The Low Fat Lifestyle

First Published March 23, 2010

Update: We've adapted to this 'cleaner' style of eating, but we've also eased up. For example, we do occasionally order a pizza or have take-out for dinner. We have found that it' a little easier, if we aren't too hard on ourselves. We just want to live to about a hundred.

Thanks for reading. September, 2025

Original post: Starting a low fat, low sodium diet wasn’t just a matter of changing the foods we ate. I discovered that it was also a change of lifestyle. I wasn’t just changing out red meat for white chicken breast, or adding extra vegetables to the dinner plate. Food was no longer just meals eaten at various times throughout the day; food was the stuff that could break us down and kill us, or keep us well, healthy and active for many years to come.

Once I started cooking without the fats and salts we had become so accustomed to I discovered that we had more energy, and we actually wanted to do things like go for a walk and exercise. We wanted to play basketball with the kids and putz around with the yard work.

Whoa. We were active adults. With this new-found source of energy, we found that our attitude toward food was changing. For the better.

The thought of eating a Grand Slam breakfast at Dennys or a sausage McMuffin now makes us queasy. A fast food burger would make me gag.

Where once dinner was a thick slab of meat with piles of mashed potatoes and gravy, it’s now a low fat, flavor packed pork and broccoli stir-fry. We eat smaller portions and taste the food. Really taste it. This new attitude toward food is a lifestyle change.

What makes some foods more heart friendly than others? Fat and salt content, and how the food is prepared. Red meat contains more saturated fat than chicken or pork. Shrimp contains more cholesterol than tilapia fish. Salmon has more omega-3 oils than cod.

Mashed potatoes made with 2 percent milk and salt free butter is better than mashed potatoes made with whole milk and salted butter. A baked potato topped with low fat sour cream and chives is a better side dish than fried potatoes.

Stir-fried vegetables seasoned with Chinese Five Spice are better than steamed vegetables smothered in butter. Sliced apples make a better side dish than bread rolls.

Eating low fat, low salt foods isn’t just a change of menu. It’s developing a sense of how food is meant to be eaten, how starting with fresh, raw ingredients means you control what kind of fat goes into your body, how much salt you take in and how the food is prepared.

How you eat makes a difference in how you live. Your diet shouldn’t just be about your weight or your cholesterol levels. It should be about how you connect to food and how it connects to you and your life.

Chicken Stew and a New Attitude

First Published March 18, 2010

Update: The chicken stew recipe has undergone several changes over the years, as recipes do. I highly recommend the books I mentioned in the article, or ones similar to them. 

Thanks for reading.  Sept. 9, 2025

After my husband had his heart surgery, and the doctor informed us that his diet would need a radical overhaul to avoid death by clogged artery, I visited my local bookstore and bought three cookbooks:

• “American Medical Association Healthy Heart Cookbook”
• “American Heart Association Low-fat, Low-Cholesterol Cookbook”
• “Better Homes and Gardens New Diabetics Cookbook”

Though neither my husband nor I are diabetic, a friend lent us her copy of the New Diabetics Cookbook because it offered a host of recipes low in fat and directed at controlling cholesterol levels. I liked it so I bought a copy.

Armed with this arsenal of collected culinary know-how, I went to work.

One of the first recipes I tried was from the Healthy Heart Cookbook: Chicken and Vegetable Stew.


The recipe called for baby onions and baby carrots, celery, red peppers and tomatoes. It called for salt free broth, soybeans and pinto beans, Swiss chard, spinach and a sweet potato. It called for dill, basil and pepper. And of course, it called for lean chicken breasts.

There was blanching and draining and simmering and pureeing. There was slipping off skins and trimming away roots and slicing and dicing and cutting.

When I served up this culinary conquest, my husband took a few bites, murmured something about missing beef stew, ate a few more bites and resumed mumbling.

I kind of wanted to hit in the head with my big wooden spoon.

Instead, I offered up this bit of wisdom: “Eat it or die.”

The chicken stew, and subsequent recipes that have since been added to my provisional repertoire, has been modified a bit, but the principles behind making it a heart friendly meal remain the same. In my next post, I’ll talk about what makes a dish heart friendly, and how to flavor foods that are not “fat dependent”.

The chicken stew, by the way, was delicious. My husband’s taste buds, and attitude, just needed adjusting, and we’ll talk a bit about that as well.

The Low Fat Diet Venture

No more Mac 'n Cheese

First Published March 10, 2010

Update: Still need to stay on this type of diet. It's for life, really. But now I'm on a diet for pre-diabetes. But only weigh about 105 lbs. So now, I have to follow a diet designed for weight loss, while trying to gain weight. Now that's Contemporary Cooking!

Thanks for reading.  September, 2025

Original Post: My husband is prone to high cholesterol and heart disease. His triple bypass at age 48 was the catalyst for my learning how to cook all over again, to cook “fat free”. No more beef stew with rich sauce, no more beef and Yorkshire pudding, or chicken kiev with gravy. No more Indian fry bread. No more biscuits slathered in gravy or mounds of mashed potatoes made with whole milk and butter. No more pound cake, cookies, ice cream sundaes or sweet, sugary cakes dressed in velvety frostings.

I worried about serving up boiled chicken and rabbit food. But I wanted my husband to live, so I learned how to cook all over again.

But “fat free” in an inaccurate label. Your body still needs certain fats. I don’t cook fat-free. I cook low-fat. My husband and I follow a low-fat, low-sodium diet.

The point of controlling the fat in our diet is to manage cholesterol, the culprit of heart disease. But, as my husband and I discovered, when you lower your bad cholesterol, you may also lower your good cholesterol. So I had to learn how to make the bad go down and the good go up.

Even if your cholesterol isn’t spiraling out of control, you should control the fats in your diet. In the next few posts, I’ll include some low-fat recipes that don’t taste like boiled chicken and rabbit food. I’ll show you how to adjust your diet so you don’t sacrifice taste for good health. 

Betty Crocker's Gluten Free Mixes

First published on March 1, 2010

Update: Betty Crocker is still a stand-out gluten free product, but the cost now can be a bit much; I've seen prices as high as eight dollars for single box of yellow cake mix. 

The gluten free market is expanding, and Betty may find consumers are looking at other options. In the original post, I note the price for a box is under five dollars. Not anymore. And now I often opt for a lesser known, less expensive brand, and they are often comparable in flavor and texture.

Yes, Betty Crocker is the standard, but as you shop, keep an eye out for other gluten free mixes. Because it shouldn't have to cost more to eat, just because you have a medical condition.

Thanks for reading. September, 2025

Gluten free baking mixes have been available on the market for a few years now. Many of the manufacturers were small companies, and the products were marketed in specialty shops or online. And they were, and still are, quite expensive.

Enter Betty Crocker, a leader in the industry and a 900-pound gorilla in the gluten free product market.

Not only are the boxed mixes less expensive, under five dollars, the resulting baked goods taste every bit as good as their wheat-based counterparts. 

The brownies I made up from the brownie mix, for example, are rich in flavor and have a moist, airy texture. No bitter aftertaste or dryness. No crumbly texture. No dense “wet spots”. I’ve tried quite a few of the gluten free mixes now, and Betty Crocker outperforms them all but Bob’s Red Mill and Cherrybrook Kitchens.

The 16-ounce box yields an 8x8 pan, which makes the cost a little higher than the mainstream mixes, but compared to other gluten-free mixes, the price is on the low end of the scale.

Betty Crocker produces not only the brownie mix, but also a chocolate chip cookie mix, and two cake mixes: devil’s food and yellow cake.

I find them in my local supermarket and usually pay $3.99 a box. That I can pick them up during my regular shopping trips, and don’t have to make a special trip, is a real boon.

That Betty Crocker is able to get these products onto the shelves of conventional supermarkets demonstrates not only that gluten-free has gone mainstream, but also that large food corporations, such as General Mills, are finally paying attention to the plight of those consumers who deal with food allergies every day of their lives.

Betty Crocker, just as in 1924 when General Mills aired “The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air” on radio for information hungry cooks, is once again turning a niche market into a mass market. Those in the food industry should be watching, because that Betty, she’s one smart cookie.

Note: I have not received any compensation from Betty Crocker or General Mills, nor any other product mentioned in this review.

Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

First Published February 24, 2010

Update: The mix is just as good today as it was then. Though the purchase price can be a bit high, the quality of the product cannot be disputed. 

Thanks for reading. September, 2025

Note: I purchased this product, Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix, in the supermarket. The review has not been influenced by anything other than the quality of the product.

Bob’s Red Mill as a company has been operating for over 25 years, and is considered a leader in gluten free products. The company’s products include several gluten free flours and mixes.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix weighs in at 22 ounces and all that’s required to yield two-dozen cookies is butter, egg and water. A package of the mix can cost, on average, between five and eight dollars.

The mix uses natural ingredients and gluten free flours, and the result is a sweet, crunchy cookie that pleases even the wheat eaters in my family.

You may need to watch your cooking time, though. The package calls for 18 minutes in a 350-degree oven. If you overcook, the cookies get a little hard rather quickly. If you undercook, the taste is a little grainy.

Judging exactly when the cookies are done can be a little tricky. Because there’s no gluten in the flours, the cookies don’t take on that smooth, toasted look of wheat-based chocolate chip cookies. They tend to look a little “wet” and feel too soft to the touch.

Take them out anyways and let them cool on the cookie sheet for one or two minutes before moving them to the cooling rack. The trick with gluten free mixes is to NOT expect the end product to look like those from wheat-based mixes.

The taste and texture, though, of these cookies is very, very close to wheat-based cookies. I try to keep a couple of packages in the pantry so I can bake up a batch quickly. I store the cookies in my cookie jar and they stay fresh for two to three days.

You can also freeze the cookies, or even freeze the dough. Roll it into a cylinder and slice off as much as you need, just as you would a store bought dough.

Gluten Free Daily Bread

I make gluten free bread from scratch. It’s a rice flour bread and the process is a departure from the usual one used in bread making.

Let’s start with the recipe.

Dry ingredients
3 cups brown rice flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons milled flax seed
3 teaspoons xanthan gum
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup dry milk
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Wet ingredients
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon molasses
1 1/2 cups water

Butter a 5x9 loaf pan and sprinkle with rice flour to coat.

Mix all your dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl, including the yeast. You don’t proof the yeast with this gluten free bread as you would with wheat-flour bread.

Put the eggs into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat lightly with the whisk attachment. Add the vinegar, the canola oil and molasses and beat again to mix. Add half the water to this and mix again.

Change to the dough hook. Add your dry ingredients to the bowl all at once.

Mix the dry ingredients at low speed. Add the remaining water one to two tablespoons at a time.

The trick here is to add the water slowly, keeping the dough moist. The dough will not look anything like wheat-flour dough. You want to add the water slowly and get the bread dough to the consistency of thick cake batter. You may not use all the water. You may need a little more.

Adding the water is the equivalent of adding the flour in traditional, wheat flour bread making.

Once you get the dough right, spoon it into the pan. Spread the dough out evenly and set in a warm place. Cover with a clean towel and allow the bread to rise. Once it reaches the top of the pan, it’s ready for the oven.

Bake the bread at 375 degrees for about 50 minutes, depending on your oven.

Allow the bread to cool completely, at least two hours. Now you have to store it.

Gluten free bread should be frozen. If you leave it on the counter in a plastic bag, it will dry out, crumble and go bad within a couple of days.

I slice the bread, place the slices in plastic sandwich bags (I put in two slices to each bag) and then put all the bags in a larger gallon-size freezer bag. I take out a bag or two at a time, depending on need.

Just set the bag with the slices in it on the counter and allow the bread to defrost. This takes less than an hour. You can also put it in the toaster on low, if you like.

Unlike wheat-flour bread, gluten free bread doesn’t get soggy when frozen.

This bread won’t taste like white bread. It’s denser, hardier, and has an almost nutty taste. It tastes great with homemade jelly, which we’ll talk about in an upcoming post.

Bette Hagman’s Scones, Modified

These gluten free scones are based on the recipe found in Bette Hagman’s cookbook, “The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread”. I do modify the recipe somewhat; the recipe lends itself well to tailoring the scones to taste. The flour mix used in this recipe is the author’s Gluten-Free Flour mix. Make up a batch of this mix to have on hand.

For 9 cups of the mix use the following:

Six cups of rice flour
Two cups of potato starch
One cup of tapioca flour

Mix the flours thoroughly and store in a cool place in an airtight container. Label the container so you know what’s in there.

The scones recipe is as follows:
DRY INGREDIENTS
2 cups gluten-free flour mix
1 rounded teaspoon xanthan or guar gum
3 teaspoons egg replacer (optional)
1/4 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon dried orange peel
1/2 teaspoon salt

WET INGREDIENTS
5 1/2 tablespoons butter or margarine, cold
1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries
1/2 cup sliced almonds
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 cup buttermilk

I skip the dried orange peel, cranberries and sliced almonds and substitute chocolate chips. You can also substitute dried apricots or raisins. I also skip the egg replacer and add 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to the wet ingredients instead. It’s cheaper and adds to the flavor.

For the butter, I use a non-hydrogenated, trans-fat free butter blend with no saturated fats. This reduces the high saturated fat content found in so many baked goods.

For the buttermilk, I add 1/2 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to vanilla flavored soy milk and stir. Allow it to stand for ten minutes and it’s just like buttermilk, but with fewer calories and no lactose.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients together with a whisk, including the sugar. You can use raw sugar, sugar substitute or white granular sugar. I prefer raw sugar.

Cut the cold butter into chunks and add it to the dry ingredients. Use a fork to break up the butter and mix it into the dry ingredients until the mixture is crumbly.

NOTE: With pastry, the butter and flour mix will coalesce, that is, come together when you press it with your fingers. This is a pastry mix. With gluten free flours, this happens, but the crumbly mix has larger, looser crumbles.

Stir in about 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. Nestles chocolate chips are gluten free.

Add the two eggs to the buttermilk or soy milk mix and stir. Add all but two tablespoons of the buttermilk to the newly formed pastry mix and stir until moistened. The pastry mix should now hold together; it becomes dough.

Place half the dough onto a sheet of wax paper and with your hands shape it into a rough disk. Place another piece of wax paper on top and slowly roll it out with a rolling pin to approximately 1/4 inch thick.

Now Ms. Hagman rolls out all her mixture at once to 1/2 inch thick and cuts the disk into eight wedges. I prefer round scones and I prefer working with the smaller amounts.

Once you’ve rolled out the dough, use a cookie cutter or biscuit cutter to cut out your scones. Place them onto an ungreased cookie sheet. If I’ve got it on hand, I line the cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Brush the tops of the round scones with the remaining buttermilk or soy milk mix. This gives the scones a nice shine and helps keep them moist during the baking process.

Set your timer for 18 minutes. Roll out and cut out your second batch and bake. Allow the scones to cool for a few minutes before serving.

The scones are light and sweet, and the taste is close to that of a chocolate chip cookie. Store them in a plastic bag or airtight container.

You can also freeze the scones dough if you want to cook these up in smaller batches. Just allow the dough to come to room temperature before rolling it out.

In my next post, we’ll talk about how the process differs when baking gluten free compared to baking with wheat flour.