One for the holiday cooks

[neadods]

I'll be doing much of the Christmas cooking this year, so this post is for my fellow culinists.

The Questions
We usually have a sausage-and-bread stuffing for Christmas, but won't this year because Dad's on a low-salt, low-fat diet. Any suggestions for alternatives? I'd rather have a new stuffing than "ours missing stuff stuffing," y'know?

Also, we like to snack as we open presents. I'm looking for non-drippy healthy snackfood suggestions, since a box of mini-quiches is no longer an option.

Low-fat Sweets
Because it's Christmas, gotta have the cookies, and I wouldn't be so cruel as to bring ones Dad *can't* eat. So for anyone looking for low-fat sweets:
- Divinity
- Angel Food Cake
- "truffles" made of ground dried fruit and pistachio (thank you, Alton Brown!)
- dark chocolate almond clusters
- rice crispie treats
- popcorn balls

Comments

[queenmaggie.livejournal.com]

Try a stuffing based on things like apricots and waterchestnuts... or a real oldfashioned chestnut stuffing. There's also the more Southern oyster stuffing, if he likes that kind of thing. You need to go with stronger flavors to make up for the mouth feel of the fats, and the lessened salt.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Stuffing recipes (http://www.fatfree.com/recipes/stuffing/) at the fatfree vegetarian recipe archive. They have some sausage recipes (they use fake, of course), but I'd suggest avoiding them, because you can't control the sodium in sausage products. The apple-sage looks like it might work best for you, with a low-sodium broth and that low-sodium salt, and has hints on making it taste more like sausage stuffing.

They also have loads of cookie and dessert recipes and stuff.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Oooo! Apple sage might be perfect. I'm trying to get more fruit and veg into our diet too - for years the only vegetable on the table was peas, but I'm bringing my double steamer and intend to have a variety of alternatives.

[aramintamd.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest apple raisin; wonder how the sage and raisin would interact.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to think that I should make several batches of different stuffings so we can taste-test for next year!

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

And if you're used to mini-quiches as a holiday snack, I'd recommend getting some bags of pizza dough from the grocery store (just because it cuts down on what you have to do from scratch) and making some baked samosas or some other sort of hand-held pie-like snack - pretty much every culture's got one, so there's bound to be some filling that'd work. (If there's a Trader Joe's near you, they do pizza dough very cheaply, and have whole wheat as well as regular.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

There is a Trader Joe's near work - hmmmm!

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they do bags of pizza dough for about 90 cents. Apparently it makes great bread, too, if you put it in an oiled bread pan to bake. But it'd be really easy to use it for a samosa or mini-calzone or pasty style snack.

They'd be really good for holiday stuff anyway - fantastic dried fruits (mango, and cinnamon apples, and peaches, and things), and chocolate-covered cranberries/ginger/what have you. They might even have some nice frozen or prepared stuff that meets your quiche/snack needs, since they tend to be a bit healthier than the average supermarket stuff. And you could find some interesting holiday desserts there, like French nougat or panettone, which I think is pretty low-fat as Christmas cakes go, and might be a good option if you're leaving out something like a pie or fruitcake this year. And they do meringue cookies in several flavors, which are fat-free, really tasty, and very festive-looking. Doing everything from scratch can be fun, but having to learn new recipes and do it all from scratch because you have to can be a chore, y'know?

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

WHy not do one with apples and walnuts? Or I even heard of a stuffing with oysters.

[zinelady.livejournal.com]

I usually use store bought stuffing. This year I did Cranberry Stove Top stuffing and was really pleased with the taste. I'm not sure about the amount of sodium in it, but you can cut down on the margarine or butter you put in it.