Healthy Taco Night

Taco night is one of my favorite family meals to cook and to eat with the family or friends.  All of the flavor components combined are simply delightful. However, with the cheese, sour cream, high cholesterol meats, and fried tortilla shells, taco night can be a high-calorie, high-fat meal.

There are some simple swaps that can make the tacos a healthier choice for you and yours.

1: The cheese is definitely a comfort of taco night, but let's be honest, it doesn't add a lot of flavor.  There are fat free or low fat cheeses out there that can give you the texture and cold element to your tacos if that is what you prefer.  Or you can leave the cheese off completely.

2:  If you are like me, then you love the sour cream on your tacos!  The cold smooth texture with a slight sour element added to my hard shell tacos is the best.  However, switching the sour cream to Greek Yogurt can eliminate some of those unwanted calories and some of the fat as well.  It also adds probiotics and you are not eating a thick sour Greek Yogurt on its own (if you are not into that). 
If you do not enjoy Greek Yogurt, the sour cream can always be replaced with light or fat free sour cream.  I had to do this until I got used to it, and then I switched to Greek Yogurt.

3.  Growing up, we always ate ground beef tacos.  I loved the smell and couldn't wait to load it on to my growing pile that would soon resemble a taco. A few years back, I decided to try ground turkey instead.  It was fabulous!  It had the same texture and the flavor was more mild.  I have never gone back to ground beef.  It is a poultry, so it is a leaner choice of protein.  I have already switched my families point of view on this as well.

4.  Hard shells! Yum!  Who doesn't love hard shells with their tacos?  I actually love the tostadas (flat hard shell).  I would heat up my oil and let it sizzle, snap, and pop until it was golden and crisp.  I knew that I was just eating all the oil that was soaked up into the tortilla, but I didn't care!  It was my comfort food.  After starting to be more health conscious, I would eat soft shells, knowing they were more healthy for me.  Until one day, I decided to bake them!  Brilliant!  Only, they were never as crisp as when they were fried.
Luckily, there is a solution!  I now heat my oven to 350* and spray both sides of the tortillas with Pam.  I then throw them in the oven and let them get crisp.  I never have to flip them over because the Pam helps to conduct the heat against the baking sheet.  They are now just as crispy and golden brown as when I would fry them.

These are a few of the ways you can adjust your tacos to be more healthy.  You could also add vegetables to them or leave out the meat entirely and have veggie tacos.  Tacos are a great meal to make adjustments to because there are so many components that small swaps will not be highly noticed.

I would love to hear what swaps you make to your taco night...

How to Treat a Burn

Picture this...

You have a dinner party planned for this evening, and you are in the home stretch.  Your hors d'œuvres are out and presented; the table is set.  The only thing remaining is for you to pull the roasted lamb rack.  While you reach for the handles of the roasting pan, you realize the towel in your hand is wet.  "OUCH!" You scream, wondering how you are going to get this pain to go away before your guests arrive. 

Coming from an industrial kitchen, this used to happen to me and my co-workers on a nightly basis.  I used to lather on the burn creams, throw on a band aid and a glove over it; however, this did little for the pain.

I am rather skilled now at cleaning and wrapping cuts, but not great at treating burns.  I became careful not to burn myself; nevertheless, there were always the exceptions when I would. 

One night when I was at the fish/sautee station, I was burned pretty badly by the cook next to me.  He threw his ingredients into a pan with hot oil and it splattered on my forearm.  Normally that wouldn't bother me, because I don't use my forearm to cook.  Since my arm was constantly over heat that night, the pain was unbearable.

The other Jr. Sous Chef, told me to put a tomato slice on the burn.  I looked at him like he was crazy.  He explained to me that the acid in the tomato will neutralize the pain.  I thought, "what could it hurt?"  Sure enough, I placed the tomato on the wound and the aching started to slowly go away.

I have worked in several other kitchens since then, and taught that trick to many other cooks.  Not only tomatoes work; my personal favorite is lemon.  Squeeze some lemon juice on your burn or hold a lemon slice on it.  The pain will start to minimize.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a cure-all.  The skin will still be tender and sore to the touch, but it does relieve burn pain. I am sure there are other burn remedies out there, but I find this one to be easy, fast and convenient.

If you have other burn treatments, please share on the comment section below...