5 cooking tricks for healthy meals

Cooking a healthy meal can be a challenge in the hustle and bustle of daily life. The following guidelines will show you how to stretch a meal and sneak more healthy foods into your diet.

Those super-sized jugs of olive oil you buy at warehouse stores may be a good deal financially, but they can get you in trouble calorically. To avoid pouring too much, get a non-aerosol sprayer and fill with your favourite oil. Use for flavouring foods, coating pans and grills, or spraying directly on bread or salad. You'll use less — much less!

You want to make your mother's famous cream of tomato sauce and creamy beef stroganoff, but you don't want the extra fat and calories of heavy cream. No problem! Just open a can of nonfat condensed milk. You'll get the creaminess without the fat and calories — promise!

Here are two simple ways to increase your intake of vegetables by adding them to main dishes as you cook.

• Always start with mire poix (pronounced MEER-pwah). This blend of onions, celery and carrots (ratio of 2:1:1 or 3:2:1) with parsley and bay leaves is worth learning a bit of French for. It's a great way to sneak veggies into nearly every entrée you prepare. Sauté 250 grams (one cup) or more of the mixture (which you can buy already cut up and prepared in some grocery stores) in 15 millilitres (one tablespoon) of canola oil, then use as a starter for sauces, stews and soups.
• Whether you're making homemade spaghetti sauce or reheating jarred, adding 125 grams (1/2 cup) or more of puréed veggies (red peppers, cauliflower, carrots, broccoli) provides just the right touch of antioxidants, vitamins and — don't forget! — flavour. Or add 250 grams (one cup) grated or mashed carrots, zucchini, squash, sweet potatoes or pumpkin to muffins and other quick breads.

If you are like most of us, you always make potatoes the same way — peeled, boiled and mashed with lots of butter. It's a lot of carbs and a lot of calories. Here are two alternatives to try.

• Add boiled and puréed cauliflower to your mashed potatoes. You won't be able to taste the difference, but you'll get less starch and more fibre. Also, to cut back on the amount of butter you add, blend in a little low-fat milk.
• Instead of mashed, serve potatoes boiled with the skin on and cut into cubes. Even better, select new potatoes, which have fewer simple carbs than other types of potatoes.

This is a closely related trick — one your parents or grandparents probably used during the Depression, when 500 grams (1 pound) of hamburger had to feed 12. They stretched it with mashed potatoes, grated carrots, beans andother vegetables. Well, even though you can afford sirloin these days, we recommend the same approach.

• Add grated vegetables (try carrots or onions) to ground turkey or beef to stretch the meat, reduce the fat and punch up the fibre content of meat loaf, hamburgers, chili and soups. You can buy veggies already cut up and prepared in many supermarkets.
• Even better: learn to use soy, beans and lentils as delicious protein sources instead of meat in dishes like stews, spaghetti sauce and lasagna.

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