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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Kindergarten parent night and orientation

by Heather on September 2, 2010

It’s nearly 3 AM in these parts and I can’t sleep, so I figured I may as well tell you how our kindergarten orientation went last night.

One thing I haven’t mentioned about Autumn starting kindergarten is that she’s going into a Spanish immersion program. Our district just happened to be starting the program this year at the elementary school Autumn was going to be attending anyway, so right around the time we went through the screening process we also submitted our application to the immersion program.

If you’re not familiar with language immersion, it’s a method of teaching a foreign language that takes advantage of a child’s natural ability to absorb and retain a second language at a very young age. All throughout elementary school Autumn will be taught the standard curriculum by Spanish speaking teachers. Math, geography, history, etc will all be taught in Spanish, and by the time she reaches junior high, Autumn will be fluent in the language. We’re pretty excited about the program and I’m already imagining how useful it will be to have a pint-size translator at my disposal should I ever find myself in Cozumel and in desperate need of a bathroom.

So we arrived at the school last night, and as soon as we stepped into the building I knew I was in trouble. My office at work is freezing most of the time and I wear clothes that are normally inappropriate for the season in order to retain the feeling in my extremities. Yesterday I wore a sweater, a light one as sweaters go, but since it did not behoove the school to turn on the AC for parent night (it’s a public school-why would they?) that sweater may as well have been a parka stuffed with hot coals for all the comfort it offered (read NONE).

We found Autumn’s classroom, introduced ourselves to her teachers and took a quick tour around the school. Even though I grew up in the district, I’d never been in this school before and I was struck by it’s sprawling and somewhat confusing layout. While Autumn’s classroom is an actual room with a door, some of the grades seem to be situated more communally. The library appears to be the hub and I noticed several classrooms were just open annexes of the library itself. Weird but kind of cool at the same time.

We finished our tour and found our way back to Autumn’s classroom, but as more parents and children started filing into the already hot room, I told Nathan I couldn’t take it anymore and quick went home to get rid of the sweater.

Since we only live a half mile from the school, it took me less than ten minutes to drive home, change and drive back. When I returned, the room was stuffed with people and hotter than ever. I found Nathan and asked if he saw any familiar faces. He said yes and pointed to a table where the neighbor who lives behind us was sitting with her son.

Oy. These would be the neighbors I’ve written about before. The neighbors with six kids who spend all summer screaming at each other outside our bedroom window. The chaos of their unsupervised play has been the soundtrack of our summer every year since we moved into this house. The kids appear to have no curfew and we’ll often hear them screaming on the trampoline long after dark.

The thing about this Spanish immersion program is that Autumn will spend her entire elementary career grouped with the same kids. While there may be some parents who may pull their kids out at some point, the classmates Autumn starts out with now will be the ones she has every year through sixth grade.

Ok. So the neighbors we don’t like so much also have their kid in the program. Fine. Let’s get to know them. We’re in this for the next seven years so we may as well make an effort. That is part of the problem, after all. We don’t know them at all and haven’t made any kind of effort to get to know them. Hell, before last night we didn’t even know their last name.

Nuh-uh. Nathan wants no part of that. He doesn’t like the kid who will be in Autumn’s class. He doesn’t like any of the kids, but he especially doesn’t like that kid because he has caught him throwing rocks at our house and tossing random bits of crap over the fence into our yard.

Delinquent, he says. No way is Autumn going to be friends with him.

And so I had to offer a little insight into the female mind. I told my husband that if he declares that boy as off limits, Autumn is going to want nothing more than to be with that boy. This immersion program is welcoming children from outside our district and that boy may be the only class mate who lives close to us. We can’t ignore the fact that one day Autumn is going to be out on the deck, see him in the yard behind us and ask to go over and play.

And if we say no? I have a feeling she’d have no problem finding her own way over there.

So I have my work cut out for me in trying to convince my husband it just might be possible to have a pleasant relationship with these people.

Let’s make an effort now. It might just save us all from becoming reluctant in-laws later, you know?

Other than the neighbor thing, this Spanish immersion program looks like it’s going to be fantastic. I’m actually kind of excited to be sharing our experiences with it and hope to post more updates and anecdotes throughout the school year, neighbor boy or no.

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Way existential. Like Ren and Stimpy.

September 1, 2010

Last week I signed up to go to the Type-A Mom Blogging Conference. I wasn’t planning on going to another conference this year. In fact, a conference that caters specifically to moms was way off my radar. I was very happy with my experience at Gleek Retreat and I didn’t find myself really down about [...]

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The bobcat returns

August 26, 2010

Long before Heather Armstrong started writing about her new house, the crazy lady who sold her said house and the mythical bobcat that supposedly camped out in the shed, my grandmother claimed she had her own bobcat roaming the back yard. That my grandmother thought she had a bobcat living in her yard was funny [...]

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One minute, four years ago

August 25, 2010

A few years ago my mother gave me this awful little digital video camera for Christmas.  I think it may have been a doorbuster deal at some store on Black Friday, but the thing  sucked the life out of every AA battery I put into it and took really horrible videos to boot. The first [...]

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Fat girl, writing

August 24, 2010

There’s a good post over at BlogHer right now about the importance of a fat woman being able to call herself “fat.” I’m not going to summarize it in depth other than to say the author, Angie Manfredi of Fat Girl, Reading, urges us to look at the word not as an insult but as [...]

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Heidi Klum, Santa Claus and me

August 18, 2010

Autumn has started to pay more attention to the physical differences in people.  I’ve wanted to write about this for awhile because a) she’s a girl b) she’s my girl and c) she recently called me “fat” for the first time ever. I knew this was coming. Once Autumn was introduced to the preschool environment [...]

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Run, baby, run

August 17, 2010

When I was a kid, there was one day every year that I dreaded like none other. As it approached, the bile in my stomach would rise, my palms would sweat and I had no other wish than for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. If there was ever an antithesis to [...]

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Fool me twice

August 13, 2010

One of the best things to have come out of this blogging gig is that I’ve become friends with people I never would have known had I never started writing online. Some of these friends are other local bloggers I’ve met through our monthly meetups, but the dearest members of my online tribe tend to [...]

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Remember diapers? Yeah, they were pretty easy, weren’t they?

August 12, 2010

My daughter starts kindergarten in three and a half weeks. I told one of my co-workers this yesterday and she was all “Nuh-uh! Already?” I know. Our district tests for kindergarten readiness in the spring. Not all districts do this and I consider us very fortunate that ours takes kindergarten placement so seriously. Of course [...]

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