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My Go-To "Healthy" and Low-Cholesterol Meals


In an effort to lower my cholesterol, I've been trying new foods the last six months and trying to eat much healthier.  I've found some new favorite meals and foods that I've eaten over (and over and over).  I eat them over and over because they are yummy!  And pretty healthy too.  

Breakfast
I usually have a smoothie made out of a frozen banana, combination of almond milk or soy milk (I can't decide which I like better), this protein powder and either cocoa or Nesquick.  It is one of my favorite breakfast, snack and even dessert.  The frozen banana makes it frosty and thick and is like a dessert shake.  I've been adding protein powder since I've been cutting so much dairy and meat out of my diet.

If I don't have a smoothie, then I usually have oatmeal.  I make it with quick oats, almond milk, water and top it with a few raisins and a little brown sugar.  


Lunch
I eat a little single serving of hummus (from Costco) with veggies for lunch almost every day.  I love to dip carrots, any color pepper, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes in it.  This summer when we've packed lunches to take to the river, the pool or on vacation, I have brought along my little serving or hummus and bag of veggies.  I love it.  Yum!


Snacks
My family loves this cranberry delight trail mix.  I have found that nuts are my weakness at snacktime and I need to do better at portion control.

I love popcorn and make this kettlecorn often.

My boys LOVE fruit leather.  I make it pretty often.  I just puree up fruit and let it dry in my dehydrator on these fruit leather trays.  It's amazing and so yummy.  We've pureed canned pears, fresh peaches, apricots, cherries and freshly made applesauce.

Dinner
I've posted quite a few pictures of my "healthier" dinners on instagram.  Usually I just modify whatever I make for my family for me.  I leave out the cheese, eggs, or cut down on the meat, etc.


One of my favorites is quinoa and black bean honey lime enchiladas.  I make honey lime chicken enchiladas for my family, but pour some of the honey lime mixture over quinoa and black beans and wrap it in corn tortillas and smother it with green chile enchilada sauce along with my family's enchiladas.  


I also LOVE squash.  Any kind of squash.  We had oodles of zucchini and yellow squash this summer.  I thought about buying a spiralizer to make noodles out of them, but I found that my bosch shredding attachment makes really thick squash noodles.  I saute them really quickly and top with spaghetti sauce when my family is eating spaghetti.  (Or I bake a spaghetti squash, but then I end up eating it for days to finish it up.)  P.S.  The above picture shows some zucchini that my friend spiralized and brought over for me to try.

I found the I love sweet potatoes.  Until this summer, I hadn't really liked them.  But then I made this quinoa sweet potato salad (which I ate almost every day for 2 months for lunch this summer) and found that I like them.  I usually slice them into fry shape, toss them with a little cornstarch, smoked paprika, salt and pepper and olive oil and bake on my pampered chef pizza stone at 425 until they're browned and kind of crispy.

Last night I stuck some sweet potatoes in my quick french dip pita (I had very little meat in it and just a little slice of reduced-fat provolone and some roasted green chile).  Oh my goodness, it was so yummy!


Since we're still talking about squash and sweet potatoes, I have to tell you about my favorite breakfast burrito adaptation.  I usually fry up some potatoes for hashbrowns for my family.  I've gotten creative and mixed my hashbrowns with either a shredded zuchhini and/or yellow squash or some shredded sweet potato.  I leave the eggs and cheese off of my breakfast burrito and top it with avocado, a tiny pinch of costco bacon and some fresh salsa.  Yum!!!  I can't even count how many times I've eaten that this in the last six months, but I love it!



I haven't been much of a seafood person, but I'm trying to branch out.  I really like salmon, especially when it's grilled on a cedar plan and glazed with teriyaki sauce.  My family eats it with jasmine rice.  I always have quinoa.  Yum!  All the veggies in the above picture were from my garden.  Mmm...

Sweets
I love, love ice cream.  I love this Umpqua chocolate frozen yogurt that has less than 5 mg cholesterol per serving.  And also, this Dreyer's 1/2 the fat Fudge Tracks has 5 mg per serving.  We usually buy the lower-fat versions of ice cream anyway, but some have more cholesterol than others.


Thanks for reading!  I could talk about food for hours.  Lol!  What are your healthy favorites that you eat over and over?

To read more about my health journey find all my posts here.

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