You can still enjoy fettuccine alfredo, with a few minor adjustments.

I had the opportunity to present a class today on simple changes we can make to improve our diets.  I love teaching this type of class because I always learn something new from the discussion with those who attend.  Thank you to all of the lovely ladies who attended the three sessions today.  I appreciate all of your comments and am anxious to try out some of your ideas.  It is fun to discuss the common goal of better health.

Although this presentation wasn’t on my typical preparedness theme, we did touch on several food storage items including grains, oils, sweeteners, and dehydrated fruits and vegetables.  Since freeze dried and dehydrated foods retain much more of their nutrients than their canned counterparts, these fruits and vegetables add beneficial nutrients to soups, casseroles, and many other recipes.  For any class attendees, I realized that I forgot to mention one of my favorite benefits of storing and using agave nectar! It has a nice 2-3 year shelf life, and doesn’t crystallize like honey. 

Anyway, if you missed the class but would like a copy of my handout, you can download it by clicking here: Stake Relief Society Healthy Foods Handout. This file includes the recipe alterations on the Pumpkin Sheet Cake.

I tease about skipping Thanksgiving just so we can get on to Christmas, but I really enjoy preparing this special family meal.  It’s a lot of work, but like many of you who love to cook, I get a great sense of satisfaction from presenting my wares at the kitchen table and hearing my family and friends murmur their pleasure as they indulge. Last year, I posted some of my favorite easy Thanksgiving side dish recipes including Corn Souffle, Orange Jello Salad, Yam and Apple Bake, and Make Ahead Crescent Rolls.  Today I’ll share another favorite side dish recipe, and a new recipe I’m trying this year for homemade sugar-free cranberry sauce made with agave nectar.

I mentioned in a previous post that it’s a great time to stock up on canned goods and other items for food storage because so many products go on sale for holiday cooking and baking. One of my favorite products to buy in November is stuffing mix.  It lasts at least a year on your shelf and is great to use in casseroles, to crush for nice seasoned crumbs to use in coatings for meat, or simply to prepare as a side dish.  For the big Thanksgiving meal, I like to customize it with this family favorite recipe:

CROWD PLEASING APPLE STUFFING

1 Box (12 ounce) Seasoned Dressing Mix
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped onion
2 tart green apples, cored, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup raisins

½ cup dried cherries
2/3 cup chopped parsley (fresh is best)
¾ cup chicken broth

¾ cup apple juice
1/2 cup melted butter

In large bowl, combine stuffing, celery, onion, apples, raisins, cherries and parsley. Moisten with broth, apple juice and butter, tossing lightly but well. Add more apple juice if needed.

Casserole Method: Place in a 12 1/2 x 9 x 2 1/8-inch baking pan or 3-quart oven-safe casserole dish. Cover and bake at 350 degrees 30 minutes until heated through. To make it crisper, uncover and bake 5-10 minutes longer. Makes 12 to 15 servings.

Cranberry sauce is typically loaded with high fructose corn syrup, so I’m excited to try this all-natural version this year.  I have been using agave nectar for about 5 years now, and specifically Xagave brand , which is a blend of blue and white agave nectars, for about a year.  I love agave not just for of its nutritional benefits, but for its great shelf life for food storage.  It has nearly the same flavor and consistency of honey, but you can keep agave on your shelf for years and it will never crystallize.  If you’ve never used agave before, you can go to www.allaboutagave.com or www.xagave.com to learn more about this awesome natural sweetener. 

The cranberry sauce recipe is very simple and can be jazzed up to your liking with orange zest, pomegranate seeds, etc.  so I’m excited to try it out. I thought it might be hard to make my own, but there is even a YouTube video demo here to help us out.  I’d love to hear your favorite Thanksgiving dishes.  Please post them!  Enjoy your Thanksgiving meal!

This recipe is taken from Delicious Meets Nutritious, a great agave cookbook by Xagave.

COPYCAT ORANGE JULIUS

1 c. unsweetened frozen orange juice

1 c. milk (can use powdered milk and increase water)

1 c. water

1/3 c. Xagave (agave nectar)

1/2 tsp. Sweet Vanilla Powder

ice cubes (add until you reach desired thickness)

I love to read and I love to bake, so I have a natural (or maybe unnatural) affection for cookbooks.  I have actually checked out stacks of cookbooks from the library, because I find it fun to hunt for new recipes.  When I was on bedrest with my last pregnancy, I watched hours of Food Network shows. It was almost torturous waiting for weeks to try the pages of recipes I had scrawled on notebooks at my bedside.  So, when I started experimenting with agave, I knew I needed to find an agave cookbook that would help me with substitutions in my best-loved recipes.  It needed to have practical, familiar recipes that wouldn’t reveal the change from sugar to agave in my family’s diet.  The search is finally over!  I LOVE Delicious Meets Nutritious from the makers of Xagave.  This cookbook is exactly what bakers need to convert their families to agave, and wean them off of refined sugar.  I love it from cover to cover!  The introduction provides an explanation about the origin and manufacture of agave and the health benefits, including impressive information about agave’s low glycemic index rating.  Next, it includes all of the details I needed on agave’s cooking properties and conversion calculations to replace sugar.  This information is very thorough and interesting.  I knew that using agave was a great way to reduce refined sugar in my diet (the book includes a chart that indicates calories saved by using agave rather than sugar as well), but I didn’t know that it actually improves the taste and texture of baked goods and can even be used in canning.  I will be making all my jams and jellies with agave from now on.

Once you leave the enjoyable introduction and enter the recipe section of Delicious Meets Nutritious, you’ll find a great variety of simple, practical recipes with ingredients found in nearly every pantry.  I love that the authors have converted all of our guilty favorites to much-less-guilty clones, including chocolate syrup, lemon cake, cookies, homemade maple and strawberry syrups, and even how to mix Kool-Aid with agave.  The recipe section is also peppered with healthful tips on substitutions for white flour and eggs.  This cookbook will get a lot of use in my kitchen.   If you are trying to improve the health of your family by making diet changes, I highly recommend trying agave with Delicious Meets Nutritious. It is available in next month’s Alison’s Pantry catalog for $21.99, (it’s $29.99 on www.xagave.com so this is a nice savings).  Alison’s Pantry will also be selling Xagave, which is a blend of white and blue agave nectars which the manufacturer says “provides the best taste, cooking qualities, and health benefits of any agave product on the market.”

Most food storage calculations encourage families to store about 60 lbs. of sugar per person per year.  This total can include honey, molasses, jell-o, jams and jellies, or corn syrup too.  Agave is another great sweetener to consider for long-term food storage.  If you haven’t tried agave, you need to!  A friend who is battling breast cancer, and really watching her diet and nutrition, introduced me to agave about two years ago.   Agave nectar comes from a plant that is similar to an aloe vera plant.  There are light and dark / amber varieties.  The light is similar to a mild-flavored honey.  I stir it into my oatmeal. The amber is slightly stronger, somewhat similar to maple syrup, and especially good for use in barbecue sauces.  It is a near-perfect sweetener for a lot of reasons.  It is low on the glycemic index scale making it great for diabetics, and for others looking to reduce their sugar intake.  It is very similar to honey in taste and consistency, so it is sweeter than sugar, and can be substituted for sugar in smaller quantities for reduced caloric intake.  To substitute agave for sugar in baked goods, use 1/2 cup agave for 1 cup sugar in the recipe.  In baked goods, I have increased this to 2/3 c. to 3/4 c.  to increase sweetness.  This link provides even more detailed directions for substitutions (and the site has other interesting facts about agave) :

http://www.allaboutagave.com/substituting-agave-nectar-for-other-sugars.php

I won’t get on my soapbox, but I loathe artificial sweeteners, so I love that agave is a natural and healthful sugar replacement.  The bonus food storage benefit is that agave doesn’t crystallize like honey does.  It has a long, stable shelf-life of about 2-3 years. I have found that agave is quite pricey locally, so I order mine from Amazon in bulk, which is typically on sale.  Here is a link to their agave products:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_8?url=search-alias%3Dgrocery&field-keywords=madhava+agave+nectar&sprefix=madhava+

If you have used agave, I would love to hear your tips and recipes.