***Here are a few healthy recipes to eat at home to feed your entire family without hurting your wallet***

Ironically a few days ago, I had a post about cheap food stand foods after noticing a sandwich board announcing a full jumbo hot dog + can of soda pop combo deal as a mistake at $2.50.

If you missed that post, you can still catch it here: The $2.50 unhealthy meal is unbeatable.

I can tell you that I was jumping up and down for joy when my local grocery store put out a flyer with some great recipes for families of 4 people for $15 or less.

Now, don’t worry, I did inspect the menu choices to make sure that we weren’t talking about poor quality foods, but I was quite impressed with the menu.

I should point out that these recipes come from Loblaws grocery store which is one of the biggest grocery market chains in the country. Not only does Loblaws offer an incredible food shopping experience, but they master the art of putting out their own private label foods that keep us all running back to the store for more.

I cannot tell you how many foods in my food pantry are labelled “President’s Choice®”! I just love the quality and price point.

Here are three menus that won’t hurt your pocket book. I have kept the ingredients as generic as possible because I know some of my readers won’t have access to Loblaws private label foods. Obviously, the recipes from the flyer use “President’s Choice ®” ingredients for the most part, but you can easily find all the ingredients listed below at pretty much any grocery store!

So here are a few suggestions to feed a family of 4 for less than $15 and STILL serve good food:

1) Chicken a la King recipe

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Serves 4

>>>Ingredients for Chicken a la King recipe<<<

8 oz (250 g) boneless skinless chicken breasts

¼ tsp (1 ml) freshly ground black pepper

3 tbsp (45 ml) unsalted butter

1 large onion, diced

2 cups (500 ml) sliced mushrooms

2 tbsp (25 ml) all purpose flour

1 cup (250 ml) 2% milk

1 cup (250 ml) chicken broth

1 sweet red pepper diced

1 bag (375 g) of extra broad egg noodles

>>>Preparation for Chicken a la King recipe<<<

1. Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces.

2. Season with pepper

3. In large frying pan, melt 1 tsp (15 ml) of the butter over high heat (you might want to use a bit of olive or grape seed oil to prevent your butter from burning).

4. Add chicken and cook for 2 minutes, or until no longer pink.

5. Remove the chicken with slotted spoon and reserve in a bowl.

6. Melt remaining butter in a pan and cook onions for 2 minutes, or until softened.

7. Add mushrooms and continue cooking for 4 to 6 minutes, or until browned.

8. Reduce heat to medium-high.

9. Slowly stir in milk to make a smooth sauce, then chicken broth.

10. Add red pepper to pan.

11. Cook mixture, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes or until sauce thickens.

12. Return chicken to pan and heat through for 1 minute.

13. Serve over cooked noodles.

Krizia’s note: I rarely cook with butter at home unless I’m making a béchamel. For this recipe, I would simple go with grape seed oil, which has been my cooking oil of choice for many years. The fact that the recipe calls for 2% milk instead of cream, this cuts back on fat and makes this quite healthy. I would be tempted to make mine with 18% cream the time I prepared this recipe to see the difference in taste. That said, this is a tasty and quite inexpensive recipe.

2) Four Peppercorn Stroganoff pie recipe

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Serves 4

>>>Ingredients for Four Peppercorn Stroganoff pie recipe<<<

2 tbsp (25 ml) olive oil

8 oz (227 g) sliced mushrooms

1 lb (500 g) inside round steak cut in ¼-inch (5 mm) thick slices

1 bottle (350 ml) Peppercorn sauce (the recipe calls for PC Memories of Lyon 4-Peppercorn Sauce. You may be able to find a substitute and if you cannot then you might want to use one of your favourite flavouring sauces that doesn’t contain too much sugar)

2 tbsp (25 ml) chopped fresh parsley

½ pkg (250 g) capelli pasta (This elongated pasta is thinner than spaghettini. If you cannot find capelli, you can surely use any shape of pasta you prefer).

>>>Preparation for Four Peppercorn Stroganoff pie recipe<<<

1. In a large non-stick frying pan, heat half of oil over medium-high heat.

2. Cook mushrooms until golden and tender, about 5-6 minutes.

3. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the mushrooms to an 8-inch (2 L) glass baking dish.

4. Return frying pan to medium-high heat.

5. Cook steak for 2 minutes or until medium done.

6. Pour the cooked steak into the sauce.

7. Cook both for about 1 minute.

8. Stir in half of the parsley.

9. Pour the finish mixture into a baking dish and stir to combine with mushrooms.

10. Preheat oven to 200ºC (400ºF).

11. In large saucepan of boiling salted water, cook pasta for 3 minutes or until barely tender.

12. Drain. Toss with remaining oil.

13. Drop pasta into four separate piles on top of beef mixtures, mostly covering beef.

14. Bake in centre of oven until pasta is slightly crispy, about 10 minutes.

15. Sprinkle with remaining parsley and serve.

3) Bacon-Topped Turkey Meatloaf

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 60 minutes

Serves 4

>>>Ingredients for Bacon-Topped Turkey Meatloaf recipe<<<

½ cup (125 ml) croutons (You can make those at home and you’ll find loads of recipes on the Internet and you can actually avoid the hydrogenated fat that most store bought croutons contain. Obviously, if you can afford to buy your croutons at shops like Whole Foods Market, than you should be okay when it comes to adding healthy croutons to your recipe)

½ cup (125 ml) 2% milk

2 tbsp (25 ml) unsalted butter

1 large onion, finely diced

1 egg (I’d choose a free-range egg or an organic free-range egg if possible)

1 tbsp (15 ml) Dijon mustard

1 tbsp (15 ml) grinded steak spices

1 lb (500 g) extra lean ground turkey

5 slices of naturally smoked bacon

>>>Preparation for Bacon-Topped Turkey Meatloaf recipe<<<

1. Preheat oven to 190ºC (375ºF).

2. Spray rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray (I’m not a huge fan of cooking sprays and would most likely use grape seed oil or coco nut oil to oil my pan).

3. In bowl stir together croutons and milk.

4. Soak until croutons are softened.

5. Meanwhile, in non-stick frying pan, melt butter over medium heat; cook onions for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until soft and golden.

6. Set onions aside to cool for 5 minutes.

7. Using fork, mash croutons.

8. In large bowl, stir together onions, crouton mixture, egg, mustard, grinded steak spices.

9. Using your hands or wooden spoon, gently mix in turkey without compressing meat until thoroughly combined.

10. Do not overwork the mixture.

11. Transfer mixture to centre of prepared baking sheet.

12. Using hands, shape into loaf about 20 x 10 x 4 cm (8 x 4 x 1-1/2 inches).

13. Lay strips of bacon lengthwise along top of load, slightly overlapping them.

14. Bake in centre of oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until instant read thermometer reads 74ºC (165ºF).

15. Let cool for 10 minutes.

16. Using two metal spatulas, transfer to cutting board and slice.

17. Serve with roasted potatoes and a side order of frozen corn.

Krizia’s two cents: Bacon is bacon. There’s no point in trying to make bacon healthy because it’s not. It tastes good and ads flavour to your recipes.

Do I eat bacon? Yup, and my bacon of choice is Italian. I LOVE pancetta and I like to joke around and say that if anyone came out with an “eau de pancetta”, I’d gladly wear it as a perfume. I limit the pancetta I eat to once in a while because I know it’s a weakness, but I have not cut out pancetta from my diet since many of my favourite Italian dishes call for it (if those Italian ladies can eat pancetta and look the way they do … so can I).

Turkey bacon is a joke in my opinion because you are fattening a lean meat to mimic pork. In fact, David Zinczenko, co-author of Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution, also highlighted this same point on a recent Oprah show. Canadian bacon is better than turkey bacon (period).

You should NOT be eating pounds and pounds of bacon because your artery will have a fit as you age.

Also, I’ve witnessed too many people cooking bacon in loads of butter or vegetable oil. In some cases, it’s been so bad that I honestly thought I was going to pass out from the horror scene. Bacon is fat so if you need to use a bit of oil to avoid that it sticks in a stainless steel pan, try wait until the bacon as cooked somewhat so you can determine if there is need to add more oil. Just don’t dump oil first and then let the bacon bathe in all that unnecessary fat.

For this Turkey Meatloaf recipe, the chef at Loblaws used extra lean ground turkey (which contains little fat) and the point in adding bacon is to ensure the meat is not too dry during the cooking.

Main photo by thebittenword.com

Photo of chicken a la king recipes by glen edelson

Photo of Beef Stroganoff by naotakem

Photo of meatloaf by rick

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Because of the recession, many people are shunning chi-chi French cuisine and all those complicated fusion dishes in favour of simple, comforting Italian fare. The trend is so popular there were articles about it in the New York Times and a number of financial papers. A while ago, I even wrote that business people in wealthy countries like Switzerland were meeting clients at Italian restaurants for meetings and opting for Italian eateries for lunch.

>>> If you missed that post, you can still read it here: Italian food is popular again!

I love everything Italian, so I get quite upset when I hear people say Italian cuisine is fattening because of the pasta. What many North Americans don’t understand is that Italians from Italy do not eat the same size portions of pasta that are served in restaurants on this side of the Atlantic. If you’ve ever travelled to Italy, you probably noticed many Italians eat a small portion of pasta twice a day, and Italian women are as slim and as sexy as ever!

As much as I love French food, my passion for Italian cooking is just as strong. The two cuisines differ in many ways and I think that’s why I like them equally so much.

Italian cuisine forced me to love rapini, a bitter version of broccoli. When I was a kid growing up, our Italian gardener could have paid me a million dollars and I still would not touch rapini after tasting it once and absolutely hating it. Now, I eat rapini as often as I eat mushrooms (and I eat a lot of sautéed mushrooms!).

>>> I actually wrote about my love for rapini here: I like rapini so much, I could eat it every day!

Like any other types of cuisine, Italian food can be as healthy or unhealthy as you want it to be. If you load up a plate with white pasta, pour a sauce made with loads of hydrogenated oil over it, then sprinkle pounds of cheese on top, then yes, I’d agree Italian food is unhealthy. On the other hand, if you eat the same pasta (yes, white pasta … I still have not given white pasta up, though I do eat wholewheat and multi-grain pasta regularly), top it with a lovely tomato or a meat sauce made with lean meat (all cooked in healthy olive oil) and sprinkle a small amount of cheese over it to flavour the dish (as opposed to drowning the pasta in it), then you have a totally different dish, lower in calories and much healthier for your body.

There are so many good things about Italian cuisine, but sometimes I think people don’t have the right tools (in this case, recipes) and often get lost in the diet-noise of what to eat and what not to eat. To help you make sense of Italian cuisine and start you off with some great recipe ideas, I’ve found these tasty Healthy Italian recipes from Eating Well. Try out a few to find a new list of healthy favourites!

Remember, if Italians from Italy can continue to eat white pasta and white potatoes (aka gnocchi), then why should North Americans give up carbs entirely? Why not learn the basics of healthy eating instead?

Healthy Italian recipes from Eating Well:

>> Italian Main Dish Recipes

* Chicken, Broccoli Rabe & Feta on Toast

* Roman-Style Chicken

* Tuna Pomodoro

* Veal Scaloppine with Lemon, Capers & Leeks

* Fennel, Porcini & Chicken Cacciatore

* Hunter’s Chicken Stew

>> Italian Pasta, Polenta & Gnocchi Recipes

* Gnocchi with Tomatoes, Pancetta & Wilted Watercress

* Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Parsley Brown Butter

* Broccoli Rabe, White Bean & Fontina Pasta

* Penne with Vodka Sauce & Capicola

* Polenta & Vegetable Bake

* Scallop Piccata on Angel Hair

* Rigatoni with Beef & Eggplant Ragu

* Spaghetti alla Carbonara

* Spaghetti with Mushroom Bolognese

>> Italian Salads & Side Dish Recipes

* Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Dressing

* Chard with Shallots, Pancetta & Walnuts

* Sicilian-Style Broccoli

* Red-Wine Risotto

>> Italian Desserts Recipes

* Tiramisu

* Espresso Semifreddo

* Italian Hazelnut Cookies

* Pears Baked in Marsala with Crumbled Amaretti

* Sicilian Granita

* Vanilla-Kirsch Panna Cotta with Cherry Compote

* Chocolate Sambuca Gelato

Photo of pasta by thebittenword.com

Photo of gnocchi by mseckington

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living tip in an aggregator that collects content from different
sites, or as a re-blogged post, please check out the content
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What would Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Greek cuisine be without tomatoes? Europeans who eats a Mediterranean diet consume several kilograms of tomatoes each year.

Tomatoes are not only tasty and delicious, but they contain loads of healthy benefits: they are a good source of fibre, vitamin K, potassium, manganese, folic acid, folate, mangnesium, copper, vitamin E, niacin, vitamin B6, phoaphorus and thiamin; they give you 32 per cent of your daily vitamin C and 25 per cent of your daily vitamin A; they are high in antioxidants (lycopene), which helps your body fight free radicals and they have a lot of water. All of which makes me wonder: Why aren’t more people eating tomatoes?

It’s worth pointing out that genetically-created tomatoes that you can buy at any time of the year, are inferior in taste and freshness. In my opinion, if you buy tomatoes in the middle of December, you aren’t getting the real thing. I limit my tomato buying to the months of July, August and September, when markets and grocery stores are bursting at the seams with locally-grown, sweet ripe fresh tomatoes.

Once the season is over, I turn to canned organic tomatoes which I can buy all year round (they make wonderful sauces). I rarely eat fresh tomatoes during the fall and especially during the winter, because I know they aren’t in season. I’ve bought tomatoes grown in Mexico, Central America and even South America during winter months in the hopes of finding something that tastes as fresh as what I find during the summer, but I’ve always been gravely disappointed because they are picked way too early. Having eaten locally-grown tomatoes in Costa Rica during December, it’s clear the distance they have to travel when they are shipped to North American kills the goodness and the taste. The ones I ate were red, juicy, sweet and delicious.

While you can eat tomatoes raw or cooked, tomatoes cooked in olive oil help you get some much-needed lycopene in your body. There’s a lot of information to absorb when it comes to eating healthy, but lycopene might just be the easiest anti-aging superfood you can add to your diet. Lycopene is a potent antioxidant found in many red fruits (don’t forget that tomatoes are, in fact, a fruit and not a vegetable). If you’re not partial to tomatoes, lycopene can also be found in guavas, grapefruits, watermelons and red oranges. Who knew a glass of sangria could be that good for you?

There are thousands of tomato recipes out there, but when I saw this incredible list, I simply had to share it with my readers. I’m a big fan of Epicurious and have tried many of their delicious recipes. These tomato dishes will make you a star in the kitchen and help you on your way to mastering the art of healthy eating!

Here are 18 healthy tomato recipes that will add loads of flavour to your meals:

1) Ratatouille

2) Roasted Black Sea Bass with Tomato and Olive Salad

3) Charred Heirloom Tomatoes with Fresh Herbs

4) Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

5) Mozzarella Arrabiata Salsa

6) Grilled Chicken Salad with Tomatoes, Spinach, and Feta

7) Pepper Grilled Steak with Chopped Summer Salad

#8) Linguine with Puttanesca Sauce

9) Artichoke, Cherry Tomato, and Feta Salad with Artichoke-Pesto Crostini

10) Tomato, Onion, and Serrano Chile Salsa

11) Tomato Relish

12) Tomatoes Stuffed with Fresh Mozzarella and Basil

13) Tomatoes Stuffed with Guacamole

14) Tomatoes Stuffed with Marinated Feta

15) Smokey Corn and Tomato Bruschetta

16) Eggplant Caprese with Grilled Tomato and Basil Vinaigrette

17) Smokey Corn and Tomato Bruschetta

18) Herbed Lamb, Tomato, and Zucchini Kebabs

Top photo by Muffet

Recipe photos from Epicurious

Photo of tomato and olive oil by lepiaf.geo

>>>> If you’re viewing this healthy eating or healthy
living tip in an aggregator that collects content from different
sites, or as a re-blogged post, please check out the content
from the REAL website at www.EatSmartAgeSmart.com

A recession doesn’t mean that you have give up good food all together!

There are so many dishes you can make that are very budget friendly and healthy at the same time … you just need to know where to find the right recipes.

It’s true that you might have a harder time creating $3 per serving recipes with beef, veal or lamb, but chicken is and has always been a very affordable meat that contains lean protein.

I found these great recipes from Eating Well and they are ALL under $3 per serving!

* Chicken Marbella: This Spanish inspired chicken recipe is quite easy to make.

* Chicken with Honey-Orange Sauce: This is a great recipe that you can easily be served with white rice, brown rice, pasta, whole wheat pasta, potato, sweet potato or coucous!

* Chicken Tetrazzini: This recipe will jazz up plain pasta!

* Provencal Chicken : I’m a sucker for any dish that includes tomatoes and chicken!

* Pecan-Crusted Chicken : It’s hard to believe this recipe is ONLY $2 per serving!

You can find the complete list of Eating Well chicken recipes ranging from $2 to $3 per serving  here: Cheap & Easy Chicken Recipes

Photo by thebittenword.com

The economy might be tight and sometimes plain depressing, but there are still ways to cook healthy and eat well on a budget.

Budgeting might be the MOST popular in the English language nowadays because everyone realizes that if you spend $1 here, you might not have it to spend it there if you’ve lost your job or if you are struggling to make your mortgage payments.

I’ve documented the new movement of the recession diet where it’s been reported that more and more people are turning to fast food restaurants, pasta, Ramen noodles and Spam meat to feed their families while spending the least amount of money.

You can read one of those posts here: Recession diet: There might be a recession, but McDonald’s profits keep rising!!!

I certainly understand that you have to do what needs to be done to take care of your family’s need and would never dream of looking down on anyone who had to take that route to survive these challenging times. That said, there are a growing number of people wanting to still eat like a chef on a smaller budget because most of those “caviar wishes and Champagne dreams” budgets have fizzled with retirement savings.

The keep to eating “gourmet on a budget” is really to know how to shop. There are a few tricks that you can use that allow you to eat like a king on a popper’s budget!

I eat a really healthy diet and I do it on a very reasonable budget. It’s true that I cook 90% of my meals and that does help in keeping the cost down, but I can only do that because I stock up on good ingredients that allow me to whip up any gourmet dish at a reasonable price.

Here are my 7 tips to eating well on a budget:

1)  Those French surely know salt: Not all salts are created equally and that becomes clear when you spend enough time in France. Fleur de sel is a beautiful thing and I would never dream of not finishing a salad or a steak straight out of the pan with it. Although Fleur de sel is readily available in North America, it’s still not cheap. You can however use a few other tricks the French and the Italians use to add flavour to their dishes like: Parmesan cheese, capers, fish sauce (ok, that’s more Asian) and anchovies (you cannot pay me enough money to eat anchovies, but a lot of people love them).  When you prepare your meals at home you will always have less salt in your food then the mountain of salt added to processed foods and frozen dinners.

2) Watch that weekly sales flyer: Let me tell you that I analyze that flyer to determine what I will buy and what I will stock up on. A few weeks ago, my local grocery store had a “stop-the-presses” type of sale on their strip loin steak. I’ve bought a small strip loin steak for $8 or $9 and the store had them at $2.50-$3.50. The sale only lasted a few days and I can tell you that I left the store with 10 steaks and put them in my freezer! I do the same with my frozen wild blueberries from ‘Europe’s Best’ go on sale at $2.99 or $3.99 (instead of $5.99). I see so many people ignoring sales flyers as if they were beyond that … I can tell you that you won’t find one great chef who is not always conscious of the price of food and always looking for the best quality at the best price.

3) Those Italians are surely smart: Yup, some good Italian friends of mine who live on a massive estate in Tuscany with more than 150 olive trees educated me a few years back on Italian cuisine when they announced that Italian cuisine is a cuisine of peasants. That said, what Italians have been able to do with herbs, salt and garlic is truly remarkable if they really consider their cuisine as being that of peasants. The ingredients in Italian cuisine are not all that expensive if you take pasta, risotto or frittatas. It’s how creative they are with vegetables, herbs, olive oil and meats that bring out the flavour of those dishes. Italians also eat a lot of beans and you can create great bean dishes that are incredibly tasty.

4) Hit your local farmer’s market: You’ll hear me talk a lot about farmer’s markets because you can buy local and fresh foods. This is the season for an abundance of fruits and vegetables and if you bring that to the dinner table, then you end up with gourmet meals that are seasonable, therefore very affordable!

5) Embrace chicken and turkey more often: Chicken and turkey are much cheaper than steaks or lamb so you might want to embrace those meats more often. There are at least 1 million recipes of chicken (in my humble opinion) and you can use turkey as a replacement instead of keeping it only for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most grocery stores sell turkey breasts, thighs and drumsticks that you can easily cook during the week. I strictly buy grain fed chicken and turkey and if you look at the price you’ll see it’s not that much different from the non-grain fed meats.

6) Try these fatty meats: Reasonable portions of pancetta (Italian style bacon), Canadian bacon, and good quality sausages (Italian, Moroccan merguez and the Spanish chorizo) add a burst of flavour to your foods. I swear if someone invented “eau de pancetta”, I’d be the first to buy it to spray it all over my body … that’s how much I love pancetta. That said, I eat those fatty  meats in small quantities and don’t eat them weekly.

7) Start rolling: Wraps, burritos and fajitas are a great way to use up leftovers! I often will have leftover grilled vegetables and if I have wraps on hand I know I have a meal and just need to focus on finding one source of protein. Wraps, burritos and fajitas are also a great way for you to take advantage of cheaper cut meats and vegetables that aren’t 100% perfect (you know how you might have a pepper that is not as firm as when you first bought it? That is a great pepper to grill for your wraps, burritos or fajitas.

>>>> If you have other great ideas you use to keep cooking well and eating healthy during the recession, do drop us a line in the comment box to let us know!

Photo by moriza

Food shopping for the holidays is going to hit home because when you see that number flashing on the cash register, it will most likely hurt! With inflation being what it is thanks to this world financial meltdown, it’s going to cost a lot more to buy food for your guests this year.

If you are entertaining during the holidays a lot of the ingredients you bought last year will cost you much more this year. You will either have to find more cost-effective versions of your favourite recipes or you’ll have to explore brand new ideas.

It’s obvious that this tighter financial environment will give way to many creative twists on old favourites and in a few years when things return to normal, we’ll look back and we’ll be very appreciative for the lessons we were able to learn.

I have a few trusted sources for new recipes and I’ve got to tell you that I had never associated Food & Wine recipes with being recession-proof, but they recently created a lineup of 15 recipes that required few ingredients, but that were still quite tasty and have a wow factor when it comes to presentation.

I know that I’ve already started looking at different of their recipes and I already have four of the 15 recession-proof recipes from Food & Wine on my list of MUST-TRIES for the holiday season!

You can use many of these delicious recession-proof recipes as part of your holiday menu for more casual dinner parties, or these make for great everyday cooking ideas year-round.

You’ll find great ideas like Chantilly Potatoes with Parmesan Crust (YUM!), Spicy Roast Chicken (OMG – Oh my God!), Caramelized Broccoli with Garlic (I cannot wait to try this one) and Apple Dumplings (my kind of simple dessert) to name a few!

You’ll find the entire list (and ingredients) of recipes from Food & Wine here: 15 recession-proof recipes from Food & Wine

15 affordable and delicious weekend stews!

As I was finishing up this post, I received another newsletter from Food & Wine and opened and was greeted by 15 delicious looking stews! I find stews so comforting during the colder months and I’m always quite happy to discover new recipes.

Some of the mouth-watering recipes include Iraqi Lamb and Eggplant Stew with Pitas; Fish Stew with Peppers, Almonds and Saffron; Scottish Beef Stew; San Francisco Seafood Stew; and Beer-Braised Chicken Stew with Fava Beans and Peas.

You’ll find the entire list (and ingredients) of recipes from Food & Wine here: 15 affordable and delicious weekend stews from Food & Wine

Photo by TheBusyBrain