Weekly Wellness
Issue 251
Featured Article
Healthy Holiday Suggestions -- Suggestions for getting through the holiday eating and baking season without too much damage to your waistline!
Fitness Tip
Break it Up!
Can't find time to fit in a workout? Most fitness experts agree that exercising for three ten-minute sessions every day offers the same benefits as daily half-hour workouts. In fact, a ten-minute walk after supper can help you burn extra calories all night long! Try taking ten-minute walks before work, during your lunch break and as mentioned, after dinner.
Nutrition Tip
The great pumpkin.
Pumpkin in its pure form -- including canned -- has fat-busting potential in baked goods. Use it to replace up to 3/4 of the fat in some of your favorite spiced muffins and quick-bread recipes. Pumpkin, a winter squash, is especially rich in beta-carotene, vitamin C, potassium and fiber, with some iron and few calories.
Quip or Quote of the Week
Quip: Nutmeg contains a mildly hallucinogenic chemical called myristicin.
Quick Recipe
Cheese Roll Up
Spread a flour tortilla with a thin layer of cream cheese. Top with a slice of lean smoked ham and cheese slice; roll up. Microwave about ten seconds.
Tidbit
Hot Cocoa Healthier Than Wine
Researchers at Cornell University found that hot cocoa contains more antioxidants per cup than a similar serving of red wine or green tea. The researchers say that drinking a cup of hot cocoa is healthier than eating a chocolate bar. It has about one-third of a gram of fat per one-cup serving, compared with eight grams of fat in a standard-size 40-gram chocolate bar. To get the most benefits, use pure cocoa powder.
Food Fixes
To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into the baking pan; wrap the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.
Hollow out large tomatoes or bell peppers to use as dip containers.
For hardened brown sugar: try keeping a bag of prunes with the top cut off laying on top of your container of brown sugar. The brown sugar never gets hard and when the prunes start drying out, just put them in a saucepan and cook for whatever time it takes for them to soften. Having been in with the sugar they are usually sweet enough without adding more sugar.
Enjoy cooking tips? Check out the Quick Cooking Tips section! They're quick, easy and helpful!