Nutritious choices made simple ®
This week’s recipe review brings you not one, but two recipes and a brilliant idea for combining them. Store-bought pie dough and cranberry sauce generally don’t earn Guiding Stars because of salt, sugar, and saturated fat, but our team loves these recipes in our database
When you’re the dietitian, you’re often asked for nutritious dishes, suitable for feeding a crowd at a potluck, which taste great and cost little. And when you’re the dietitian, you appreciate the question and want to provide recipe suggestions that both the home cook and crowd they’ll be feeding will be excited about. Since party season is upon us, it’s a good time to create a go-to list of perfect pot-luck menu ideas so that I’m ready the next time I’m asked.
This easy Cranberry Smoothie earns 3 Guiding Stars for nutrition, and will probably also earn you some “What a great idea!” comments from your holiday guests. True, smoothies are not typical Thanksgiving fare—which is why it’s a unique menu addition. Try serving the smoothie in punch glasses or little “shooter” cups and offer it to guests as they arrive. Or include it in your day-after-Thanksgiving breakfast or brunch: multiply the recipe to serve your crowd, then transfer it to a big pitcher so guests can serve themselves. However you decide to serve it, the creamy consistency and alternative way to feature cranberries makes it a festive and tasty choice this season.
Fresh herbs can add a lot of cost to a meal, so for many workday recipes, it’s just as sensible to swap them out for the more cost-effective dried version. When it comes to flavoring the centerpiece of your annual turkey feast, however, fresh herbs are well worth the splurge for the complex boost they’ll bring to your holiday table.
The last thing you want to do as a guest is show up and take up valuable counter and oven space to prepare your dish. We’re planning to bring Southern Cornbread in a cast iron skillet to this year’s meal. I will bake the recipe ahead and cover the skillet with some aluminum foil to transport it in the car. When we arrive, I will heat it up on the stovetop to serve it warm.
While a table of richly colored autumn dishes is a good thing, it often lacks variety in texture. This is where my pick for your holiday table comes in. In my opinion, no holiday table is complete without something crunchy and green because while I love sweet potatoes just as much as anyone else, our Thanksgiving table needs a bright boost. With this in mind, I’m choosing Apple Walnut Tossed Salad for my Thanksgiving pick. With fresh, crisp, greens, apples and walnuts, this seasonal salad is what your table needs to round it out perfectly.
Thanksgiving recipes are beloved. For good reason—they’re generally packed with salt, sugar, and fat. We wouldn’t ask anyone to skip a family favorite, but if you’ve got some sides people are more adventuresome with, why not experiment with improving the nutrition profile on one or two? Don’t worry about flavor, either. These recipes all use a little something special to take the nutritious makeover of the family favorites into recipes delicious enough to give the old school faves a run for their money.
As I’ve been suffering from a bad cold for almost a week now, and spending waaaay too much time bundled up in bed, I figured now was as good a time as any to examine the old adage “feed a cold, starve a fever” and see if there was any truth to it. First off, I want to say that dietitians never recommend “starving” for any reason, so you can rest-assured I won’t be giving anyone that advice. But what’s this bit of medical folklore all about?