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

[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?