Imagine a relaxing Saturday morning at home enjoying the sweet and spicy goodness of a cinnamon bun, still warm from the oven, sinfully delicious… and surprisingly low in fat!

 

Fortunately, eating healthier doesn’t mean you have to bid farewell to all of your favorite sweet treats or that you have to sacrifice taste at the dinner table.

 

Whether you are looking for new meal ideas, or you want to make favorite family recipes healthier, Lancaster General has a guide that will help you prepare meals that are both good… and good for you.

 

“The Lighter Side of Lancaster: Traditional Recipes Made Healthier” is a 44-page cookbook that features
favorite local recipes for appetizers, soups, main courses and desserts, which were submitted by local members of the community. But the guide also includes suggestions on how to modify recipes to make them healthier.

 

“It’s more than just your average cookbook,” says Rosemary Search, RN, BSN, Community Health and Wellness Manager for the Lancaster General Wellness Center. “It has tips as well as subtle changes that will make your recipes healthier and help you and your family adapt to healthier eating.”

 

The book suggests ways you can reduce saturated fat, sugarand sodium by reducing, omitting or replacing ingredients. For example, you can use fat-free cream cheese instead of regular, or use two egg whites in place of one whole egg.

 

Getting ready to enjoy some delicious cinnamon buns, whoopie pies and morning glory muffins are cookbook contributors (front) Erma Yoder, Rosemary Search,(back) Jan Kristensen and Jacqui Zimmerman.

In addition, it features 22 recipes, including cinnamon buns, morning glory muffins, corn fritters, chicken corn soup, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, whoopie pies and, of course, shoo-fly cake.

 

There are recommendations on a variety of healthy foods that should be a staple in all kitchens and tips for dining out. Also, it includes money- and time-saving suggestions so that eating healthier doesn’t break the budget or consume hours at the grocery store.

 

Best of all, the cookbook is free.

 

“The Lighter Side of Lancaster” is part of Lancaster General’s Healthier Living initiative, encouraging people to incorporate three components into their lives: better nutrition, more exercise and improved stress management.

 

“We hope that this guide takes some of the stress out of preparing healthy meals by making them a little easier to make,” says Jacqui Zimmerman, RD, LDN, Dietitian for the Wellness Center.

 

Before a recipe made it into the cookbook, it was “taste tested” by the Wellness Center staff and the cookbook contributors. “Everything that’s in here tasted really good to us,” Jacqui says.

 

Rosemary says this is the first in a series of healthier eating cookbooks that will be produced by the Wellness Center. Another resource available is “Lancaster on the Move,” a guide to free and low cost physical activity for you and your family, developed in partnership with the Lancaster County Planning Commission.

 

To receive your free copy of “The Lighter Side of Lancaster” and “Lancaster on the Move,” call (800) 341-2121. You can also download both books free on-line using the links below.