Appetite for Life: Healthier resolutions

Appetite for Life: Healthier resolutions
Wednesday, January 26, 2011 | Special to the Ledger

By Meagan Warncke

Jan. 1: I hereby resolve to eat healthier in the New Year. I will take my lunch to work every day. It will be a salad, soup or healthy sandwiches. I will make them fresh every morning.
Jan. 2: I am so glad I have been taking my lunch to work. It’s so nice to have a homemade meal and I don’t have to fight lunch traffic.
Jan. 5: I’m getting a little tired of the same things every day. I’d really rather go out and get a bowl of pasta from that little Italian place.
Jan. 15: I had a burger and fries for lunch today. I overslept and just didn’t have time to make my lunch.
How many of us go through this every January? By the middle of the month we’ve already slipped or given up on our New Year’s resolutions. For a lot of people, their biggest resolution is to eat healthier, lose weight or both. However, when our busy, hectic lives get in the way of that, we easily fall back into our old habits of take-out and less healthy food options.
The good news is — thanks to a little invention called the Internet — we have a huge selection of websites offering easy and healthy recipes that can help us stick to our resolutions to eat better in the New Year. There are many ways to make the dishes we love better for us. A healthy meal doesn’t have to take an hour to make and doesn’t have to taste like cardboard. Healthy food is tastier and leads to much less guilt.
My personal resolution is to try to reinvent my favorite dishes into healthier, easier recipes for me and my family. I believe by that small step, I will be healthier and maybe even a few pounds lighter. I want to teach my son that healthy food tastes good and that it’s easy to prepare a home-cooked meal. Along with that, I hope to teach him that it’s OK to indulge in rich foods from time to time, as long as it’s in moderation. If we deny ourselves those foods all the time, we will end up on a road to overeating and bad food habits.
So, my New Year’s gift to you is a healthy pasta recipe that will satisfy and not leave you feeling guilty afterwards. I hope you all have a wonderful start to the New Year.

‘Healthified’ Fettuccine Alfredo

Prep Time: 40 min
Start to Finish: 40 min
Makes: 8 servings
1 lb uncooked fettuccine
2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Dash freshly ground black pepper
Dash ground red pepper (cayenne)
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
2 oz 1/3-less-fat cream cheese (Neufchâtel)
2/3 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1. Cook fettuccine as directed on package, omitting salt. Drain; return to saucepan. Cover to keep warm; set aside.
2. Meanwhile, in medium bowl, stir milk, flour, salt, black pepper and red pepper with wire whisk until smooth. In 2-quart saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly (do not burn). With wire whisk, stir milk mixture into butter mixture in saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat 6 to 8 minutes or until mixture thickens and boils.
3. Stir in cream cheese until melted. Stir in Parmesan cheese until melted. Pour over fettuccine; toss to coat. Sprinkle with parsley.

Nutritional Information
1 Serving: Calories 330 (Calories from Fat 110); Total Fat 12g (Saturated Fat 6g, Trans Fat 0g); Cholesterol 70mg; Sodium 310mg; Total Carbohydrate 42g (Dietary Fiber 2g, Sugars 4g); Protein 13g Percent Daily Value*: Vitamin A 8%; Vitamin C 0%; Calcium 20%; Iron 15% Exchanges: 3 Starch; 0 Other Carbohydrate; 0 Vegetable; 1/2 Lean Meat; 1 1/2 Fat Carbohydrate Choices: 3

*Percent daily values are based on a 2,000-calorie diet.
Recipe courtesy www.eatbetteramerica.com