Healthy Wraps

Hi, All:

One cool, crunchy sandwich that I like to eat is to wrap a Weight Watchers tortilla shell around some low-fat meat, and stuff it with lots of raw veges, like cucumber, alfalfa sprouts, romaine lettuce, and even some chunks of tomatoes. A little low-fat mayonaise, or oil and vinegar dressing will give a nice zing to it.

This is a great way to get your vegetable intake up, while keeping with the proper portion size of protein. Add a large glass of chilled water and voila, you have a well-balanced meal that's both filling and healthy!

Experiment with different meats and veges, and enjoy!

Blessings,

Eileen

Curried Pumpkin and Mango Soup

Ohhh, my hubby made this for our family this past Sunday. We've been trying to use up pantry and freezer contents and so he modified a pumpkin soup recipe to include some of our frozen mango, too. This soup is thick, and has a little tangy taste and is excellent, in my opinion. By using low sodium broth you create a healthier soup. I hope you enjoy it.

Curried Pumpkin and Mango Soup

1 onion
4 peeled chopped cloves garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 can chicken broth and 1 can of water
1 can pure pumpkin
2 cups mango chunks (frozen or fresh)
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 1/2 cups skim milk
2 tablespoons brown sugar

In large stockpot, cook the onion and garlic in the oil until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add chicken broth and curry powder. Bring to boil. Add pumpkin and mango, stir constantly, bring to boil again. Turn heat down to very low and cover and simmer about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

In very small batches transfer the hot soup to your blender. Be sure to hold the lid on top of the blender and even cover it with a towel to prevent blowouts. Puree the mixture until totally smooth. Transfer the newly smooth blended soup into a fresh clean pan. After all the soup has been pureed, slowly blend in the skim milk and brown sugar. Reheat the soup gently and serve immediately.

Try it! I hope you like it.

My, my, it's been awhile...

Sorry, guys! I've had a roller coaster of a life for the last while and have been offline for a lot of it.

I believe I left off with the water challenge. Can't remember if I met that challenge or not. If I didn't, I know I came close to the eight glasses each day as I'm still coming close to getting that in me regularly. It really is an amazing help to losing and maintaining weight loss. Not so much fun with the frequency of bathroom breaks required, though. Thankfully our basement bathroom is once again in working order since my office is down here, too.

How are we all doing with eating lots of greens and fresh fruits and other colourful vegetables? I hope, in this season of plenty, that you all are gravitating to those 'healthy' choices of salads and undoctored fresh fruits and veges. The nectarines have been awesome around here lately.

Let's all really try for those five to eight servings of vege's and fruit daily. Romaine salads are a great way to hike the vege intake, just forego the croutons, bacon bits and high-calorie dressings. Be creative, add sprouts, mushrooms, grated carrots, boiled eggs, grape tomatoes, etc. to add flavour, and just a little oil and vinegar dressing to top it all off.

Here's to healthy eating!

Blessings,

Eileen