Sorry, You've Been Replaced

Sorry Cookie, Puddin', Sweetie, you've been replaced...

The Get Hawt topic for this week is Substitutions, the assignment is to write about ways that we've found to substitute healthy foods in place of unhealthy ones.  This is something I've been actively trying to do for the past three weeks, and it's not as hard as you might think.

Consider lunch for example.  Mine used to consist of a "main" item, a frozen pot pie or a sandwich, some chips, and a can of Pepsi.  Every day, no matter what the food items were, there was a can of Pepsi in there somewhere.  No more.  I've replaced that can of pop with a bottle of water.  I think I've had four pops in the past three weeks.

Another substitution that was easy to make - yogurt in place of pudding.  I love those little Jello pudding cups - tapioca is my favorite.  I would almost always have one with lunch, or something equally sweet.  You're supposed to have dessert with every meal, right?  I've eliminated the pudding in favor of Yoplait yogurts.  Calorie-wise, I'm not sure there's much difference, but it seems like a good change to make.

The main course for lunch has become, at least for now, a large serving of fresh fruit.  I've found a 2-cup serving of grapes, watermelon, and chopped apples to be quite satisfying, and infinitely better than those pot pies.

There have been substitutions as home too.  The biggest has been in the area of side dishes.  As I've said before, my wife and I were raised on meat and potatoes.  Every meal had to have some kind of meat, and a side of potatoes, usually mashed.  Bake a chicken, serve with mashed potatoes.  Pork roast, goes with mashed potatoes.  Salmon, that calls for red potatoes.  See where I'm going with this?

We've swapped out the potatoes for a vegetable or rice side dish.  I've become a big fan of those frozen steamer bags that you pop in the microwave for 5 minutes.  They come in a variety of choices, they're easy to make, quite tasty, and as far as I can tell, they're not loaded up with fake ingredients.

The hardest substitution to make at home has been the meat.  We're trying to do at least two meals a week free of meat (not counting fish).  I've liked every alternative that I've tried so far, but not so with Missy.  It hasn't been easy finding recipes that we both like.  Most meat-free recipes use beans in place of meat, and she's not a huge bean fan.  One recipe that we did agree on was a Chipotle bean burrito (recipe forthcoming), very, very tasty, and completely meat free.  It will be on the menu again this week for sure.

Another pitfall at home is after-dinner snacking.  I can sit down with a package of those sugar wafer cookies and annihilate the entire package, no sweat.  Yeah, I know.  That has ended.  If there is any snacking after dinner now, it's popcorn.  Not that nasty microwave stuff either.  I'm talking real home-made popcorn, popped on the stove, with just a little butter and salt added.  Delicious, and not terribly unhealthy.

Giving up the goodies isn't easy, but it's worth it it.