Love to cook! Looking for friends to share recipes and support!

Labchick17

Looking for people to share new healthy recipe ideas with to stay within my calorie goal everyday. Calorie counting is new for me soo I’m using this app now to help keep track. I love to cook and would love to connect with others who would love to share recipes and support one another.

springlering62

Welcome to MFP @Labchick17

I’ve ditched a lot of recipes that were old favorites because they weren’t adaptable.

But I’ve found I can adjust or make substitutions in many others.

Exchanging margarine for butter cuts those calories by nearly half. And I’ve also found that most recipes that call for multiple tablespoons, I can cut them by half or more with no appreciable difference in taste.

I can brown or “stir fry” at high heat with no oils at all.

In leiu of tablespoons of oil (I only use olive oil these days-others go rancid before I even make a dent in the bottles) I use my refillable Misto sprayer. I seldom use more than four or five grams of oil, and even that is split down into multiple servings.

Spice mixes have neglible calories compared to thick sauces.

I no longer make creamy sauces or gravies. If I need something nice for roast pork, for example, I whip together some Dijon, herbes de provence, and a tablespoon of marmalade.

There’s some pretty decent low cal breads for toast (check out Lewis Bakeries) and I’ve been using low carb wraps (45 each) for wraps instead of sandwiches.

For lasagna (yes, we eat lasagna) I mix ground chicken with herbes de provence and let it sit in the fridge a couple of days before browning it (in a dry pan). It tastes just like Italian sausage- very rich and flavorful. Mozzarella full fat “balls” are much lower cal than preshredded, part skim (I know! Makes no sense!) so I shred my own, and I use part skim for the ricotta. I also found out- due to a dumb math error- that halving the quantity of noodles doesn’t affect the taste or mouth feel. I saw someone here the other day who was using spaghetti squash in theirs. I don’t think I’d do that but now I’m game to substitute some sliced squash or Zuchinni for some of the noodles.

Use your imagination. Try new cooking techniques. Air fryer, smoker.

I try to treat reducing calories as a game and seeing how many recipes I can cut to the bone without affecting flavor.

I watched Pioneer Woman for the first time the other day and had to turn it off after the third or fourth stick of butter in one meal. Yikes. I’m not a farmhand. Even in my worst “old me” days I didn’t go that far, lol.