My top 3 Recipe Tips...make any meal a fat burning meal

Recipes have been our hot topic this week and is actually one of my favorite things to talk about.  I just love trying out new and creative ways to keep my meals fresh and interesting and I love passing on that information to you.

Today I’ve got 3 quick and easy tips that I use almost daily to make any recipe into a healthy and fat burning meal.  You see, many times the recipes I find and want to try are not exactly "100% Isabel approved" so they take a bit of tweaking from me in order to get them to contain only healthy ingredients and still taste great.

Here are the 3 most common issues I run into when trying out many new recipes:

1.  The cooking oil is a BAD choice.  I hate to ever call any food “bad”, but there are many oils I stay away from at all costs.  Oils like canola oil and vegetable oil are really just toxic to your body and can be extremely detrimental to your health and weight loss efforts (please refer back to the FATS chapter of your manual for a more detailed discussion of healthy oils).  I always, always, always replace the canola oil and/or vegetable oil in any recipe with coconut oil or butter to cook with.  I, first, take a look at the ingredients list and decide which oil would be a better fit for that particular recipe.  I use coconut oil to cook stir fries, eggs and most meats and use butter to cook veggies and for any recipe that contains a grain (quinoa, rice or millet recipes).  I don’t ever use olive oil to cook with unless I am cooking at a very, very low temperature (the lowest setting on my stove top) because olive oil’s healthy properties are better maintained if it is not heated.  Coconut oil and butter are always better to cook with.
2. The recipe calls for breadcrumbs.  Most breadcrumbs are made from processed white bread and contain high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils (yes, in bread crumbs!)  I choose to make my own from Ezekiel bread, rice bread or spelt bread.  I place 10 pieces of bread in a 250 degree Farenheit oven.  You’ll get the best results if you put the bread right on the oven racks.  Leave them in the oven for approximately 30 minutes until they’re golden brown.  Remove from the oven and let them cool.  Once cooled, place all the bread in a food processor until fine.  Super easy!  And you can add any seasoning you like and have fresh, delicious bread crumbs that you can use in any recipe. 
3. The recipe calls for milk.  This one is an easy solution... I always use coconut milk or unsweetened almond milk.  Coconut milk is my favorite and I’ve used it in mashed potatoes, smoothies, and in baking, all with great success.  Making your own coconut milk is best, but I buy canned coconut milk, since the ones in the refrigerator section all contain a long list of ingredients I can’t pronounce.  Make sure the ingredients list on your coconut milk is as short as possible and the first 2 ingredients are organic coconut milk and water (no sugar or preservatives added).

Those 3 tips seem to help me the most often and have helped me modify some really incredible recipes that my family really loves.

As I mentioned yesterday, I did get my hands on, what I think, is a wonderful series of cookbooks that are a perfect complement to your healthy weight loss meal plans.  It’s not very often that I get a cookbook that is almost 100% aligned with my own healthy way of eating, so when I do, I love to share that information with you.

Check them out here ---> The Metabolic Cookbooks

Here is a post we received from a happy reader who is also loving Dave Ruel's cookbooks as much as I do.
 
"After a quick look through the various files that downloaded, I am impressed. First, let me say that Isabelle has promised to send us with a copy of the receipt for the books, a help sheet to modify this and other cookbooks so that they more closely hit the DSP guidelines. We will need it if we have any doubts about what parts of the recipes don't meet the mark. Other than that (and it is not a problem with Isabel's "fix"), the books look good to me.

I want to try several recipes immediately. What I really love is the navigation within the cookbooks. So EASY! Click on the page number OR the title in the Table of Contents and you are transported to the recipe. Click at the bottom of the ingredients list and you,re taken right back to the Table of Contents. Macronutrients are always listed (a great BIG plus for all those who like to know exactly what we are putting on our plates), and the recipes can actually be chosen from the ToC with just the combination of macronutrients you are looking for. Want a protein and carb combination? It is in the ToC under that category!
 
Well organized and easy navigation. Also, it appears that each recipe will print out on a single page. I never like a printout to go to the second page when I am cooking from it (too easy to miss something important on the second page the second or third time I do a read through while executing the directions).

There are several different cookbooks; e.g., Breakfast, Sides, Red Meat, etc. I plan on using them and from what I could tell by the reading of them, I also plan to enjoy the tasty meals I will cook from them."

~Sharon B from Lakeland, FL  

See what Sharon is talking about with Dave’s Cookbooks here!


In health and happiness,



Isabel De Los Rios
Certified Nutritionist
Certified Exercise Specialist
Author of TheDietSolutionProgram.com

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