The first time I ever tasted my mother-in-law’s lasagna, I knew there was something a little…off about it. It had all the things one usually finds in lasagna, and upon examination of the dish I could find nothing out of the ordinary. Noodles-check. Ground beef-check. Sauce-check. Cheese-check.
It took several tastes of this lasagna before I finally asked Nathan what was up. Why was his mom’s lasagna so familiar and yet so different?
The answer? Swiss cheese.
Nathan’s dad doesn’t like ricotta. Something about the texture, he says. Of course this is the man who believes he is charged for every email he forwards and instead prints off copies of the emails to distribute in person. Which would explain why we were never given an invitation to a recent family reunion.
If you ask me, Swiss cheese does not belong in lasagna, but the beauty of lasagna is that it’s so versatile. You can personalize it to your tastes and still call it lasagna even if you choose to put some skunky cheese in it.
God bless my mother-in-law.
Since starting back with Weight Watchers last year, I’ve only made one kind of lasagna. It’s the same lasagna I showcased on the blog earlier this year and it’s one I never get tired of making. It’s light and filling and oh-so-garlicky. It’s my go-to recipe whenever I want to literally knock somebody’s socks off.
But sometimes a girl likes to experiment and I recently consulted The Pioneer Woman’s blog to check out her lasagna recipe. If The Pioneer Woman makes it, you know it has to be fabulous.
My God. Just looking at that recipe makes me want to go right to a cardiologist and schedule an angioplasty. A pound and a half of ground beef AND a pound of sausage? Not to mention the pound of mozzarella. But hey, at least she went with the lowfat cottage cheese. Thanks, Ree.
Normally when I see a recipe like that, I go down the list of ingredients and see where I can cut corners. Maybe I could use ground turkey instead of ground beef, turkey sausage instead of pork sausage. And do we really need a full pound of mozzarella? Probably not.
But if you tinker with a recipe too much, it ceases to be the dish that had you salivating in the first place. Sometimes substitutions just don’t work.
But sometimes they do.
My lasagna is not a substitution as much as it is an interpretation of the dish, and while I’ve found myself using fewer substitutions this time around by choosing to just eat smaller portions, I still have a few favorite tricks up my sleeve when I want to feel like a glutton without actually being one.
Stop me if you’ve already heard these:
Applesauce
Applesauce is an amazing thing. Not only is it tasty on its own, but you can use it in place of oil in pretty much any cake or muffin recipe. Of course the end result is a little less moist and the sauce isn’t at all effective when making cookies or brownies, but it could very well mean the difference between eating a full-size muffin and eating one the size of your knuckle.
Egg whites
I love me an egg white omelet, and the beauty of the egg white is that it contains most of the protein of the egg but only a fraction of the calories. If I make a cake from a box (which I usually do) and it calls for two eggs, I will substitute a couple of egg whites for one of the eggs. It’s not a drastic reduction in calories and fat, but when used in conjunction with applesauce, you’ve got the makings of a heart-healthy treat.
Fat-free whipped topping
Sugar-free Jell-O is one of those things I only eat when I’m incredibly desperate. Seriously, I have to be ready to gnaw the upholstery off the couch before digging into a Jell-O cup because it does absolutely nothing for me. Eating Jell-O is like eating lime-flavored air, but when paired with some fat-free whipped topping it is transformed from something vaporous and unsatisfying into an actual dessert. And you can make that Jell-O cup disappear under a mountain of whipped topping without worrying about popping the button on your trousers.
And when we get right down to it, do we really even need the Jell-O?
Guacamole
I don’t understand how anyone can not like guacamole, but the more finicky people out there aren’t down with the texture, taste or color. My dad does not like guacamole, and it was only after my first taste of it as an adult that I realized every taco I had ever eaten as a kid had been a lie. I felt betrayed and cheated and accused my father of limiting my potential by never introducing me to the Technicolor silky smoothness of mashed avocado and spices.
If I’d had guacamole as a kid I’d have a Pulitzer by now, which is why I made sure to introduce Autumn to the stuff very early on. She’s a minimalist when it comes to tacos, (cheese and meat only, please) but she does love dipping pretzel sticks into a few spoonfuls of guacamole plopped onto her plate. It’s one of the ways I get her to actually eat a veggie that’s not in the form of a stick or a cob.
While guacamole is high in fat (good fat, yo), it’s also high in fiber and a little of it goes a long way. Lately I’ve been using it as a condiment on my sandwiches and have also mixed it in with some chicken tortilla soup.
And you better believe I put it on my tacos.
Tortilla chips
Here’s the thing about tortilla chips; I have a little problem with them. People open a bag of tortilla chips around me and the chips disappear within seconds. I’m the Tazmanian devil of snackers and my arms move so fast when shoveling the chips into my mouth that all you see is a flesh-colored blur of indistinguishable appendages.
Tortilla chips are what you would call a TRIGGER FOOD and it’s best that we only bring them into the house occasionally. Sometimes, when I want the taste of chips and salsa without the risk of biting off my own fingers, I will cut up a low fat or fat-free tortilla, spray it with cooking spray, sprinkle it with a little garlic salt, and pop it into the oven for a few minutes until it starts to brown.
In all honesty, it’s not quite the same as regular tortilla chips, but it is a satisfying substitute. And when you go through that much work to make the chips, you’re less likely to go back for more.
Speaking of lasagna…
Back in the day Nathan and I used to work on opposite shifts. Being the ever dutiful fiancé, I would regularly cook our main meal for lunch and bring it to his workplace to eat with him. One day I brought in a lasagna made with tofu. It had the noodles and the sauce and the cheese, but in place of the meat I used firm tofu. His co-workers were none the wiser and helped us polish off the entire pan.
I’ve also made a polenta lasagna, with the polenta taking the place of the noodles and I know of people who have used eggplant and squash to make a noodle-less layered quasi-lasagna dish.
When you think about it, lasagna is like the Kevin Spacey of Italian dishes. You can dress it up any way you like and it’s brilliant every time. Except when you put Swiss in it.
Peanut butter
Back when my weight problem started to cross my mother’s radar, she brought me to a doctor who put the fear of God into me by telling me peanut butter was the worst thing I could possibly eat. I think he was referring to the fat content, but for years I couldn’t eat the stuff without feeling guilty. Eventually I wised up and realized peanut butter was, in fact, a vital component in Thai food and all was well in the world again.
I actually don’t indulge in much Thai food anymore, but I do love to spread a tablespoon of peanut butter over a fat-free English muffin. Like guacamole, it’s filling, full of protein and a little bit goes a long way.
Pizza pizza!
I have three words for you; make your own. Nathan and I hardly order out for pizza anymore and we’ve had exactly two frozen pizzas in as many years because we’ve found both a great sauce recipe and a great dough recipe. While nutrition info for most pizza chains is readily available, there’s nothing that compares to making a pie in your own oven and knowing exactly what ingredients went into it. Making pizzas at home is also a great way to get the kids involved in preparing the meal. Just keep your sneakier little topping kleptos away from the finished product. Trust me on this.
When I was a kid, we called it “Shake and Bake”
I think it was one of Oprah’s cookbooks that made the whole “oven fried” thing very popular, and I actually made her oven fried chicken recipe one year when we had Ryan and Marla over. It was the best non-fried fried chicken I’d ever made, though the recipe was a little labor intensive. Nowadays you can find recipes for anything from oven fried coconut shrimp to oven fried potato wedges and you don’t have to worry about spilling the vat of leftover oil onto the kitchen carpet of your rental like we did.
Mmm…potatoes
We tend to eat a lot of potatoes in the winter after the Michigan growing season has ended. Potatoes are great. They’re cheap, versatile and filling. We love them in soups, we love to mash them and I have a couple of wonderful twice-baked potato recipes that no one would suspect came from a light cookbook. When we mash potatoes, we forgo the butter and dump a can of low-sodium chicken broth in to help make them creamy.
If you want a really quick, easy and filling potato dish, bake a large potato and throw an entire box of Green Giant broccoli and cheese sauce over top. I know it sounds bad, but it’s actually not. The cheese sauce is low in fat so that the only thing you’ll be paying for later is the broccoli-nudge nudge.
When you think about it, eating well is as much about the experience as it is about eating things that are good for you. I recently had of a slice of carrot cake from the City Flats Hotel in Holland, MI. It was the best piece of carrot caked I’d ever had and I knew there was no way that recipe could be skinnied down and retain it’s decadence. A friend of mine went back to that hotel a couple of days later and confirmed what I suspected; the moistness of the cake was the result of butter. Lots of it.
I can deal with that. As long as I have my homemade pizza and my pseudo tortilla chips, I can make room for that cake.
But Jell-O? Not so much.
I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and WeightWatchers SmartOnes blogging program, making me eligible to get a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.
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