Remember snow days? Those absolutely “free” days—no school, no work—just a day free to do anything that comes to mind? I know that I always baked something, cookies, bread, smores in the fireplace…..it was a fun activity to do as a family. And nothing tastes better than comfort food, rich, warm, sweet or savory when you are cooped up inside.

I see people doing that now in our social isolation. It is great to see families cooking together. We have lamented that cooking was becoming a lost art….and now it’s back. I heard our local grocery store was out of yeast! Wow—we have time to make bread now!

With all this cooking and “idle” time we might be consuming a few extra calories and we know what happens next. Some day we will have to get out of the yoga pants and put work clothes on again. How can we cook with our families and not gain weight? Can we have our cake and eat it too?

We can be more active   

And we can cook smarter.

Make the bread, but use half whole wheat flour. Make black bean brownies or use applesauce to replace the fat in other recipes. Dates make a great sweetener---chop some and replace 1/3 of the sugar.

Here are a few recipes to try….let me know how you like them.