A more healthful Bite

I love the little oatcakes that are commonly called Aussie Bites, but the sugar and butter calories are pretty daunting for those of us watching our weight, or our sugar and fat intake. 

So here's my attempt to make some with no cholesterol (although it does have saturated fat) and far less sugar. 

I made them in a mini-muffin tin that has 24 indentions; the batter makes 4 dozen, and it keeps well for several days in the refrigerator.

Lori K’s Aussie Bites

Makes about 4 dozen

Ingredients

½ cup coconut oil

½ cup honey

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups rolled oats, uncooked

1½ cups flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup raisins

¾ cup sliced almonds or chopped nuts

Instructions

Mix the first four ingredients until smooth. Add the rest a little at a time until everything is well mixed. Press into mini-muffin cups (24) and bake until golden, 13-15 minutes.

A healthier waffle

Processed foods often aren't worth the time they save, mostly because many use as inexpensive ingredients as they can get away with, devoid of nutrition and overloaded with sugar, fat and/or salt. That said, I usually don't have the wherewithal to follow a recipe when I get up in the morning. My compromise, besides cold cereal and milk or yogurt, is to have a box of Pioneer No-Fat Buttermilk Pancake and Waffle Mix in the cupboard and real maple syrup.

There's not much in it you can't pronounce, which I like, but I think it has too much salt (540 mg per serving) and sugar (9 g) per serving. To make it a little healthier, I decrease the 2 cups of mix to 1.5 cups and add a cup of rolled oats (regular, not instant), and use the same amount of water. It's like getting a serving of oatmeal along with your treat.

After I put about a quarter cup of the batter on each side of the oil-sprayed waffle iron, I sometimes add some chopped pecans or Craisins before I lower the top to cook the waffles. I don't know why, but they always taste better to me cooked in the waffles rather than sprinkled on top. If I don't have maple syrup, I put some jam in a saucepan and warm it up, adding a little water if it's too thick.

Of course, when I have the time to prepare a big breakfast, I have a good recipe for nutritious waffles, which I'll post tomorrow. What I should do is quadruple the recipe, mix up the dry ingredients and bag it for later use, with the instructions on the bag.

What's your favorite trick to getting a good breakfast on a busy morning?

Have it your way - healthful, even

Double Quarter Pounder With Cheese

McDonald's employs a director of nutrition? Who knew? Dr. Cindy Goody has been with McDonald’s since 2008. She was recently interviewed for Nation's Restaurant News, and had some interesting things to say:

Nutrition is the science of how our bodies use food to contribute to health, and as a registered dietitian, I have an opportunity to translate that science so consumers can use it to improve their health and well-being. As McDonald’s director of nutrition I have the opportunity to share this knowledge with the more than 26 million customers that visit our 14,000 U.S. restaurants every day.

Her philosophy is that there are no good or bad foods, but anyone can consume a bad balance of foods. Since McDonald's offered varied menu choices, she says people can build a nutritious meal from the items offered and by monitoring their portion size.

McDonald’s has provided nutrition about our quality food for more than 35 years. Today, there are eight ways customers can easily access McDonald's nutrition information: on McDonalds.com, via our toll-free telephone number (1-800-244-6227), on select product packaging, on the backs of trayliners, in-restaurant nutrition brochures, via voice-activated information through our toll-free number, via mobile devices and now on HealthyDiningFinder.com.

As an improvement to Happy Meals, Goody says McDonald’s sells more than 72 million Apple Dippers annually and more than 180 million Milk Jugs per year.

And guess what? McDonald's will even be adding oatmeal to its breakfast offerings next year.

We'll see if that gets the same real estate on their menu board that the Double Quarter Pounder With Cheese (740 calories) with large fries (500 calories) and soft drink (310 calories). 

(By the way, those aren't the most calorie-dense offerings: that would be the Angus Bacon Cheese with 790 calories, 2070 mg sodium, and the large triple thick chocolate shake at 1160 calories.)

If you want to check out the nutritional stats of your favorite Mickey D's food, you can view the pdf here.

To read the entire interview with Goody: http://www.nrn.com/article/qa-dr-cindy-goody-mcdonald’s-usa-director-nutrition?ad=healthydining&utm_source=MagnetMail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=richardsons15@yahoo.com&utm_content=NRN-News-NRNam-11-12-10&utm_campaign=Red%20Lobster%20looking%20to%20lower%20price%20points#ixzz154azWBnz

Oats on the go

Oatmeal is good for you, whole-grain goodness in a bowl. But hot cereal isn't all that appealing until the temperatures go down. In the meantime, you can get the same benefit from energy bars that list oats as their primary ingredient, but at a dollar or more per bar, the costs can add up. And even if oats is listed first, are you really getting a full serving of the grain, or are the other ingredients cutting into that?

You can make your own at home, using the microwave. To form them, use a sheet of aluminum foil sprayed or brushed with olive oil, or if you have a silicon cookie sheet liner, use that to be even more green.

Lori K's energy bar

Ingredients
1/3 cup of oats (5-minute rolled oats work best)
2 tablespoons chopped peanuts, pecans or walnuts, or raisins or chopped dried fruits, or a combination of these
2 tablespoons honey
Salt to taste (optional)
1 tablespoon of powdered sugar

Instructions
Put the oats, nuts and/or fruit in a microwave-safe bowl. Drizzle with honey. Put in the microwave and cook for 1 minute. Take out and stir with a metal spoon (plastic will melt). Put back in the microwave for 20 seconds. (If you see smoke, remove immediately.) Turn out on a sheet of aluminum foil coated with olive oil, or a silicone cookie sheet liner; do not touch the mixture as it will burn your fingers. Let cool for a minute or two, then fold the sheet over the mixture, and compress it into a roll. Pretend like the mixture is tobacco and the sheet is rolling papers; you want the mixture to be nice and tight. Unroll, push in the ends, then fold the sheet over again and compress as tightly as possible. Cool, then unwrap. Sprinkle on the powdered sugar and roll to coat.

Makes one bar.

This bar is low fat and high in whole grains. If you want more of a protein bar, try this one.

Fruit and oatmeal

If you are serious about getting enough fruits and vegetables in your diet, you need to start with breakfast, and it needs to be more than the traditional glass of orange juice.

Oatmeal lends itself to pairing with fruit. Although raisins and apples are the most common, a lot of other fruits work as well. For instance, strawberries. We had some excellent local organic strawberries that we had brought with us on our trip to Washington, but not all of them made it whole, and they messed up the rest enough that it would have been hard to eat them out of hand. So we brought them back home, sorted the good from the bad, cut off their tops and sliced them all in half. I put them in a pot with about a half cup of brown sugar that had hardened in my cupboard, set the heat to low, and let them cook until they were all soft and the sugar was bubbling. I put the syrupy mixture in the fridge overnight, then added it to the oatmeal in the morning. One thing to note, however: The acid in the strawberries will cause whatever milk you add to separate.