Happy New Year!
It’s New Year’s Eve!
It is the very last day of 2012!
You know what that means? It means that it’s New Year’s Resolution time for many. I know that last year I talked a little bit about the fact that because our entire family runs on a school year schedule, I’m kind of programmed to set my own personal goals and resolutions for the “year” in September, rather than January.
And that’s still true, but this new year is going to be a bit different, and you’ll be seeing it with some changes to The Whole Bag of Chips as well.
This blog is designed so that it often follows the twists and turns of our family’s life. As with any family, there are always lots of twists! We like to keep things exciting at our house.
Some of you may know that for years we have had a variety of stomach issues here. I know I’ve mentioned it in some of my posts. It’s one reason we don’t eat out often (besides the financial reason), it’s the reason I do my “sweets” after school rather than at night before bedtime, and it’s the reason why we work so hard to make our meals from scratch, and try to eat as healthy as we can.
That said, we still love our homemade desserts.
A lot.
However, in an interesting twist, it was recently suggested to us that eating a strict low fat/healthy fat/healthy carb diet might be beneficial in helping us to fight the chronic belly aches here at our house. It was suggested that one of us may have something similar to an allergy to fats.
The first reaction I had was similar to the day I was told that one of my kids was allergic to dust.
She’s doomed.
But, in keeping with my overachiever, Type A personality, my next reaction was to take a deep breath and find out all that I could about cooking a low fat/healthy fat/healthy carb menu for my family.
Immediately.
We needed to see if this suggestion held any water.
And it did.
It was recommended that if we wanted to truly try this out and we were looking for recipes, that The South Beach Diet might be a good one to try for guidelines and new menu ideas. I checked one cookbook out of the library the very next day and read the entire thing cover to cover in about two days’ time, the first weekend of December.
December.
Christmas month.
Cookies, desserts, parties.
Not the easiest time to make such a switch, but I was going to give it 100%.
And so, here it is, December 31, almost a full month into our experiment, and although the chronic stomach pain has not completely disappeared, we have seen an improvement, enough that we want to keep up with this new way of eating. Our family is not on the diet, per se, not following the strict Phase I, II and III plan, but rather using the facts in the beginning of the book about fats and carbs and sugars, along with the recipes throughout the book, to overhaul our menu.
Therefore, in keeping with many people’s top New Year’s Resolutions: losing weight, and staying fit and healthy, The Whole Bag of Chips recipes will be featuring the recipes that we have been using in our meals as of late. We have switched our entire family over to this “diet” so that we are all eating the same thing and all eating as healthy as possible, together.
I tried to keep my healthy versions as close to my regular versions as possible.
When it came time for Christmas Cookie baking, I made two sets: a regular set of our favorites for our trays and a healthy set of our same favorites, using modified ingredients, for our family. We did not want to give up the things we loved but yet we needed to try to keep to as low fat a diet as possible, even at Christmas.
So today, in preparation for your New Year’s Day breakfast, I will post for you a breakfast recipe that you can use tomorrow morning if you would like to start your 2013 eating healthier too. The recipe is a modified version of our homemade pancake recipe along with a delicious hot peach compote recipe to go on top. Neither is far off from what we normally would make (in fact this pancake recipe hardly differs from our own), but they both are in keeping with the low fat/healthy fat/healthy carb guidelines. One is a South Beach cookbook recipe and one is from the Farm Girl Gourmet blog that I found online.
Happy 2013 and enjoy!
PANCAKES (from the South Beach Diet Cookbook)
My entire family loved this compote and it was so easy! I’d double the recipe next time.
INGREDIENTS
2 cups whole wheat or whole grain pastry flour (We have always had whole wheat flour at our house all the time and will often do half wheat, half white flour in our recipes.)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 egg white (we just did two eggs instead of one egg and one egg white)
2 cups buttermilk (to make buttermilk use 1 T. white vinegar to 1 cup milk, so two and two here)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons canola oil (I used plain nonfat yogurt instead of oil, which is a tip we learned a few months back. We love how fluffy it makes our pancakes and waffles.)
DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl, whisk together the egg and egg white until very foamy. Whisk in the buttermilk, vanilla extract, and oil.
Stir into the flour mixture just until the batter is combined and pourable.
Heat a large, nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium heat.
Pour 1/3 cup batter into the skillet to form a 4″ pancake. Cook for 2-3 minutes, or until the bottom is browned.
Turn and cook for 1-2 minutes or until golden brown.
I had everything I needed for this recipe at home already.
FRESH PEACH COMPOTE (from the Farm Girl Gourmet blog)
INGREDIENTS
1 pound fresh peaches, skinned, pitted and sliced (or frozen) *I used a bag of Aldi’s frozen peaches.
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
DIRECTIONS
In a medium saucepan, add the peaches, brown sugar, water and cinnamon, bring to a boil.
Turn heat down to medium low and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until mixture is thick and liquid is syrupy.
The Whole bag of Chips 