Busy People's Low-fat Cookbook

Busy People’s

Low-Fat

Cookbook

Dawn Hall

Rutledge Hill Press™

Nashville, Tennessee

A Division of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

www.ThomasNelson.com

In memory of my gentle hero, faithful best

friend, cherished lover, loving father, and

courageous husband, Tracy Hall.

11/27/62–5/4/01

Copyright © 1998, 2003 by Dawn Hall

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Rutledge Hill Press, a Division of Thomas Nelson, Inc.,

P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, Tennessee, 37214.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hall, Dawn.

     Busy people’s low-fat cookbook / Dawn Hall.

       p. cm.

    Includes index.

     ISBN 1-4016-0105-7

     1. Low-fat diet—Recipes. I. Title.

   RM237.7.H3448 2003

   641.5'638—dc21

2003001766

Printed in Hong Kong

03 04 05 06 07—5 4 3 2 1

Complete Your

Busy People’s Library

The recipes in these two cookbooks are all easy to prepare and cook They all contain 7 ingredients or less and can be prepared in less than 30 minutes

Down-Home Cooking

Without the Down-Home Fat

1-4016-0104-9

$16.99

Includes recipes for:

• Citrus Pancakes

• Caesar Oyster Crackers

• Chicken Skillet Cobbler

• Chewy, Gooey No-Bake Freezer Cookies

• Turtle Cake

Busy People’s

Slow Cooker Cookbook

1-4016-0107-3

$16.99

Includes recipes for:

• Cinnamon-Kissed Chicken

• Mushroom Chowder

• Apple-Yam Casserole

• Peaches and Cream Spoon Cake

• Pistachio-Nut Snack Cake

Available at better book stores everywhere!

or at

www.RutledgeHillPress.com

Contents

Acknowledgments

My Story

Introduction

Notes to the Cook

Breakfast

Appetizers & Breads

Soups & Salads

Side Dishes

Entrées

Desserts

Drinks

Index

Acknowledgments

As I take a moment to reflect and gather my thoughts, I am overwhelmed with thankfulness. I wholeheartedly believe my talents are a gift from God, so of course I thank Him first. It’s not uncommon for me to wake up at 3:30 A.M. with a low-fat, fast and easy recipe idea in my head. For years I thought, What is wrong with me? But after friends and family members kept requesting the recipes I’d created and encouraging me to write a cookbook, I realized that it wasn’t a problem; it was a gift. A gift from God. It is to Him that I give all the praise and glory for all the good He does through me.

Next I thank my daughters Whitney and Ashley who have served as my guinea pigs for so many years. When you taste the recipes in this cookbook you may think that would be a good thing, but believe me, I’ve had my share of flops. I never follow a recipe. I love to create. Sometimes when eating out I’ll jot down on a paper napkin what I think is in the dish, then when I’m home I try to recreate the same dish using low-fat ingredients quickly and easily. For someone to ask me not to be creative with food would be like asking a flower not to blossom. My family has never done that to me. I am truly thankful for their support and encouragement.

I greatly appreciate the help of my personal assistants: Diane Bowman-Yantiss, Karen Schwanbeck, Mable Jackson, and Robin Friend. I couldn’t have done it all without you. You are the glue that keeps it all together.

Last but certainly not least I thank my publisher, Larry Stone, for believing in me, Bryan Curtis and Terri Woodmore for getting the word out, and Geoff Stone, my editor. I am grateful for all the hard work, time, and patience he put into the project.

My Story

It’s been said that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Often this has been the case in my life. If I were not the one living my life, I’d find the truth of my life unbelievable. Many have said my story would make a great movie. Who knows? Maybe someday.

I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My parents divorced when I was five. When I was ten we moved to Toledo, Ohio, when my mom remarried. I’m the oldest of seven. I feel I was born watching my weight and have struggled with being a compulsive overeater for as long as I can remember. I hate it.

I flunked first grade. In early years of elementary school my teachers always told me I wasn’t focusing in class, even though I was trying to with all my might. It wasn’t until adulthood that I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, which explains my extreme difficulty (even today) to concentrate with background noise and distractions. I graduated with honors in 1981 from Springfield High School.

I married my high school sweetheart, Tracy Wayne Hall, in 1984. I never went to college. I worked as a waitress until I was pregnant with our first child in 1986. We were blessed with two wonderful daughters born in 1987 and 1988. It took one year to physically build our small ranch home ourselves (with the help of friends) while our family lived in a tiny efficiency apartment above Tracy’s parents’ garage. We fondly named our new home Cozy Homestead, and we moved into it in June 1992.

I enjoyed teaching aerobics and facilitating classes for compulsive overeaters. With passion I was creating new recipes every day, and our family never ate the same meal twice for family dinners. I home-schooled our children until November 28, 1994. I’ll never forget that day. It was the day my life was turned inside out and upside down and also the last day of a normal life as I can remember it.

November 28, 1994, the day after my loving husband’s thirty-second birthday, was the day we found out Tracy had brain cancer. Doctors were able to surgically remove one pound of malignant tumor, leaving Tracy completely paralyzed on his entire left side. He was given six to eight months to live.

I told Tracy the day we found out about his cancer that I believed God was going to use our most challenging situation to give Himself praise and glory. That is exactly what God is doing to this day.

To make a long story short, in order to pay for an experimental treatment, we had to raise thousands of dollars each month because our insurance would not pay for experimental treatments. All of the recipes I had been creating over the previous five years I printed into books and sold in order to earn enough money for Tracy’s treatments. My thought was we could use what little we had left in our savings to pay for a couple weeks of Tracy’s treatment, or we could try to invest the money into cookbooks and hopefully earn enough to pay for his treatments indefinitely. In the beginning, when I was driving home with my first vanload of a thousand cookbooks I thought to myself, You’re nuts, Dawn. How in the world are you going to sell a thousand books? You’re nuts! Well, we sold a thousand cookbooks in five days and eighteen thousand in ten weeks. That first book was Down Home Cookin’ Without the Down Home Fat. It was selected as one of Ohio’s Best of the Best Cookbooks by Quail Ridge Press and the 1996 Best Cookbook of the Year by North American Book Dealers Exchange. Not too shabby for a homemaker who didn’t know how to type or use a computer, huh? I would be a fool if I thought for even one moment that I did it. Over 650,000 cookbooks sold. It was definitely a God thing, and He gets all the credit. He did it through me and for that I am forever grateful.

I guess we weren’t living with enough stress of daily financial bondage and fighting cancer and its devastating effects. We had a house fire on Valentine’s Day in 2000. It was a nightmare, and I did all I could to fight the fire. I remember vividly our daughters screaming in panic and fear, Get out of the house, Mom! It’s only a house! They were scared to death. All I knew was I didn’t want our daughters to lose the house their daddy built for them. After all, how many little girls can say their daddy built their house for them? The fire left all four of us living in an assisted living nursing home for four months as builders restored our home to its original state.

The good news was that Tracy lived for six and a half years after his diagnosis, twelve times longer than the doctors ever imagined. He was a wonderful father and an amazing example of a truly godly man. He inspired countless people, me included. He was able to fulfill his dream of living to see his little girls become young ladies. Tracy died on May 5, 2001. Ironically, it wasn’t the cancer that took him. It was from a fall that caused a brain hemorrhage. The experimental treatment had cured him completely. Tracy’s death was not in vain. The data gathered during his use of the experimental cancer treatment will be used to help others. His skin, bones, organs, and even part of his eyes were donated to help others live. Praise God!

God still gets all the praise and glory. I believe my cookbooks are a tool that God is using to open the doors for me to share the good news of His love. As an inspirational speaker, people will come listen to me, a cookbook lady, when they might never come to listen to a preacher. I believe my primary purpose is to encourage and inspire others to live lives with no regrets and to put God first in each of their lives.

Introduction

Since we live in a culture that is always on the go, we don’t always have a lot of time to prepare healthy meals. This has contributed to fast-food lifestyles that have produced overweight people. With my line of Busy People’s cookbooks I make available to everybody recipes that are easy to prepare, low in fat, and great tasting. In this book you will learn about the importance of eating low-fat foods as well as get to enjoy over 200 low-fat recipes that will stimulate your taste buds. Also look for my Busy People’s Slow Cooker Cookbook. The slow cooker is a perfect way to prepare a meal while away from home. And if you like these recipes, keep your eyes open for future Busy People’s cookbooks at a bookstore near you.

Help! I’ve Started Eating and I Can’t Stop

It seems like most of us have been there at one time or another. Thanksgiving, Christmas day, and all-you-can-eat buffets (we want to get our money’s worth!) are just a few situations when a lot of us overeat. For those of you who never overindulge, God bless you! You can go ahead and move to the next chapter, as this will probably bore you. For most of us, we eat for so many of the wrong reasons: We’re happy; We’re sad; We’re bored; It’s time to eat. You know it’s true!

The Truth About Your Weight

Weight, nutrition, and health are complicated issues. When it comes to fighting the bulge, the truth is it can be hard. For some of us very hard. If you’re thinking, No joke. Now tell me something I don’t know. Listen up. What you are about to read may surprise you.

The number one reason people are in hospitals today is because of lifestyle. Heart disease, cancer, and diabetes can all be positively affected by a low-fat diet. Today there are so many wonderful low-fat foods that taste delicious. We don’t have to eat like a rabbit to eat healthy. If you’ve never tried a low-fat diet, I strongly encourage you to do so. For those of you who complain about the taste of low-fat foods yet have never tried them, all I can say is, Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!

Although many dietitians, health enthusiasts, and other people with good intentions would like to make being healthy seem simple, it is not. Some people believe: If I’d only put God first; If I’d only eat low-fat foods; If I would exercise daily; or If I only ate when I was hungry, I wouldn’t have a weight problem. Other people believe that there must be some hidden abuse or emotional reason behind why people are overweight or that it’s a self-control thing. It’s not always that simple. Yes, sometimes it is a psychological problem, and yes, sometimes it can be as simple as changing one bad behavior or attitude towards food. However, for the most part, I feel it is much, much more complicated than just one issue. For the most part, for most people maintaining ideal weight is complex and multifaceted.

Maintaining Ideal Body Weight

Many people have tried to simplify this complicated issue with comments such as, If you don’t want to be fat, just don’t eat fat. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were so simple? Then there are those who say, If you don’t want to be fat, just stop eating when you feel comfortable. That’s a fine idea for those who are overweight because they simply keep eating even though they are full. What about those of us who already quit eating when we are comfortable, and we happen to have a larger appetite than our bodies need? Another way of looking at this is that we don’t eat too much; our bodies are just shorter than they ought to be for the weight we are. It’s hard to stop eating when your stomach and watering mouth cry out, I’m still hungry! One way to help calm hunger cries is to drink water before, during, and after your meal. Other ideas to help satisfy a hungry tummy are:

• First thing in the morning, think positive, reinforcing thoughts about eating healthy.

• Eat a cup of vegetable soup or a clear broth before your meal.

• Eat more salad with fat-free salad dressing or fat-free green vegetables at the end of the meal to help you feel satisfied.

• Sip on decaffeinated herbal flavored teas. There’s something very soothing and relaxing about sipping on flavorful teas. Or, for a unique sipping beverage place 8 to 10 tic-tacs in the filter holder of a 10-cup coffee maker instead of coffee. This will create a hot, flavorful beverage that is virtually calorie free. (One calorie per cup.)

• Drink a glass of Metamucil. (The flavored ones aren’t bad.) Not only does it help you feel fuller, but it provides 3 grams of natural fiber per glass.

• Sometimes we still feel hungry because our sweet tooth is not satisfied. With this in mind, try a tic-tac or chewing a piece of gum. If that doesn’t work, try a small fat-free cookie, sugar-free jello, popsicle, or a piece of fruit.

Ask the advice of your family doctor or holistic medical doctor. Explain your hunger. See if there are some natural herbs, vitamins, or minerals that may be helpful in curbing your appetite. For those who say, It’s all in your head . . . that’s why you think you’re hungry, a part of their statement is true. Hunger signals are released from the brain. However, being overweight usually is more complicated and complex than simply just that. If you go to a holistic medical doctor, he can actually test your blood. Sometimes a deficiency in one area or another can make you feel hungry, tired, etc.

My mother, Wendy Oberhouse, has lost over eighty pounds, and my stepfather, Donald Oberhouse, has lost seventy pounds. They’ve kept the weight off for years. I am so proud of them. Along with the switch to a low-fat, low-calorie lifestyle, they use herbs to help curb their large appetites. The herbs help take the edge off so they can maintain their healthier lifestyle.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind Theory

Sometimes we think we’re hungry because the delicious, mouthwatering foods that are left over from the meal are staring up at us from their serving bowls. We think we’re hungry when we really aren’t. It tasted good, and we’d like more. Keeping this possibility in mind, only serve your vegetables and salad home-style. (They can be used