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Healthy Holiday Suggestions Healthy Halloween Recipe Holidays can be difficult for those on a diabetic diet -- actually, for anyone on any diet! The American Diabetes Association offers the following suggestions to make your celebrations a little sweeter and less damaging to your health ad waistline. These are great suggestions for anyone to follow. You can enjoy an occasional sugar-containing food, but it must be substituted for other carbohydrates already in your diet. If you want a small slice of pumpkin pie, for example, give up the baked potato and toppings at dinner.

When you are making a festive dessert, try cutting the sugar by one-third to one-half and increasing the cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and any other sweet-tasting spices and flavorings. Decide ahead of time what and how much you will eat and how you will handle social pressure to indulge in foods that are not normally in your diet. Take a smaller serving size of dessert or scrape off the high-fat whipped cream topping. Volunteer to bring a favorite low-sugar dish such as baked apples or sugar-free puddings to social functions. Do not take a holiday from your daily exercise routine. Continue your normal workouts in addition to extra activities such as power walking while shopping. Source: American Diabetes Association Beneficial Baking Basics Are you looking for a few home made treats that won't blow your caloric intake? Add the following items to your grocery list the next time you want to bake a sweet treat:

• Applesauce: Fruit purees such as applesauce can replace up to half of the fat called for in baked items. The natural sugars and fibers in applesauce help to retain moisture.
• Cocoa: Reduce the amount of baking chocolate in a recipe with low-fat cocoa. Three tablespoons of cocoa plus 1-tablespoon of water equals one square of baking chocolate. Mix the cocoa into the dry ingredients and stir the water into the wet or creamed items in the recipe.
• Confectioners' Sugar: Leave that can of frosting on the shelf and reach for the confectioners' sugar instead. A light dusting over cakes and brownies significantly cuts calories and fat compared to heavy frosting.
• Nuts: It's all right to keep nuts on your shopping list -- simply decrease the amount you usually purchase. Toast the nuts before mixing them into your batter or dough. This will give them a stronger flavor so you can use less of them.
• Yogurt: Replace up to half of the butter in your recipe with half as much low-fat or nonfat plain yogurt. Not only does this decrease the fat, but it also helps create tender products.

Hints and Helpers

• Make your own Easter egg dyes. Boil the eggs with grass for green, onion skins for yellow and beets for red.
• When making Easter eggs, remove an egg that has cracked from boiling water and pour a generous amount of salt over the crack. This will seal the crack and contain the egg white.
• After the Easter holiday, purchase the large eggs and bunnies made from chocolate at half price or less. Use for any recipes to save some dollars.
• To preserve a Halloween pumpkin, just spray the inside and outside surfaces with an antiseptic spray to kill bacteria and keep the pumpkin in better shape.
• When stuffing your holiday turkey, try placing a piece of cheesecloth inside the cavity before adding the stuffing. When you remove the cloth, all the stuffing will come out at one time. Markets are now selling a stuffing sac; one sac costs more than enough cheesecloth purchased in bulk to do ten birds.
• Never stuff your turkey with warm stuffing and leave overnight, even if refrigerated. Always keep the stuffing separate and stuff the bird before cooking.
• Grind up a few black walnuts in a blender to add to your pumpkin pie for an improved flavor.
• Make a heart-shaped cake: First, bake both a round cake and a square cake. Cut the round cake in half, and then turn the square cake so that the corners face you in a diamond shape. Place each half of the round cake on the two uppermost sides of the diamond. Now you have a perfect heart-shaped cake for Valentine's Day.

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