Author: Melissa Walshe

Melissa Walshe is a food lover, an avid home cook, and an editor of the Guiding Stars blog. While creating, tasting, and curating Guiding Stars recipes, she has developed a knack for helping nutrition and flavor find a happy medium. Melissa earned her Ed.M from Harvard, and a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Southern Maine. She uses her background in education to make nutritious, accurate food writing available to the home cook. In her free time, she spends a lot of time in the garden and walking her dog.

Smart Dessert

November 22, 2019November 21, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

Pie is delicious, but crusts made with wheat flour and butter make it unfriendly to guests with wheat or gluten sensitivities or who are following a vegan diet. This torte wouldn’t work if your guests’ primary allergy concern is tree nuts, but it’s fantastic for the subset of dinner guests that often end up having fewer options to pick from. Using dates to sweeten good apples and a crust made of nuts, it’s also bringing some serious nutrition to the table. If you skimped on the meal food to save room for dessert, this is an option that will both please your tastebuds and sustain you.

Smart Sides

November 15, 2019November 14, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

If you can get fresh green beans, they really don’t need more than a light treatment of garlic and herbs to be worthy of playing handmaiden to the sacrificial bird, so to speak. Color and crunch are also often lacking on a Thanksgiving table. While you could provide those with a salad, you could also save yourself time, money, and oven space by swapping in a fresh green bean recipe like this one instead.

Smart Appetizers

November 8, 2019November 7, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

Snacking during the parade in the lead up to dinner is a tradition in my family. The array of nibbles, however, isn’t really all that different than the same kind of snacks we have access to all year. Cheese, nuts, shrimp cocktail, cream cheese and olives on celery. The dominant flavors are salt and fat, and the truth is, the apps tray can lean towards the side of more calorific than flavorful.

Smart Thanksgiving

November 1, 2019October 31, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

When I say “smart,” I mean…follow me off the beaten path, here. Let’s play with the traditional ingredients of Thanksgiving, but put them to work in different and delicious ways. This month, I’ll be showcasing some recipes that our team especially enjoys using fall flavors to their best in recipes you don’t see every year.

Ham It Up

October 25, 2019October 23, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

Here at Guiding Stars, our algorithm is intentionally designed to help you minimize the saturated fat and salt in your food. Ham, of course, is full of both. Ham, bacon, pancetta, and salt pork are not products you will find labeled with any stars. Slow cooking, however, gives us a beautiful opportunity to showcase the philosophy that no food is “bad” food, per se, but rather, that enjoying great nutrition and a good relationship with food is all about balance.

Souped Up and Slowed Down

October 18, 2019October 16, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

Soup is probably the food most people associate strongly with slow cookers. The long cooking time brings a special oomph to the flavor of even basic dishes. That being said, we’ve all had soups from a slow cooker that were maybe a bit overcooked or had a weird balance of textures. These tips will help you soup up your slow cooker soup game.

Lean In to Slow-Cooked Meat

October 11, 2019October 10, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

Meats that are high in saturated fat are also high on the list of foods to consume in moderation. They’re also delicious, in part because fat is helpful for improving tenderness and moisture during cooking. Lean cuts of meat are a better choice for nutrition, and good news! You can get to moist and tender without the saturated fat. Long cook times at a low temperature are ideal for getting lean meat to fall apart under your fork.

Slow Cooker Champions

October 4, 2019October 2, 2019 by Melissa Walshe

A crock full of bubbling goodness is a special delight as the cold weather edges in around us. It’s easy to get carried away with enthusiasm for the convenience that the slow cooker provides, but if you’re not an experienced slow cooker cook, it’s easy for modified recipes to go awry. Explore some of these tried and true slow cooker favorites with us this month as we consider what goes into making slow cooker recipes work.