content is vastly different between turkey and beef, simply substituting one for the other will not yield ideal results. Instead, if you want to serve turkey, take a little bit of extra time to hunt down a recipe that was originally made with turkey or doctor your favorite family recipe to account for the decreased moisture before serving it.

• Make chopped salads instead of salads with chunks of veggies. Chopped salads provide a flavor explosion in your mouth before you even add any dressing, since you meld all of the flavors in each bite. Thus, they require less dressing-which is the most fattening part of most salads.

By: Stacey Moore

Dough Conditioners And How They Work

Repeatedly we hear that dough conditioners are “magical”. “My loaves are so much bigger and lighter now.” “My dough is so much easier to work with.” Can dough conditioners really be that good?

Dough conditioners can make quite a difference, even making a good bread great. But dough conditioners are proprietary—each producer has its own formula and those formulas are usually closely guarded and of course, some work much better than others. You’ll have to experiment to find which works best for you—but it’s worth the effort. Dough conditioner is indispensable to the baking of great breads.

Look for a good, commercial grade conditioner that you can use for both pastries and breads. Commercial grade conditioners tend to be powerful and take as little as 1/2 teaspoon per loaf while many of the conditioners that we see in the grocery stores require much more than that. Considering what a dough conditioner can do, it may be the best bargain in baking often costing less than ten cents per loaf. And dough conditioners are easy to use: just add the dough conditioners with your flour.

What should a good dough conditioner do?

• A good dough conditioner creates an enhanced environment for the growth of yeast helping to make your breads and pastries more uniform and lighter. Yeast prefers a slightly acidic environment for growth and a good dough conditioner will alter the pH of the dough.

• A good dough conditioner will strengthen the gluten structure in the dough so that it stretches further with more elasticity. The enhanced gluten will allow the bread to rise further for a lighter loaf and make the bread “chewier”.

• A good dough conditioner will encourage the development of gluten. Gluten is a combination of two proteins found in wheat flour, gliadin and glutenin. With a good dough conditioner, more of the protein will combine into gluten.

• Some dough conditioners also retard staling and help your bread stay fresher longer.

• Dough conditioners may also provide nutrients to feed the yeast.

Copyright 2007, The Prepared Pantry (http://www.prepraredpantry.com ). Published by permission

By: Dennis Weaver -