Non-fancy healthy food options (American living in a third-world country)

lizery wrote: »

Meat. Fresh veggies. Fruit. Rice. Whatever spices the locals use.

Can you get any local recipes that use what you have available rather than western recipes calling for a bunch of hipster foodie ingredients?

Great ideas!

Definitely try yummly.com - once you have signed up for an account, just enter the ingredients you actually have and it will give you tons of recipes with those specific ingredients. You can also filter by calorie limit and even the foods you don't like.

PS. I have spent years living in developing countries so can relate to your experience well. I used to load up my suitcase with things that I couldn't get locally during every R&R break. (Tip - if you do that, buy multiples and stock-pile!)

You don't have to eat a specific list of foods to eat healthy. Look for things that meet your nutritional needs using local ingredients. There are many recipes that use fresh ingredients or you can adapt a recipe to use fresh instead of frozen or canned.
Beans or lentils are also a staple food in many areas of the world that may be available to you. You may look for recipes using those.

http://www.supercook.com
http://www.pinterest.com
http://www.budgetbytes.com
http://www.skinnytaste.com

What kind of foods do you have near you? (You never said where you were)

Look at the local population and what they eat...you don't need fancy food to be healthy or loose weight

Read recipes for ideas, don't follow them exactly. I rarely cook from recipes, and also most recipes I see don't use things like protein powder or frozen veg -- frozen veg can usually be substituted, but obviously so can fresh. Rather obviously you can sub non organic for organic.

Good basic recipe sites: 101cookbooks, epicurious, I like foodandwine for ideas.

all recipe sites will have recipes that use fresh ingredients...you just search for what you want the main ingredients to be. I use foodnetwork, allrecipes, epicurious, and a wide range of others.

I would advise you to avoid the sites that focus on very specialized diets like vegan...they are more likely to try to substitute things like flaxseed for a more common ingredient they avoid.

Not totally sure, but often when recipes call for canned or frozen veggies I just use fresh instead. Fresh tomatoes will have more liquid obviously, so you might sautee them first and then add them. A lot of times I just cook down a stew or soup with fresh veggies a little longer to reduce liquid, but then again, I'm not adding meat, so I'm not sure how that would affect it.

You could make your own bread maybe? Just flour, water, yeast, a tiny bit of sugar to get the yeast going, oil if you like or not? But I know for some people bread gets tricky. I grew up making it, so I'm too good at it. I'm not baking again until I lose weight--fresh bread is too tempting to me.

Garlic and pepper for your veggies. Just a pinch of salt is needed.

Try making your own tomato sauce as a base for a variety of dishes. Onions are heavenly when slow roasted in a little oil or lard (!)

When I was a child living in the West Indies mom would make our own bread, raising it by leaving it out on the warm porch. Great memories.

The local cuisine could be just fine if they toned down the chillies and the lard. Good luck convincing a local cook to change their habits!

Can you get bones from wherever you get your meat? You could make your own beef or chicken stock, and use it for soups or sauces. Just add water, onions, whatever spices you can get that you like, and simmer for ages. Strain. Cool, and scrape any fat off when it's cooled, unless you want to keep it for the extra flavour.
Definitely agree with OP...garlic is your friend with vege dishes!

Third world country living oftentimes requires you to subsist (plant what you will eat). Foods aren't frozen, but is usually kept in a cool Creek for up to 3 days in the rural Pacific. If you ask the locals, am certain they might enlighten you as to how they've preserved their fruits/veggies options.

A cousin of mine did her Mormon mission in rural Mexico after living between Los Angeles and Hawaii most of her life. Apparently, they make fresh cheeses fairly often there too, you will need to enquire if that is your thing.


ETA:. Sometimes, some would barter their crops for your skill. Even teaching English to their children counts - minimum of reading, comprehension, composition and conversational. Many're German & French Doctoral students earned lodgings, car use and food & spending money through our family this way.

Crazypotato982gtu wrote: »

Hi! So this is sometimes my dilemma: I often search for healthy recipes and meal plans online in English. However, the trend at least for American sites seems to be to use a lot of ingredients that are simply not available to me where I am living currently. Examples are: protein powder, flaxseed, anything with the word "organic," nitrate-free anything, coconut oil, almond butter, whole wheat pitas, nonfat Greek yogurt...and the list goes on. NONE of those items are sold within a 7-hour trip from where I live. The concept of low-calorie or sugar free is not understood by the general public.

Also, it is impossible to get canned or frozen vegetables here so recipes that rely on canned tomatoes, for instance, are tricky for me. There are no shortcuts like in the US (frozen, precooked veggies, chopped fresh fruit, seasoning packets, precooked boneless skinless chicken etc.).

That having been said, I live in an area where fresh fruit and veggies are readily available and cheap. Also, the meat and poultry is freshly butchered, and I can generally ask the butcher to give me a cut with as little fat as possible, or in the case of chicken, to remove the skin for me. The seafood available is not fresh, expensive and does not include very many options...and usually the ONLY canned seafood available is tuna, which I hate. No canned chicken.

So does anyone know of recipe sites that do not employ these fancy, difficult to obtain ingredients for a good meal? I am always on the lookout for new ideas.

Wow, you are lucky that you get fresh fruits, veggies, and ask a butcher for specific cut of meat. There is no need for protein powder (it's a supplement). If you get enough protein, there is no need for the supplement am I right? Now, flaxseed and all other fancy stuff are not needed at all. I think with all the available resources you have. It is plenty, and I'm quite jealous.

Many fancy things are not available to me either, so I just adapt the recipes. Instead of tofu I use diced chicken breast (or Greek yogurt if it's soft silken tofu - Greek yogurt is not a fancy ingredient where I live), instead of canned and frozen vegetables I use fresh, instead of coconut oil I use olive oil or butter (depending on the function of coconut oil), instead of almond butter I use peanut butter, or just sprinkle random nuts and seeds if it's for the taste or use a cooked oats paste (cooked oats with a bit of butter - any tacky grain work, try rice) or tahini if it's for the texture (crushed apples or bananas also work for certain recipes), local spices can replace any of the fancy spices, spinach instead of kale, sweet peppers instead of celery...etc. Some ingredients can be skipped altogether.

For sugarless drinks you could do teas or infused teas, for lower sugar drinks but not completely sugar-free you could try Kompot using local fruits and berries (any fruit works) which has only 60 or fewer calories per cup, depending on how sweet you like it.

Labels like "organic" or "nitrate-free" have no bearing on your weight loss, so you don't need to seek them out. Labels like "sugar free" and "fat free" sometimes indicate lower calories, but you don't need them. You can shave off an equivalent amount of calories elsewhere if you really want to try something and using full fat or real sugar in the recipe gives you a higher calorie result.

Greek yogurt is just yogurt, strained using a cheesecloth to your desired consistency (keep in mind full fat Greek yogurt is about 120-220 calories per 100 grams with most hovering around 140). Almond butter is just almonds, processed in a blender with a touch of oil until they release their oils, whole wheat pitas are very simple to make if you really want them (but I don't see a point if you have access to tortillas or any other flatbread), red ripe fresh tomatoes can be substituted gram per gram for canned. Speaking of flatbread, the most basic kind is just flour, with enough water to form a relatively wet dough and a pinch of salt then bake on a stovetop skillet for a minute or two and you will have flatbread with less than 5 minutes of work involved, plus you can make just a single serving if you want.

You don't need to follow a meal plan, but if you are curious about a certain recipe you can definitely creatively substitute. MFP makes things near effortless because any substitutions can be accounted for in your tracking, and as long as you are within your calories you should be fine.