Tip Tuesday: Less is more...

Years ago, in an attempt to stretch our grocery budget, I started adding less ground meat to recipes that called for it. This not only saved us money, but it has also saved us in calories and fat. When making spaghetti sauce, instead of using a full pound of ground meat (we use ground turkey for the most part, again because the kind we get is less expensive than ground beef) I usually use about 1/3 pound instead. Even though we have eight people eating dinner at our house, no one has ever complained that they need more meat. The amount I do put it adds the flavor and texture, but it doesn't have to be overkill.

The exception is something like tacos or burritos, which I usually use a larger amount of meat for because it is going to an individual item. However, I also use refried beans in tacos and burritos, and that helps us to cut back on the amount of meat we are using there too.

Another area where less is more is cheese. I have been really aware of cheese ever since I started counting my calories. I have found that using less cheese on the top of casseroles has not changed the flavor for me, and for some things, like when I make homemade chimichangas, I stir the cheese into the other fillings rather than putting the cheese on each individual chimi as I roll them. This lets me limit the amount of cheese and it also cuts down on a step in the rolling process which also saves me time.

There are many other ways we can cut back on calories, simply by paying attention to how much of something we are using. Salad dressing, mayo, butter and oils in general can really add up in the way of calories and fat. I used to just dump some oil into my frying pan when making a meal. This makes whatever amount of oil I used get cooked into our meal, and sometimes I was using more than I really needed to. Simply by measuring a tablespoon of oil or two instead of dumping what amounted to much more than that will cut back the amount of fat in a dish. The same thing goes for butter. We don't really have to use a whole tablespoon of butter on our toast and spread it around until it all melts in. We can simply take less butter to start with, and surprisingly, half of the regular amount is usually enough!

I guess my point is, that if we pay attention to some of the smaller details, we can still get a lot out of our food, without having to eat a lot of extra and unneccesary calories.