Turning trash into treasure one ingredient at a time

I love to eat. Sometimes I worry my love to eat overrides my love to live, and the ingredients you put into a recipe really do matter, in the short-term and long-term. Short-term, you might get a stomach-ache, gain a few pounds, have troubling thoughts of regrets. Long-term effects mean a boxed assortment and not one with chocolate. Sometimes I used these fears to tone down unhealthy eating habits and other times, I have to compromise. Here are a few ways:

Nacho Business (But Really I’ll Share)

I make ‘nacho’ jokes all the time and yes they’re typically cheesy. Cheese of course typically gets a stinky reputation: it’s too high in calories, it’s too fattening, it’s too salty. While these might be true of some cheese, it’s not true of every one. According to the USDA, one slice of low sodium mozzarella cheese has 8 grams of protein which is just as much as a two tablespoon serving of peanut butter.

So, now that you have approval to add some cheese, slather on some veggies and spices.

I love steamed broccoli on my nachos as well as raw spinach and cucumbers. Corn chips and cheese can be salty so when you add water rich vegetables, it balances out.

Spices can also perk the flavor of nachos. Cayenne has an array of benefits from helping the digestive tract, boosting one’s metabolism, and alleviating joint pain according to Dr. Edward Group’s article from www.globalhealingcenter.com.

“Homemade” Lemonade

Squirting some lemon juice on apples isn’t just great for keeping them from browning.  It’s also a tangy treat because it tastes just like lemonade. And this can be even more filling than regular lemonade since apples have fiber!

Movie Theater Popcorn

You can make your popcorn “x-rated” by adding enough spice and flavor to make your mouth say wow. Pepper which is a super source of nutrition from manganese to fiber to vitamin K is really tasty on popcorn as well as a bit of olive oil and a little bit of salt. If you’re craving a more sweet popcorn, coconut oil and cinnamon are a great mixture. Cinnamon is proven to lowering blood glucose according to research nutritionist Paul Davis in an article he published in Journal of Medicinal Food.

Cinnamon and Ginger Infused Oreos

This last one is really just to make myself feel better about eating Oreos. It's very easy and you only need a few seconds. Start by splitting the Oreo open, so that the cream is on each cookie half, then you put a little bit of ginger powder spice on one side and little bit of cinnamon powder spice on the other half. Place the halves together and you’ve got Christmas in your mouth.

These altered recipes are what give me hope that delicious food isn’t all evil. A life of eating horrible tasting food just to prolong that said life, doesn’t quite sound like a pleasant way to live at all. It seems to come down to what you know, what you’ve got in the present moment, and what you’re willing to experiment with in order to create something tasty but nutritious. That’s the real secret. Taking the trash out in this sense doesn't have to mean endless sorting of what ifs, it just means being creative to encourage full flavor.