Today would have been Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday.
Elvis loved peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Have one for lunch.
For dessert, here’s a recipe for peanut butter banana cake. Stick a candle in it and sing “Happy Birthday” to the King.
Elvis was a big cheeseburger fan. Check out these gourmet cheeseburger recipes. Since he liked bacon, we think Elvis would have gone for the Johnny Appleseed Cheeseburger, with Cheddar, sautéed apples, and red onions, plus lots of maple bacon.
Love me tender, love me sweet, love me sweet potatoes. Yes, Elvis also loved those starchy orange tubers. Let’s throw in a bag of our favorite sweet potato chips to go with that burger.
More foodie things to do on Elvis’ birthday:
Find reviews of our favorite peanut butters; BYO banana.
Just in time for the cold spell come three hearty soups from Amy’s Organic.
If you don’t know this brand, try it and become one of the many fans. The products are organic, tasty and better for you than most supermarket brands.
Amy’s aims to appeal to vegetarians and vegans as well as the general audience.
The three new soups include Chunky Tomato Bisque, Fire Roasted Southwestern Vegetable and Spanish Rice and Red Bean.
Chunky Tomato Bisque is creamy, velvety and sweet as sugar. Alas, that’s because there are 14g of sugar is per serving—almost three times as much as the other two varieties. You’ve heard us say this before, but there is more sweetener hidden in our food supply than is necessary or healthy. That Amy’s uses organic evaporated cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup means nothing to your glycemic index.
Fire Roasted Southwestern Vegetable Soup is vegan, a flavorful mix of tomato, potato cubes, roasted corn, bell pepper, black beans and onions. Green chiles and chipotle are listed on the label, but we tasted pepper rather than chile heat.
Stay warm this winter with Amy’s Organic
soups. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.
Spanish Rice & Red Bean Soup is mis-named. Spanish rice is a spicy white rice side dish prepared with tomatoes, onions and green peppers. Putting the words “Spanish rice” in front of this red bean soup with tomatoes, corn, bell pepper, zucchini and brown rice (which is the eighth ingredient on the label—i.e., not a whole lot of rice) is misleading. But the soup is hearty and nicely peppery.
The line is gluten free, certified organic by QAI and kosher by Ner Tamid K. The soups are low fat, cholesterol free, high in fiber and have no GMOs.
Enstrom’s toffee is the buttery best—
and it’s also available in sugar-free!
Today is English Toffee Day, so get yourself a box.
But don’t toss out the “crumbs” at the bottom: They’re delicious on ice cream, cheesecake, yogurt or cake frosting.
In fact, Enstrom’s, one of our favorite toffee makers, sometimes sells crumbs by the bag for toffee fans who find many other uses for them (call—they’re not on the website).
More than a few people we know turn to packaged diet entrées for weight loss or maintenance. The portion-controlled single servings help eliminate the risk of overeating.
But Consumer Reports found that some give you so little to eat, that you need to add more food. Others are very high in sodium.
Consumer Reports looked at 24 leading microwaveable meals—22 frozen and two shelf-stable—including Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers. Consumer Reports evaluated the nutrition info for each meal based on its label.
Here are some topline findings:
Delicious, low calorie and low in sodium.
Photo courtesy Kashi Company.
Fourteen of the meals were tasty enough to recommend (that is, they rated very good in taste).
Eight meals had more than the 600 milligrams of sodium that Consumer Reports set as a maximum, based on generally recommended guidelines. Healthy Choice Complete Meals Sweet & Sour Chicken, Lean Cuisine Cafe Classics Steak Tips Portabello, and Kashi Black Bean Mango had the least sodium of the tested meals, each with an impressive 450 milligrams or less.
While no clear winner emerged among brands, Kashi was the only brand to earn a very good rating for all of the meals included in the test. They’re a little pricier than some of the others, but deliver the quality.
You can find the whole report in the February 2010 issue of Consumer Reports Magazine.
Replace the ice cream and whipped cream
with cottage cheese and yogurt. Photo
courtesy California Milk Advisory Board.
For a healthy and festive breakfast, split a ripe banana, add two or three small scoops of cottage cheese and top with different flavors of yogurt and fresh fruits.
Sprinkle with granola or cereal flakes and you have a delicious “banana split.”
It’s worth buying special banana split dishes—the entire family will love this one!
