Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cooking and diet

I need no-sugar freezer jam!

FunkyHelix — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:55:51 -0800

Anyone know a good no sugar/Splenda recipe for strawberry freezer jam? I bought Sure-Jell No Sugar/Less Sugar Fruit Pectin to make strawberry freezer jam thinking that I could make the jam with no sugar. But according to the directions and the customer service agent I called, you can only make no sugar/low sugar cooked jam. Freezer jam still takes 3 whole cups of sugar or it won't set right. Only one less cup than full sugar freezer jam.

My mom is a diabetic and we keep my son on a low sugar diet because it's healthier. Three cups of sugar is still way too much sugar for them. And I don't want to make cooked jam because it requires canning skills, jars, canner to boil jars in, etc. It's a pain in the ass.

Is there a way to make no sugar/splenda freezer jam?

Has anyone ever truly lost weight and kept it off?

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:17:37 -0800

What kind of hope is there for the average person to lose weight and keep it off when someone like Oprah who has personal trainers and personal nutritionists and personal chefs and personal minders and more money than God can't manage to do it? I never used to be a heavy girl. I ate terribly, but I exercised at the gym every day, and I was slim and fit regardless. But then I moved, and I got older, and I put on close to 80 pounds in a decade. I have watched people all around me struggle to lose weight and then they put it all back on plus more. I can't even motivate myself to try because it looks like I'm just setting myself up for disappointment--I'd have to radically change how I eat (learning to cook, for a start, which is a whole other hurdle). I keep reading that none of it works anyway, and everyone has a "set point" or something, and only 5% of people manage to keep weight off after losing it.

Canned milkshakes are gross. I sat in on a Weight Watchers meeting once and I felt like I was in a cult. I'm at my wit's end.

Has anyone here managed to lose real weight and never gain it back?

Share your slow carb recipes

sid — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:50:34 -0800

Give us your slow carb recipes! We are attempting a slow carb diet, which for us means cutting out or severely reducing all flour, rice, potatoes, and bread. Our carb sources would be pulses, legumes, and sweet potatoes. It's going pretty well so far but I think we are going to soon grow tired of hummus! Please share any delicious recipes that would fit the stated parameters.

Recipes for an extremely strict diet.

Becko — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:33:57 -0800

Recipes for someone with a really strict diet My sister, by her own choice, has cut out refined sugar, refined flour, meat and all dairy that comes from a cow out of her diet.

For Christmas, I'd love to compile a cookbook for her of recipes that she could make that would fit this strict regiment.

I'd like to first start with some of my favorite recipes and adapt them accordingly and then start finding some online that sound good.

In recipes for cookies and other desserts, is there a suitable substitute for sugar? Also, is brown sugar considered to be refined sugar?

Is there a website out there designed to find suitable ingredient substitutes?

What's easy AND healthy?

EarBucket — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:01:00 -0800

Help me come up with easy, low-calorie lunches. So I'm going on a diet, as I could stand to lose some weight. It's going pretty well so far, but here's the issue. I stay home all day with five month old twins. Between taking care of them and trying not to let the house get too trashed, I don't have a lot of extra time and energy to fix healthy food. It's easy, and tempting to just pop a hot pocket or something into the microwave.

So far, I'm doing all right by simply not having that kind of food around the house. But, the lack of variety is starting to get to me. I've got a few simple, easy foods that don't take much time, but I'd like more options. They need to be:

Low-calorie (preferably in the 300-400 range)
Relatively low-fat (less than 6g is best)
Quick and easy to prepare.

Even very simple stuff is fine--I'm doing things like turkey sandwiches, oatmeal, pasta, etc. I'd just like to have as wide a range of options as possible.

Where did my tastebuds go?

schroedinger — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 06:05:26 -0800

I want to go from goat to gourmet. Having taste buds that are happy eating MREs all day long has its advantages, but it would be nice to enjoy the finer things in life. But I can't spend all my money on high-end restaurants. How do I become a pescetarian foodie on a college budget? I was raised on an All-American diet of white pasta, grocery store brand cheese, slightly overcooked vegetables, and PB&Js. This left me with an inability to tell the difference between "bland", "good", and "fantastic." Box wine and the finest merlot are all the same to me, the sushi from a five-star restaurant and the prepackaged stuff in a dining hall fridge case are virtually indistinguishable, Ghirardelli and Hershey's are twins, and I've been known to continue eating the lentil-bean monstrosities I make long after their due date because the, um, ripeness adds tang (no, really, it does!). I think PowerBars taste good. PowerBars.

I try cooking to widen my palate, but I'm terrible at it and my tastebuds are so insensitive that I can't actually taste the difference anyway.

I've heard the way to counter this is to just buy high-quality food, but I don't have the money to shop at Whole Foods every weekend. So what to do? My lack of taste is more than just embarrassing--it contributes to unhealthy eating as I can eat large quantities of the most unimaginably processed crap without compunction. What's the solution?

I need recipe software that doesn't suck!

Mr. Gunn — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 18:35:04 -0800

Can you help me find recipe and shopping list software that doesn't suck? I know there have been questions about this before, but the two leading contenders from last question, LivingCookbook and Now You're Cooking, both fail in several of these categories. LC is closest, but sucks in many ridiculous ways.
I need three main things:

An easy method of manually entering recipes and linking ingredients to USDA nutritional info.

The ability to made a shopping list from a collection of recipes.

The ability to write a meal plan using those recipes.I rarely use recipes from a book or website, and if I do, I usually modify them beyond all recognition. In order to easily enter my own recipes, the program must be aware of every english and metric measurement that exists and be able to convert among them. It must intelligently parse entries such as "1 bell pepper", by offering options which map onto USDA ingredients, rather than making me type in peppers, sweet, red, raw, whole.Then when I go to generate a shopping list, it should combine ingredients across recipes and convert ingredients originally entered using different units into the same unit, and round those up to the nearest whole unit of purchase, such as a jar or bottle .Finally, it should know that if I go shopping on Sunday, and have roast beef and flounder on monday and tuesday, to add the items shopped for to my inventory and to subtract them as as the week passes.

I don't care about downloading or screen-scraping recipes, importing stuff, or the ability to store pretty pictures. I just want something that doesn't make data entry laborious and shopping list generation cumbersome.

Post-surgery meals recovering from colon cancer surgery

desuetude — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:54:17 -0800

My mom was recently diagnosed with colon cancer, and is scheduled for a lower anterior resection of her colon next week. Help me plan meals for the first week post-surgery! More details:

CT scan showed no metastasis, so we're not dealing with any chemo or radiation issues, just recovery from the surgery. She's in her early 70s and in generally good health. She is, however, pretty scared about surgery, and I expect that despite all best efforts, her spirits will be very low during those first few days when she can't move around too much.

I'm staying with my folks for a few days after she's discharged from the hospital. I live a couple of hours away, so aside from the day or two I'll be taking off late next week, I can only be there on weekends. She prepares all meals for herself and my dad -- he will not be doing anything in the way of cooking. I may be able to get him to heat up leftovers for them, though.

I'm not finding much on specific dietary recommendations post-surgery. I know that she'll be able to eat solid foods by the time she gets home. I know that she'll need to avoid fruits and vegetables while she heals from surgery. Need I avoid all foods high in fiber to minimize discomfort and complications during healing? Are beans/lentils okay? Oatmeal? Is some fruit juice okay?

Will GI-stimulating ingredients like ginger or other spices help or harm, if used in small amounts to provide some flavor? I want to make meals as flavorful as possible, and she's used to eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, so any way to get fresh flavors into food is good. I'm planning to make some infused grapeseed oil (parsley, cilantro, etc.) to use as seasoning. Already planning to pick up some good yogurt to help restore her digestion.

I would love, love, love to hear from those who have cared for someone post-resection or had this surgery.

Best-ever slow-cooker recipes?

agropyron — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:46:44 -0800

What are the most amazing low-fat slow-cooker recipes in the world? My wife has about 5 really fabulous slow-cooker recipes that are nice and healthy. Low fat and low calorie. Three are beef stews and two are chicken dishes.

What are your favorites? I suspect there are a lot of health-conscious slow-cooker chefs here.

Ricey goodness! YUM

JonnyRotten — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:11:26 -0800

I am looking to increase the amount of rice in my diet. I am looking for suggestions on totally awesome rice cookers, and general ricey advice! What cooker do you all suggest?
What brand of Furikake Should I purchase? I've never had it before but read some glowing recommendations to try it.
What other things can I get to kick up the rice portion of my diet? Totally kick ass soy sauce?

Links to purchase would be awesome as I am nowhere near a asian market or any place that would sell this kind of thing.

Basically heres the scoop. I'm sick of dieting. I think I am going to supplement alot of my meals with rice with some kind of seasoning or condiment, then do like a rice with grilled chicken breast for supper to take to work or something. I would like to have alot of different tastes to keep the variety factor up. I like the idea of cooking a batch of rice in the morning and just having it for meals. It should supply some bulk to my diet and be lower fat with lots of otherwise good stuff. Not really looking for diet advice, just some background..