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It’s that time of year again when most of us ring in the New Year with some sort of resolution stating what we’d like to change in the coming year. What’s yours this year? Some of the most popular resolutions we hear about are getting fit, losing weight, managing debt, eating right, quitting smoking, and volunteering more in order to help others.

On this week’s Cooking with the Moms podcast, we share our resolutions – can you believe we’ve both resolved to get more organized? – along with tips for helping you and your family stick to yours.

We also have two recipes to make eating right in 2009 easier than ever. The first is an easy-does-it recipe for Confetti Chicken Wraps, a makeover of fast food Mexican fare. Why drive into the drive through with your kids when you can make this yummy meal instead? Our second recipe for Smooshed Sweet Potatoes is a kid-friendly side dish that’s sure to help everyone get more veggies on the table.

Tell us about your New Year’s resolutions and how you plan to stick with them. We welcome any and all ideas. Most important of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

For nearly ten years now, Janice’s daughters have joined a few special neighborhood friends the week before Christmas for a fun-filled morning decorating gingerbread houses. Whoever hosts this annual event gets to mix up gobs of frosting, assemble the houses and prepare the work surface. The girls then spend a couple of hours sipping hot cocoa and attaching a rainbow of colorful candies to their houses as well as the “grounds.” After all, without walkways, snowmen and trees the houses wouldn’t be complete! Must-have confections for the rowdy candy crew: gum drops, nonpareils, Necco wafers, licorice, and candy canes of various sizes.

Courtney, Merri, Leah and Carolyn

Since there are always three sets of sisters working on three sets of houses, each girl gets two sides to decorate. After a decade of practice, the houses can get pretty elaborate, and there’s always a bit of competition to see who can create the most unique and whimsical look which may explain why Leah’s godmother Merri, added cool palm trees! This year’s gathering also included three wonderfully rambunctious boys from the neighborhood who added a whole new level of fun and frenzy to the event.

Liam, Brendan, and Ryan

And speaking of boys, though decorating gingerbread houses was never a tradition for Liz or her two sons, she recently decided to keep up with the Joneses — or shall we say, the Bissexes — and bought each of her boys a gingerbread house as a Hanukkah gift! Simon and Josh ate more candy than they stuck to their houses, and the mess was so bad it took Liz an hour to clean it up (notice how the oh-so-experienced Janice placed a tablecloth below her girls’ houses), but it was well worth the effort. Decorating gingerbread houses turned out to be a lot of laughs and a great hands-on activity for the boys — and wow, aren’t those houses beautiful? Next year, Liz will be ready with a plastic tablecloth … and the vacuum.

Simon and Josh

In today’s Cooking with the Moms radio podcast, we take a reflective look back at 2008 and dish about our favorite recipe makeovers, restaurant meals including Neo at The Mansion on Peachtree in Atlanta and Xinh’s in Shelton, WA, and new food products as well as our most exciting food adventures – can you believe Liz’s son Josh caught a 7-pound lobster in Maine? We also share our predictions for the top 2009 food & nutrition trends including omega-3 fats, vitamin D, sodium, and sustainability.

During the show, Janice had an opportunity to talk about our trip to Chicago for the annual meeting of the American Dietetic Association. During the conference, she met up with former college professor, Katherine Musgrave, for dinner.

Janice & Katherine

Janice told our listeners, “Katherine, now 88 years young, is the reason I became a dietitian. I was a microbiology major at the University of Maine when I took Intro to Food and Nutrition as an elective my sophomore year. After the first class I asked her to be my advisor since I knew that food and nutrition was the major for me. Katherine’s enthusiasm, passion and energy inspired me then and inspires me today. She has been retired for over 20 years yet she still teaches and counsels patients and remains active in the dietetic association. I feel blessed to have her as my mentor.”

To watch a video of this amazing woman, visit the University of Maine’s website.  Who are the mentors in your life?  We’d love to hear about them.

We are pleased to announce that Lori L., mom of two from Boxborough, MA, is the winner of our latest giveaway for Quick Flip to Delicious Dinners and the Veggie Quick Flip Pocket Guide, written by dietitian Eileen Faughey.  Our winner was selected randomly from more than three dozen blog entries.  When asked to share the recipe her family “flips” over, Lori posted the following comment:  My son devours my homemade fat free salsa. It is made with mostly fresh vegetables. He piles it with tortilla chips and cheese or dips his carrots in it for a yummy treat!

We loved hearing about everyone’s favorite family recipes and were happy to see so many from our website and cookbook!  There were more ideas than we could possibly share here (so feel free to look back over the posts to read them), but here are a few to whet your appetite.

Nicole B had a unique recipe: My family flips over my chicken and pineapple sandwich on sourdough bread! You either grill or saute’ the chicken breasts, and then do the same with the pineapple slices until they are browned and soft. Serve on sourdough bread with light mayo, shredded lettuce, and top with pineapple slices. Very satisfying and filling!!

Kathy M. had a great suggestion for families with food allergies:  My family flips over my chicken and broccoli. My son has a peanut and tree nut allergy so we can’t go to a Chinese restaurant. Before he was diagnosed, he used to love eating this take-out meal. Now I make homemade chicken and broccoli over brown rice at home. I’m sure it’s much healthier because I can control the amount of sauce mixed in and there’s no MSG!

Jen, a soon-to-be dietitian from Miss Organic’s Kitchen blog wrote: My family flips for chicken asparagus bake. It has rice, chicken, asparagus, covered in homemade cream of chicken soup and a little bit of cheese. Yum!

And another fellow food blogger, Lisa from Jersey Girl Cooks, shared this delicious dinner: My family loves when we have fajitas. I like to use whole wheat tortillas and offer a variety of healthy toppings including grilled chicken, grilled veggies, low fat cheese and low fat sour cream.

Thanks to everyone for entering.  Stay tuned for our next giveaway coming up in January for a top-of-the-line pressure cooker!

Spinach balls are one of those quintessential holiday favorites that seem healthy – after all, they’re made with spinach – but are typically loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat.

When Jen M., a mom of three from Overland Park, Kansas sent us her recipe for Spinach Balls and asked us to give it a healthy makeover, we couldn’t resist the challenge. “Spinach Balls are a special treat for the kids and a great party food,” said Jen, “but they’re so greasy.” After looking at Jen’s recipe, made with a stick and a half of butter (that’s 12 tablespoons!), we had to agree.

Athena, age 7, loves her mom's new recipe

3-year old Orion eats with gusto

The Rescue:

Hmmm. What to do with those 12 tablespoons of butter? While we’re not opposed to butter all together, the 7 grams of saturated fat in just three of the spinach balls pushed us over the edge. For our rescue, we used four tablespoons of butter plus four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (rich in heart-healthy monounsaturated fat). We also cut the Parmesan cheese from one cup down to a half.

When made with less fat and Parm, the spinach balls turned out a bit dry. Jen had the same problem when she initially tweaked this recipe at home. “I experimented with less butter and I even used some olive oil but it didn’t work – they were too dry.”

Our final fix was the addition of half a cup of shredded reduced-fat Cheddar cheese. This did the trick and we were happy with the results of our recipe rescue. More importantly, Jen and her family were happy too. “They stayed moist without that greasy quality of the original, and we liked the new flavor,” Jen told us when we spoke on the phone recently. At first, 7-year-old Athena said, “Never make this again,” but then proceeded to devour them! Jen made a batch and froze half. She plans to serve them to friends over New Year’s. We hope she’ll report back and tell us what her friends think of the Recipe Rescue.

Cheesy Spinach Bites

Makes 16 servings (about 48 “bites”)

• Two 10-ounce packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed
• 2 cups crushed herb-seasoned stuffing mix (we like Pepperidge Farm made with white & whole wheat bread)
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat Cheddar cheese
• 5 large eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup ground flaxseed
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray two large, rimmed baking sheets with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
2. Drain the spinach well by pressing in a colander and using paper towels to remove excess moisture.
3. In a large bowl, combine the spinach, stuffing mix, Parmesan cheese, Cheddar cheese, eggs, flaxseed, oil, butter, onion powder, thyme, and pepper and mix very well.
4. Roll the mixture into 48 balls (about 1 to 1 ¼-inches in diameter) and place on the prepared sheets. Bake until golden brown on the bottom, about 10 minutes.

Nutrition Information per Serving (3 “bites”): 150 calories, 10g fat (3.5g saturated, 0.5g omega-3), 210mg sodium, 8g carbohydrate, 2g fiber, 6g protein, 90% vitamin A, 10% calcium

For comparison sake, the original recipe had 160 calories, 12g fat (7g saturated), and 300mg sodium in three “bites.”

If you want us to give your favorite family recipe a healthy “rescue,” send it to moms@mealmakeovermoms.com.

If recipes like “Mom, the House Smells Great” Roasted Chicken and Lazy-Day Beef & Vegetable Soup sound like they would hit the spot on a cold winter’s day, then be sure to tune into this week’s Cooking with the Moms radio podcast show on Hearty Winter Dinners.

The roasted chicken was featured in our cookbook, The Moms’ Guide to Meal Makeovers, and is surprisingly easy. Your house will definitely smell great when you make this dish, and your kids will definitely ask for seconds. Our simple beef and veggie soup is chock-full of great nutrition and is brimming with rich flavors. The stew meat — which cooks for hours in the slow cooker — melts in your mouth, and as Liz likes to say, “it’s like butt-ah.”  She’s from New York, so she can get away with that!

We hope you enjoy listing to the show as much as we enjoyed recording it.

Since the launch of our website and the release of our cookbook in 2004 (can you believe it’s been that long?) we’ve been taking your favorite family recipes and giving them a healthy makeover. Unlike many of the so-called “healthy” recipes out there that are sugar and fat free, our makeovers – rescues if you will – are lower in sodium and the bad saturated fat, but they’re bursting with great nutrition and flavor.

Our mission has always been to weave good-for-you ingredients into everything we make … things like whole grains, nuts, vegetables, beans, and healthy oils. That said, we never sacrifice the great familiar flavors that you and your family love.

Starting this Friday, we’ll post a regular Recipe Rescue article to the blog. Here’s how the new feature will work:

• If you have a recipe you’d like us to rescue, send us a copy at moms@mealmakeovermoms.com. From cookies and casseroles to pasta and pies, we’ll consider them all.
• Every few weeks, we’ll pick one recipe for the official rescue. We’ll add a dash (or two) of our makeover magic and then return the made-over recipe to the person who sent it.
• To make sure our Recipe Rescue is a hit, we’ll ask that person to make the dish at home and then try it out on his or her family.

We’re so excited to feature your recipes and your family’s reaction to the changes. Stay tuned for our first installment of Recipe Rescue this Friday when we spotlight a family from Kansas and their favorite holiday recipe for spinach balls. Cutting the recipe’s 12 tablespoons of butter down to just four seemed like mission impossible but … (come back on Friday to see what happened)!

Do you and your family ever get tired of the same old pasta, chicken, soup, and vegetables?  To the rescue is a new book called Quick Flip to Delicious Dinners written by dietitian Eileen Faughey.  We met Eileen in October at a nutrition conference and have wanted to offer her book as a giveaway ever since! 

Here’s how the book works: Say you’re having pasta for dinner but want something different from the usual red sauce on top.  Eileen shows you how to shake things up with five international variations — Asian, French, Italian, Mexican, or Spanish.  She does the same thing for pizza, stir fries, soups, grains, desserts, and more.  

One luck winner will receive a copy of Quick Flip to Delicious Dinners plus Eileen’s Veggie Quick Flip Pocket Guide which features buying, storing, preparing, and cooking tips for dozens of vegetables.   If you have ever wondered what to do with collard greens or rutabagas, this is the giveaway for you!

To enter, simply post a comment and tell us about a favorite recipe (preferably a healthy one!) that you and your family flip over.  The deadline for entering is noon on Monday, December 22nd.  We’ll announce our randomly-selected winner on the blog that day.  Be sure to include your email address so we can let you know if you win.

It’s that time of year again when cookie jars overflow with holiday goodies and family and friends get together to swap their favorite cookies.  Whether you’re attending a cookie swap or not, we hope you’ll tune into this week’s Cooking with the Moms Cookie Swap podcast as we dish about our best-ever holiday treats.

First up in the show is a recipe makeover for Ginger Drizzle Cookies.  We received the original recipe from Jenni K., a mom of three boys from New Castle, Ohio.  Jennie asked us to cook up a healthier alternative to the shortening-based frosting in her recipe which we did by creating a simple sugar glaze.  While we were at it, we also used canola oil instead of butter and tossed in some whole wheat flour and ground flaxseed for extra nutrition.

Our second recipe on Cooking with the Moms features Peppermint Meringue Snowballs.  They’re delicious and easy to make and are perfect for people with celiac disease who follow a gluten free diet.

Feel free to share your favorite holiday cookie recipes right here on our blog or tell us about your cookie swap adventures this season.  And by all means, if you have a super-rich recipe that needs a makeover send it along.

Don’t you just love it when you cook up a healthy recipe that makes everyone at your dinner table happy? Tacos are one of those tried-and-true favorites that elicit nothing but compliments from our kids. So last week, we took the ingredients from our Have-It-Your-Way Tacos – lean ground beef, black beans, cheese, and salsa – and used them in a new recipe for Black Bean & Beef Tortilla Pie. The inspiration for the recipe came from Everyday Food, so we can’t take all the credit for the idea!

So here’s the back story: Initially, when we tested the recipe, we decided to make it vegetarian by using meat-free grounds (they’re made from soy). But after making the pie not once but twice, we decided we weren’t crazy about the flavor of the grounds in this dish. Maybe it was one too many bites that put us over the edge, so we decided to use lean ground beef instead. If you’re a vegetarian, by all means, substitute the beef with the soy grounds (don’t let our little “issue” dissuade you).

Black Bean & Beef Tortilla Pie

Makes 6 Servings

• Four 10-inch flour tortillas
• 1 pound lean ground beef (90% or higher)
• One 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup salsa (we like mild)
• 1/2 cup corn kernels (canned, frozen or fresh)
• 1 to 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 cups shredded reduced-fat Cheddar or Mexican blend cheese
• 1/4 cup sliced black olives, optional

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim the tortillas with kitchen scissors or a paring knife to fit a 9-inch springform pan (use the removable bottom of the pan as a guide). Assemble pan with the bottom upside down. Lightly coat the bottom and sides with nonstick cooking spray and set aside
2. Cook the beef in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, breaking up the large pieces, until no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Drain excess fat.
3. Add the beans, salsa, corn, cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder and stir to combine.
4. Place one tortilla in the bottom of the prepared pan. Spread with a third of the beef mixture, then 1/2 cup cheese. Repeat with two more layers. Top with the last tortilla, and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup cheese and the olives as desired.
5. Bake until the top is lightly browned and the cheese melts, about 15 minutes. Run knife around edge of pan and remove sides. Cut into wedges using a serrated knife (we like to serve with reduced-fat sour cream and/or guacamole).

Nutrition Information per Serving 360 calories, 12g fat (6g saturated), 770mg sodium, 35g carbohydrate, 5g fiber, 32g protein, 10% vitamin A, 35% calcium, 20% iron

If you like to use beans in your recipes (which, by the way, are technically a vegetable), you may like some of these:

Black Bean Vegetarian Burgers from Super Healthy Kids.

Gnocchi with White Beans and Pesto from The Toddler Cafe

Polenta Bean Pies from What’s Cooking

If you try our fun Tortilla Pie for dinner, let us know what you and your kids think of it.