Can You Diet In Winter?

 Diets are usually summer things, maybe even Spring or fall. Yet a winter diet?It's hard when everyone is pushing dense  meals, rich with sugar and starch . This helps in keeping you warm against frosty  arctic blasts. Yet what happens when you have to lose weight? Can veggies and fruit help when the temps drop.

It'sa good question and yes, there is an answer. Surprisingly roasts can be low calorie.Roast chicken and turkey can help in dropping pounds. A simple roast chicken with lemon, thyme and garlic is not only healthy but also flavorful.Use heart healthy olive oil to rub all over the bird. You can also use sunflower oil which has Vitamin E and antioxidants along with grape seed oil, also rich in antioxidants .It' also milk tasting so you don't have to worry about any "oily" flavor lingering on the chicken. Another good choice is turkey breast which is low in fat but big in protein.Any roasted turkey is a perfect meal, rich in taste. Don;t make the thick gravy that goes with it. Keep it to a thin one. Also rethink that side of mashed potatoes. They're made with a ton of butter and whole milk or cream.Try roasted potatoes that will pair well with the thinner turkey gravy.What about a roast beef dinner? If you buy an eye of round roast that low in fat but big in protein. It does have a caveat.The meat can be tough and chewy. To avoid this, slow cook the cut and cut against the grain for a more melt in your mouth piece.

Veggies and fruits play an important part in any diet. For veggies think the easy sheet pan. You can have fun creating different variations. You can even add meat, poultry or fish to them as well and cook everything at the same time. Try a mix of sweet potatoes, beats carrots and parsnips for a colorful and flavorful sheet pan dinner that can be a main or a side. A good drizzle  of  olive oil will help caramelize them and keep them from charring and drying out. To flavor them you could add cayenne pepper for some kick or if you want a citrus-y flavor them squeeze lemon or orange juice over them. For a more Italian vibe season with garlic powder and oregano. Salads are always important to any diet. Warm them up by adding leftover and reheated meat from your roasts.Chicken , turkey and beef can be cut up reheated and added to any salad. The same for any leftover sheet pan veggies. As for fruit, there's an abundance of bananas and oranges right  now.frozen fruits can also be added to a winter diet. They're still good for you and perfect if you're craving out f season ones like strawberries and blueberries.

Yes you can diet during the winter. It just means getting away from all those heavy  calorie rich foods and desserts. Stick to lean meats and produce. You'll feel better even if the middle of a chill season.

Your Own Hot Doughnuts

 One of the best fall treats is a doughnut. It's the perfect snack or even breakfast on a chilly day. Homemade ones are even better.The bite is fresh and deliciously chewy,

Any good home baker can create a doughnut.You can make it with yeast for one with  a chewy bread like crumb or a cakey one that's more like your favorite slice. A basic recipe for the yeast variety has milk and two packets of yeas t mixed with two eggs and a stick of melted butter. You will need flour , usually the all purpose kind,More flour will be needed to roll out the dough into rolls. Keep in mind you will need a deep fryer for this and two quarts of a neutral oil like grapeseed or vegetable oil. Can you air fry doughnuts? You can. Just generously spray the basket with a neutral spray in either vegetable or butter flavor. This may be a bit tedious to do. Only two doughnuts at a time can be fried and  they have to be flipped midway through the baking process. The plus side is that they won't leave a greasy after taste and the texture is crisper on the outside, tender on the inside. Another plus is that you can also air fry cake batter doughnuts too, They come out just as good as their yeast cousins, The air fryer also works for doughnut holes too. The yeast ones take forty five minutes to rise and six to eight minutes to bake at 375 degrees Farenheit.

Cake doughnuts are another treat. The recipes are more varied than the yeast recipe as are the textures. Cake doughnuts can be as dense in crumb as a muffin or as light and fluffy as a birthday cake. You can create more flavors with cake doughnuts. A good cake doughnut recipe is made with flour, and baking powder which gives them lift. Usually one egg is used along with milk. You can fry them but look for an evenness in color and texture. Baked doughnuts are another way to go. Get a doughnut tin which has different shapes, from fluted edges to a regular circle. If you don't have one simply use a muffin or cupcake tin with foil in the middle to create the hole. Apple cider doughnuts are big right now and it's just adding concentrated apple cider. DO NOT add cider straight from the jug. You'll need to reduce it to a thick and potent syrup. This is done by boiling it down for twenty minutes.It's then added to the batter. You can also add an apple pie spice blend of nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamon. After they've been baked brush with melted butter and dredge in a mix of white sugar and cinnamon.

This is the season for doughnuts. Make them at home for a fresh, sweet treat. You can fry , air fry or bake the yeast or cake variety for a tasty bite full of satisfying sweetness.

Dumplings For The New Year

 The Lunar New Year is fast approaching it and with it comes all the treats of the season. One of them is a plate of dumplings. These are easy to make and fun to eat. Even creating the dough or skins is a simple task. Celebrate the Year of the Ox with a tasty plump dumpling.

Genevieve Ko wrote about these delicious dumplings in today New York Times Food section. Ms Ko, author of Better Baking also gave a few good recipes and how tos  as well. Any home chef, whether novice or experienced can create them. There are two, one savory, filled wit tofu and veggies and the other sweet,  tang yuan, stuffed with sesame seeds, peanut butter and sugar swimming in a sweet ginger soup. Making the dough is therapeutic. There's a soothing rhythm to kneading and rolling out the dough cutting the circles, then filling them.Many home chefs think that making skins or wrappers is hard. They're really not. It's a mix of just flour and hot water. Using the last ensures wrappers that are thin and simple to pleat. Make them with cold water and you wind up with ones that are tougher and more elastic.The tang yuan requires a different dough. The sweet dumplings have wrappers made from rice flour and a cooked mix of water and a neutral oil like grapeseed. Both kinds of wrappers need to stand, the savory for half and hour the rice flour one for only ten minutes.

The fillings are tasty and can be modified. You can be vary them or put your own spin on them. Ms. Ko uses tofu mixed with spinach, watercress or baby bok choy. There's also celery stalks too added and chili crisp for flavor. Chili crisp is a fiery savory/sweet mix you can buy or make yourself. It's a blend of red pepper flakes, ginger, sugar and cinnamon. There's also soy salt to balance this out. The dumplings are  cooked immediately in a mix of oil and water. This ensures a crispy bottom and a tender top. Keep in mind oil and water cooking together can be lethal so keep a cover on the pan until the rapid firecracker popping stops. By then the water has evaporated and you can finish cooking the dumplings in an uncovered pan. As for the sweet ones, they're cooked in the ginger soup. This again is a mix of scrubbed ginger with either rock or granulated sugar. This will only take ten minutes and then divide the dumplings and soup into individual bowls. The filling is a combined mash of ground and toasted sesame seeds and peanut butter. This is put into a freezer to firm up before being turned into filling.

It's the Year of the Ox! Celebrate with savory and sweet dumplings. They're a great way to ring in the Lunar New Year.