Half Diet Strawberry Blueberry Cobbler

This recipe is fairly indulgent but loaded with fresh fruit. I enjoy making variations of this recipe whenever berries are in season and cheaply priced. This is the richest version I have made. Sometimes I just make the filling by itself, which is a great treat nutrition-wise unless you’re avoiding artificial sweeteners. Other times I have baked the filling topped with an eyeballed combination of oats, cinnamon and brown sugar.

There is room to reduce the calories in this recipe if you’d like. It is forgiving of experimentation. It is also great with raspberries or blackberries. It all starts with filling a glass baking dish with berries and tossing with sweetener and corn starch.

• 3 pints blueberries
• 1 lb strawberries, sliced
• 1 cup Splenda for baking
• 1/4 cup corn starch
• 2 cups Bisquick baking mix
• 3 T Butter, softened
• 3 T sugar, plus more for sprinkling
• 1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss berries with Splenda and corn starch in a large rectangular glass dish. Microwave berries on high for 7-10 minutes, stopping and stirring as berries release their juice.

Combine the baking mix, sugar and butter in a medium bowl until mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Stir in milk until just combined. Mixture will be thick. Drop mixture in small scraps over the hot fruit filling. Sprinkle the dough with small amounts of sugar.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until dough is golden brown.

Serves 12

Ham and Cabbage Dinner

I value simplicity when I cook. Although I enjoy reading many recipes, I typically cook without one. Often there are ingredients in recipes I can’t tolerate due various food intolerances and aversions, so I improvise based on culinary reading and past cooking experiences. I cooked this meal a couple days ago, and I was pleased that something so simple had a satisfying result.

• 1 2lb presliced boneless quarter ham
• 1 medium head cabbage, chopped
• 2 14.5 oz cans fire roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 8 oz can mushrooms, undrained
• Cornbread for serving with meal

Place chopped cabbage into dutch oven over medium low to medium heat. Empty undrained tomatoes and mushrooms into pot and stir gently into cabbage. Place the ham on top of the cabbage so it looks a bit like a bird sitting on a nest. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. You may wish to lower the heat if the pot starts steaming out of the lid to prevent having a home perfumed with cabbage. For each serving, use a meat fork to pluck out a few slices of ham and then fill most of the rest of your plate with the cabbage mixture. Serve with cornbread.

 

A Recipe for Cheap Diet Soup

I have a few recipes for inexpensive, diet-friendly dishes. Back when I was broke (not so many years ago), I made a goal of seeing how little money I could spend on cooking and still create something nutritious. This soup was part of that quest. The butter can be omitted, but I think adding a little fat helps with flavor and nutrient absorption. Of course, this recipe can be varied. I’ve found that mushrooms and a 1/2 cup of cooked barley are nice additions.

• 8 cups chicken broth (boullion may be used)
• 1 lb carrots, sliced
• 1 bunch celery, sliced (include the leaves if you love celery)
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 lb dried kidney beans, cooked
• 1 bay leaf (optional, really enhances the flavor of the soup)
• 1 6 oz can tomato paste
• 1 T butter

Melt the butter in a dutch oven and cook the onion over medium heat for five minutes. Next add the celery and carrots and cook for fifteen minutes more. Adding the remaining ingredients and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Remove bay leaf before serving.

I plugged this recipe into a recipe calorie calculator at caloriecount.com and these were the results if the recipe were divided into 12 servings: