Recipe Substitutions
There’s nothing worse than coming home from the store to cook dinner and realizing you forgot something. Our whole philosophy is teaching you to cook with what you have on hand, so here’s a list of creative and healthy substitutions to help you get started:
- Bread = pita, tortillas, or lettuce: make your sandwiches more interesting and less carb-filled with these alternative
- Cream cheese = cottage cheese: puree and use anywhere you’d use the real stuff
- Mayonnaise = avocado or hummus: add to sandwiches, cold pastas, or anything that needs a creamy base
- Oatmeal = quinoa: try this as a protein-packed breakfast with milk and cinnamon
- Pasta = spaghetti squash: roast and peel the “noodles” away with a fork for a low-calorie and low-carb alternative
- Pine nuts = sunflower seeds: add to pastas, top salads, or use when making pesto
- Potatoes = cauliflower: use to make mashed potatoes, or roast and top with gravy or your favorite pasta sauce
- Potatoes = sweet potatoes: use for fries, oven-roasted potatoes, hash, and anytime you want to add some fiber to your meal
- Rice = quinoa: use in fried rice, stir-fries, and soups to add protein
- Rice = cauliflower: grate or pulse in blender, then steam and use as you wish
- Salad dressing = salsa: top your greens with this fresher alternative that will likely have less sugar and fat
- Sour cream = plain yogurt: add to chilis, soups, and other foods to reduce the spiciness and add a creamy texture
- Sugar = cinnamon: sweeten your oatmeal, yogurt, and treats with this spice
Also in The Dish
Shopping For One
Cooking for one can seem like a fool's errand - so much time and effort to feed just one person. The trick is to minimize your effort while maximizing your output, or in cooking terms, do as little prep work as possible to produce a lot of food (all while keeping costs down, of course). Here are some tips to make cooking for one easy and productive:
How To Navigate The Grocery Store
Most grocery stores have the same layout, with fresh foods (produce, meat, and dairy) on the perimeter of the store, and processed foods (with longer shelf lives) on the aisles in the middle of the store. Since we try to primarily eat whole, unprocessed foods, we tend to stick to the edges of the store as much as possible.
What To Look For In The Nutrition Label
When comparing our options in the grocery store, we look at the ingredient list and ask ourselves a few key questions. How many ingredients do this have? Do I know what these ingredients are? Is sugar one of the first few ingredients? There’s no hard and fast rule, but generally the fewer ingredients, the better. The more easily pronounced ingredients, the better. The farther down sugar occurs on the ingredient list, the better (if it appears at all).
