A Healthy Thanksgiving Can Be Yours With These Recipes
| 2 min read
Who says Thanksgiving dinner has to be a 4,500-calorie over-the-top feast? There are lots of delicious recipes that feature all the flavors of the holiday but with a lot less fat, calories and sodium. All you need to do is pair the following dishes with an herb-roasted turkey (help yourself to the white meat without skin!).
- Honey Garlic Cauliflower Bites: These cauliflower bites offer a burst of flavor that make them an unusually addicting appetizer. They’re also a great way to get some nutrition in before the main meal.
- Quinoa and Wild Rice Stuffing: Most stuffings are made with bread cubes, but this one features rice and quinoa instead, making it naturally gluten-free. It also couldn’t have more flavor (you can thank the currants, dried cherries, herbs and bacon for that). To make it a vegetarian dish, you can always eliminate the bacon and use vegetable broth.
- White Bean and Cauliflower Garlic Mashed Potatoes: Replacing some of the potatoes with cauliflower and white beans boosts the protein and fiber, while majorly cutting down on the carbohydrates and keeping you full for longer.
- Roasted Vegetable Salad with Green Goddess Avocado Dressing: Peppers, butternut squash and Brussels sprouts are given the star treatment with a flavor-packed dressing. It’s different from the standard salad, while still providing a punch of flavor, good nutrition and vibrant color to your plate.
- Harvest Pumpkin Apple Bread: Pumpkin puree is naturally low in calories (it only has around 80 calories in a cup) and it’s the star of this delicious bread. For this recipe, it gets mixed with some whole wheat flour, oats, apple, cranberries and walnuts. It’s a combination that guarantees you won’t have any leftovers.
- Infused Water: Drinking plain water at dinner might be the usual go-to option, but on a special day like Thanksgiving, why not perk it up a little? All you need to do is use your favorite produce, think mint leaves, cucumbers and citrus slices, to a pitcher of water. (Be sure to clean them thoroughly.) Let it sit for at least a half an hour and you’ll have a fun, refreshing and pretty beverage to offer guests (with absolutely zero calories).
- Chickpea Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookie: Your dessert-loving relatives won’t have any idea that you hid healthy chickpeas in these delicious cookies.
What are some of your favorite healthier Thanksgiving dishes? Let us know in the comments!
