Tuesday, February 17th is Pączki Day! It’s a day celebrated by most Poles by eating as many pączki as you can in preparation for the following day, Ash Wednesday, the traditional start of Lent, when many Catholics start fasting until Good Friday. So if you’re going to binge on pączki today, why not keep it healthy and bake them? My recipe is easy and you can fill them with custard or jam… I even fill some with my chocolate pudding recipe. (a single pączki is called a pączek.)
So Happy Pączki Day, everyone. And Szczęśliwa Pączki Dziennie to my Polish friends! Oh, and Happy Fat Tuesday to everyone in New Orleans. That’s about the happiest place to be today. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
There’s almost no cleanup with my easy chicken parmesan recipe. The prep is all done on wax paper and if you line your baking sheet with foil like I do, you won’t have to wash it. This recipe will convince you that frying is not necessary to make a fabulous chicken parmesan. First I pound the chicken to an even thickness of 1/2-inch. That’s to make sure it cooks evenly. Then I dip each piece in flour, beaten egg, and finally coat it with (homemade) bread crumbs that I season myself.
I start with plain breadcrumbs and season them with a store-bought Italian seasoning mix. Then I add parmesan cheese and it makes an delicious breading for these chicken cutlets. They bake for 20 minutes… oh hey… that’s just how long it takes to make my quick and easy marinara sauce, start-to-finish. After 20 minutes, top it with some sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese, bake a few more minutes and… yummm! I always shred my own cheese because packaged pre-shredded cheese does not melt as well.
The last time I made this I baked it at 425 for 17 minutes and it was a bit more crispy but it’s not much of a difference. This photo above was baked at 425. Let me know if you try the higher temperature.
Who doesn’t like chicken parmesan? Now you can make a healthier chicken parm topped with part skim mozarella to keep it low fat and light. This is truly Italian comfort food. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
I just posted the updated recipe for my marble loaf cake that I love so much. I went back to the original way that I was making it, which involved beating egg whites and folding them into the batter at the end. I had eliminated that step to make the recipe easier and less work but after making it a few times, I realized I should have left it alone.
So… good news / bad news. The good news is the loaf is light and fluffy again and the bad news is it takes a little more work – well just the one extra step of beating the egg whites.
If you hate washing pans (who doesn’t?) you will like this. If you do what I do and line the loaf pan completely with foil, you won’t have to wash the pan. And I don’t even grease the foil but you can if you want to. I just peel away the foil from the loaf, after about 15 minutes of cooling. But be careful when putting in the foil and use your knuckles in the corners so it doesn’t tear.
You’ll notice that I beat the egg whites first. When beating egg whites there must be no fat whatsoever in the bowl, not from the yolk or from beaters not are not completely clean. So use your clean beaters on the whites first. Now you can continue using the beaters on the second mixture without having to clean them first. My first recipe had fresh orange zest added and that is still an option. You can add the zest of an orange along with the flour but I like it both ways, with and without the orange zest.
This marble loaf is the first thing I make for company because it makes a beautiful presentation and goes really well with coffee or tea. And people will be amazed when you say, “There’s no butter at all in this cake.” I hope you’ll try my new, updated marble loaf cake. Click here for the new recipe. (Still want the old recipe? Click here) – Jenny Jones
Wait until you experience the taste of fresh apple sauce. You won’t want to buy it any more. Fresh homemade applesauce is so good, I sometimes eat it with a spoon as my dessert. I see lots of recipes with added sugar and stuff, but here’s the thing. Apples are sweet. They don’t need added sugar so this is the easiest, and healthiest, thing to make. You just cook some apples. Just peel, core, and chop them up and add a little water in the pan to get the cooking started.
You can have fun trying it with different varieties of apples. Not all apples taste the same. Granny Smith are good for baking but to me, not sweet enough for apple sauce. My favorite for sauce is gala but do you have any idea the number of different apple varieties that exist in the world? Seven thousand! You heard me. That’s 7,000! Here are just a few that I’ve actually seen: Rome, Braeburn, Cortland, Crispin, McIntosh, Fuji, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Gravenstein, Liberty, Jonamac, Ida Red, Criterion, Winesap, Pippin, Elstar, Cameo, Pink Lady, Spartan, Newton, Sunrise, Empire, Ginger Gold, Red Cort, Northern Spy, Almata, Gold Russet, Maiden’s Blush, Crimson Gold, Dorsett, Honey Crisp, Honey Gold, Winesap, and Anna (I grow my own Anna apples). I get to keep the ones the squirrels don’t eat!
The point is, you can come up with a lot of different flavors of apple sauce depending on the type of apple, or use a combination of different varieties. Have fun with this simple, easy healthy snack. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
You only need a few basic ingredients to make this easy tortilla pie: whole wheat tortillas, canned beans, bottled salsa, peppers, and reduced fat cheese. Add some onions and garlic and this comes together pronto in a yummy, stick-to-the-ribs dinner the whole family will love.
Here’s why I love my easy tortilla pie: It has two different kinds of beans, black and cannellini beans; It has three different colors of pepper – red, green and yellow; And it’s made with whole wheat tortillas. Even if you aren’t a fan of whole wheat tortillas, they become so soft when baked with my sauce and cheeses, you can eat this moist layered casserole with a spoon.
There’s a recipe for tortilla pie in my original cookbook but this new recipe is simpler, faster, and healthier, not to mention even more delicious. This is an easy recipe to customize and make your own. If you like is spicy, be sure to include the jalapeño pepper and get a jar of spicy salsa. If you like it mild, you can leave out the jalapeño pepper altogether and replace it with extra bell pepper, or a milder Anaheim pepper, and use a mild salsa.
Here are a couple of brands I use in this recipe:
Tortillas – Trader Joe’s Whole Wheat Tortillas
Salsa – Green Mountain Gringo from Whole Foods
I make my pie in an 8-inch round pyrex baking dish with tall sides and a glass lid. Sometimes I cut the tortillas to fit exactly into the baking pan and with this pan, the filling all stays inside and doesn’t spill out. A lot of recipes use a springform pan and if you have one, that’s the pan to use. You can also make this tortilla pie in any kind of pie pan, preferably deep dish. Some of the beans may spill out but who cares? Just make sure you cover it well with foil.
Nutritionally, this healthy meal is hard to beat. There is lots of fiber in the beans as well as the tortillas, and beans also provide calcium and protein. The colored peppers are full of antioxidants to help protect against diseases like heart disease and cancer. And if you make it spicy, spicy foods boost metabolism and that helps with weight loss. But the best reason of all to make this easy casserole is it’s simply delicious. And it’s meatless, too. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
Looking for a family dinner that pleases everybody? Make my quick & easy spaghetti & meatballs! It only takes 35 minutes to make this delicious family favorite, all from scratch, and I promise you will never have leftovers. The lean meatballs are made with ground sirloin and they are super soft because they cook right in the sauce. The sauce is my quick & easy spaghetti sauce and I just add the meatballs (& spaghetti) to make this a complete meal… but don’t forget the salad.
This is really a quick & easy recipe because the sauce takes 5 minutes of prep and the meatballs take 10 minutes to put together. Then it all cooks in one pot and you have the most delicious spaghetti dinner. The sauce needs to cover the meatballs and the pot I use measures 7 1/2 inches across. If your pot is bigger than that, you might need to make more, smaller meatballs so they are covered by the sauce. Marinara sauce does not need to cook for hours on the stove. My recipe uses canned plum tomatoes, the best kind for sauce, and I prefer a smooth sauce so I puree the whole tomatoes first. If you like it more chunky, you can cut the tomatoes up with scissors or a knife for a chunkier sauce.
These meatballs and so soft they really just melt in your mouth. That’s because I use fresh bread crumbs and not dried ones. To make fresh crumbs, which are just soft bread in tiny pieces, I process two slices of bread in a food processor. Then I just wipe out the bowl and use the same one to puree the tomatoes. If you don’t have a food processor, you can cut the bread into small pieces and puree the tomatoes in a blender.
Whether you’re having company or a family dinner, you can’t go wrong with homemade spaghetti & meatballs. Try my easy recipe and you’ll see why they call it comfort food. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
A healthy, high fiber breakfast is important but it can also be fun. And waffles are fun. Let’s talk about how healthy they are first. My waffles are made with 100% whole wheat pastry flour and extra light olive oil so… fiber and heart healthy fat. Then I bake each one with a big pile of sliced almonds for extra protein and extra crunch. The almonds get baked into the waffle and then you get a fantastic toasted almond flavor with each bite. Oh, and they are easy to make from scratch. Putting the batter together takes less than five minutes!
Now let’s talk about the fun part… what to put on your waffles. Well, there’s a little butter and of course real maple syrup, or honey, maybe some sliced bananas, strawberries, blueberries, peanut butter, yogurt, or take a minute to cook up some caramelized apples. Here’s how I see it. Let’s say you have three waffles. Put some healthy fresh fruit on the first one, some maple syrup on the second one, and the third one can be dessert. What’s wrong with a few chocolate chips or a little drizzle of chocolate syrup if it means you’re having whole grain waffles? A friend of mine wouldn’t tell you but she puts vanilla frozen yogurt on her third waffle… but you never heard it from me. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
Eat a piece of cheesecake and run! That’s because to burn off the calories from one slice of old fashioned cheesecake, you would have to jog for over an hour. But not so with my lightened up ricotta cheesecake. A walk around the block should do it. This is a healthier cheesecake for sure because it’s made using part skim ricotta cheese with no cream cheese or sour cream in sight. It’s also called Italian Cheesecake and the first time I had it was at an Italian restaurant. I ordered the cheesecake intending to share because it was, you know… cheesecake. But it was so light I ate the whole piece and could easily have had another one.
It was delicious! I had to learn how to make my own and I did. I even lightened it up some more by using part skim ricotta cheese and this delicious dessert just melts in your mouth. So no more full fat cheesecake for me. The last time I had regular full fat cheesecake at that “factory,” I wanted to stop at the mall on the way home and buy bigger pants. Make my Light as a Cloud Ricotta Cheesecake and you won’t need new pants. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
These healthy cookies are always on hand in my kitchen because I love sweets but they have to be as healthy as I can make them. And these are. They are 100% whole grain made with whole wheat pastry flour and oats. Then I add oil (I prefer avocado oil these days) and this is a cookie I can eat every day (and I do!). The truth is that most of the time, dessert in my house is just a cookie and it’s this cookie more than any other. It’s sweet and satisfying and might actually do you some good. It has lots of fiber, heart healthy fat, and no butter or white flour. Did I mention a few mini chocolate chips?
I tried to decide what to call this… Oatmeal Cookies, Whole Grain Cookies, Healthy Cookies, Cookies I Eat Every Day, but then I settled on Everyday Cookies because I have them just about every day. Sure, they are dessert after dinner but why not after breakfast? They have oats and whole grains and nuts – isn’t that what’s in a granola bar? And my granola bar recipe has chocolate chips too.
These are some crispy cookies, which is good because they keep really well. I keep them in a covered container, mostly in the fridge by the second day, but they don’t last long. With two of us here they disappear fast and when they’re gone, I make more. If you’re looking for a crispy, healthier cookie, one that you can eat every day that might even do you some good, click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
Five ingredients is all you need to make these simple, easy turkey-apple breakfast patties… and about 15 minutes. In fact, you’ll barely have enough time to scramble some eggs. Okay, I admit it. I like breakfast sausage but I haven’t had it in years. There’s this thing I have about eating healthy. I love the smell and flavor of traditional breakfast links but not all the fat that’s in there. I’m very excited that I can enjoy a healthier breakfast sausage. (patty, actually – unless you have a sausage maker and some casing!) If you’re wondering about using white ground turkey breast, I tried it and it’s just too dry but here’s the good news – dark meat is nutritionally superior to white meat. Look at this:
Calories: White meat = 161 calories. Dark meat = 192 calories.
Fat: White meat = 4 grams. Dark meat = 8 grams.
Protein: White meat = 30 grams. Dark meat = 28 grams.
Iron: White meat = 1.57 mg. Dark meat = 2.4 mg.
Zinc: White meat = 2.08 mg. Dark meat = 4.3 mg.
Thiamine: White meat = .04 mg. Dark meat = .05 mg.
Riboflavin: White meat = .13 mg. Dark meat = .24 mg.
Selenium: White meat = 32.10 mcg. Dark meat = 40.90 mcg.
Folate: White meat = .01 mcg. Dark meat = 10 mcg.
So don’t skip breakfast. Turkey sausage and eggs is full of protein and with a slice of whole grain bread, it’ll keep you going for hours. How about making your own breakfast sandwich with a whole grain english muffin, a fried egg, and a turkey patty. Note to self: Add that to my bucket list. To try my easy, healthy turkey breakfast patties, click herefor the recipe.
