Recipe of the Week: Blackened Tilapia Baja Tacos

BY KATHLEEN

In your quest toward healthy eat­ing, you may find your­self stuck in a rut, eat­ing the same 10 things that you know are “healthy” over and over again.

As you know, vari­ety is the spice of life. So every Fri­day — or almost every Fri­day — we share a healthy recipe to help keep your menu excit­ing and nutritious.

If you have a healthy recipe that you’d like to share with the group, we’d LOVE to fea­ture it on the blog, and give you credit! Email your healthy recipes to: lauren@​bc4​c.​com.

Cook­ing Light always has tons of great, nutri­tious, and tasty recipes. I found this recipe in this month’s issue.

Ingre­di­ents:

• ¼ cup reduced-fat sour cream
• 2 tbs. chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tbs. fresh lime juice
• 1 jalapeno pep­per, seeded and chopped
• 1 cup thinly sliced white onion
• 1 ½ tsp. paprika
• 1 ½ tsp. brown sugar
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• ¾ tsp. gar­lic pow­der (not gar­lic salt)
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ tsp. ground cumin
• ¼ tsp. ground red pepper
• 4 (6 oz. tilapia fillets)
• 1 tbs. canola oil
• 8 (6-inch) corn tortillas
• ½ ripe avo­cado, thinly sliced
• 4 lime wedges

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Com­bine the first 4 ingre­di­ents in a food proces­sor, until smooth. Com­bine with the onion in a small bowl.
2. Com­bine paprika and the next 6 ingre­di­ents (through the ground pep­per) and sprin­kle over the fish.
3. Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skil­let over medium heat. Add fish to the pan and cook 3 min­utes on each side.
4. Warm tor­tillas accord­ing to pack­age directions.
5. Divide fish, onion mix­ture, and avo­cado evenly among the tortillas.
6. Enjoy!

Yield: 4 serv­ings. Calo­ries: 362; fat: 13 g.; pro­tein: 37 g.; carb: 27 g.; fiber: 4.9; sodium: 388 mg.

IMAGE CREDIT: Cook­ing Light

Breakfast on the Go: Oatmeal Edition

BY KATHLEEN

McDonald’s now offers oat­meal in its lat­est attempt to offer seem­ingly more nutri­tious options. Unfor­tu­nately, McDonald’s ver­sion of oat­meal con­tains a laun­dry list of not-so-natural ingre­di­ents and has more sugar than a Snick­ers bar and nearly the same calo­ries as an Egg McMuf­fin. You can read more details in New York Times arti­cle, “How to Make Oat­meal… Wrong.”

While cook­ing oat­meal at home is prob­a­bly your best option, Cari­bou Cof­fee offers a ver­sion bet­ter than McDonald’s. If you order the clas­sic 7-grain oat­meal with skim milk, you get more fiber and pro­tein and less fat than Mickey D’s. Also, the ingre­di­ents are things found in a kitchen rather than a lab. The specifics can be found on Caribou’s web­site.

If you have any other breakfast-on-the-go tips, share them here by click­ing “Com­ments” above.

Say No To Breast Enhancements

BY KATHLEEN

Get your mind out of the gutter.

I am writ­ing about chicken breasts. While read­ing Cook­ing Light mag­a­zine this month, I was very sur­prised to learn that many skin­less low-fat chicken breasts found at the gro­cery store may con­tain high lev­els of sodium.

It turns out that about one-third of fresh chicken has been injected with a mix of water, salt, and other addi­tives. These addi­tives make the chicken juicier and more ten­der, but they can add nearly 20% of your daily-recommended level of sodium.

Pro­duc­ers can still call the prod­uct “nat­ural” despite being pumped full of sodium. So check your labels and beware of “enhanced” poul­try. Look for chicken with less than 70 mg of sodium per serving.

IMAGE CREDIT: Cook­ing Light

Recipe of the Week: Thai Coconut Soup

BY KATHLEEN

Thai coconut soup while yummy, it is not so good for the tummy (size). A bowl of coconut soup may con­tain more than 500 calo­ries and two days’ worth of sat­u­rated fat. When eat­ing out, bet­ter to stick with the hot and sour soup.

How­ever, if you’re cook­ing at home, Cook­ing Light offers this health­ier alternative:

• Com­bine 4 cups chicken broth with 1 (14-ounce) can of coconut milk in a dutch oven and bring to a boil over a medium heat.
• Stir in ½ cup sliced and slightly crushed lemon grass, 15 pieces of thinly sliced gin­ger, 4 slightly crushed Ser­rano chiles, and 1 ½ tea­spoons grated lime rind.
• Sim­mer for 20 min­utes and then strain.
• Return the soup to the pot and stir ¼ cup Thai fish sauce.
• Cook 1 minute, and then add 3 table­spoons of lime juice.
• Sprin­kle with cilantro and enjoy.

In Defense of Candy

BY KATHLEEN

I must con­fess, I LOVE candy. In recent years, my beloved candy has become a nutri­tional out­cast. Par­ents recoil in hor­ror at the thought of their pre­cious chil­dren con­sum­ing candy as they believe it is the gate­way food to sugar addic­tion. In defense, I offer the following:

Despite what the dietar­ily pious will say, candy is not the devil.

Candy does not seek to mis­lead you. It is has lit­tle, if any, nutri­tional value, it is gen­er­ally processed, and it is usu­ally chock full of sugar.

By con­trast, some energy bars, sport drinks, and fruit snacks share all of these traits but dis­guise them­selves as “healthy.”

Candy may pro­vide 6 per­cent of added sugar in the Amer­i­can diet, but sweet drinks and juice sup­ply 46 percent.

While I do not advo­cate eat­ing candy every­day, it is a once-in-awhile treat that can be enjoyed in moderation.

Choco­late is my favorite, what is yours?

REFERENCE: New York Times