A Healthier Fried Egg Sandwich (Thanks, Mrs. Dash)

I try to minimize sodium and less healthy fats where I can. In general, I find Mrs. Dash salt-free seasoning to be a good way to add flavor and lessen salt in nearly all of my meals. I thought the original flavor was pretty good, but a year or so ago, Mrs. Dash Seasoning Blend, Tomato, Basil, Garlic flavor caught my eye. I've put it in many things since that time: English muffin pizzas, pasta sauce and, indeed, anything vaguely Italian. My favorite place to put it, though, is on my fried egg sandwiches.

Fried eggs in a blog about healthy eating? What kind of heresy is this? Start by spraying the pan with nonstick canola oil or olive oil spray and add just a few drops of sesame seed oil for a richer flavor. Heat up the pan slightly before cracking the egg into it (I set the electric stove burner between 4 and 5). Spritz a serving (five sprays) Olivio butter-flavored spray on the egg after cracking it in the pan and sprinkle with Mrs. Dash, Tomato, Basil, Garlic or your choice of salt-free seasoning.

Cook the egg the way you like it. (I happen to flip mine because I detest runny yolks, but to each his own. Usually, it takes between three and four minutes until it's the way I like it.) If you enjoy the taste of bacon but don't want the fat or salt, sprinkle about 1/2 tsp. of Bacos on the top of the egg as it cooks (if it sets sufficiently, it sticks to the top of the egg). Then use a healthy margarine (meaning non-hydrogenated with good fats in it)  to lightly "butter" whole-wheat toast. It's vegetarian and tastes good without a boatload of salt. You may melt cheese or soy cheese over the top of the egg after flipping it over to cook the yolk solid; however, I think it would be rather messy to melt it over a runny fried egg. 

Tailgating: What to Bring

Your friends want to tailgate before a rock concert at DTE this weekend. You want to eat healthy.

Unless you bring your own healthy food, you're at the mercy of whoever's cooking. Need some ideas? Here are a few suggestions:

• Make your own shrimp cocktail with thawed, large peeled and deveined shrimp. Use a small relish and dip dish that will fit in your cooler so you can keep it on ice. Use bottled cocktail sauce if you want to, but I prefer a mixture of organic ketchup (or at least ketchup without corn syrup in it) and horseradish sauce. (Make it to your taste. I usually start with 1 cup of ketchup and a teaspoon of horseradish and add a little more at a time if it's not hot enough. (Don't overdo the horseradish, or you will feel as though you are breathing fire out your nose.)

• Combine brown rice or whole wheat pasta, cooked, with vegetables and your choice of an oil and vinegar or oil and lime/lemon juice dressing. Light mayo, Miracle Whip Light, or soy mayo also works, but you may need to doctor the latter with seasonings and either lemon or lime juice. (Soy mayo tends to be somewhat bland.) 

• Hard boil and peel eggs; bring in plastic wrap or plastic bags on ice as well as salt and pepper.

• If there's a barbecue available, you can barbecue shrimp, chicken and/or veggies your favorite way. See Food Network's Top 10 Better-for-You Grilled Foods for more ideas.

Healthier Macaroni Salad

Healthy macaroni salad sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Let's go with the word healthier, shall we?

1/2 package of whole wheat macaroni (your favorite kind), cooked, drained and cooled
1 Roma tomato
1/2 large red pepper
1/3 English cucumber (peel if desired)
1/2 small, sweet white onion
Miracle Whip Light
freshly ground pepper (1/2 tsp. or to taste)
celery seed (1/2 tsp or to taste)
2/3 can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained (optional)
3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and finely chopped (optional)

Boil water; throw in macaroni and cook according to package directions; rinse in cold water until no longer hot while in strainer.

While waiting for the pasta to cook and cool: Wash vegetables thoroughly; peel cucumber if you prefer. Chop all vegetables somewhat finely (not teensy-tiny, but you don't want big chunks), taking out the seeds of the pepper and tomato. (The English cucumber shouldn't have any to speak of, and they're edible, anyway.) Mix all vegetables (including optional ingredients, if desired) as well as the pepper and celery seed in a large mixing bowl with enough Miracle Whip to lightly cover the pasta and

This will serve approximately 8 people as a side dish, four if using a main dish with chickpeas and/or eggs.

Healthy Eating on a Road Trip?

My attempts at healthy eating are not always perfect. Despite some good planning, my friends and I still ate a lot of junk when we were in Louisville this weekend.

Besides being in the car for about eight hours on Friday and Sunday, we were at the Kentucky Exposition Center (which is also the site of the state fairgrounds) for about 10 hours all told on Saturday; that day, healthy eating fell by the wayside, primarily because we didn't feel like hiking the length of the fairgrounds to go to the cooler in our car. I can find healthier food at the Tigers' Comerica Park! Someone could make a killing selling salad along with the pizza sold at the exposition center (that was a hint, by the way).

I did have trail mix in my purse, but it wasn't enough to stave off hunger for hours on end combined with sleeping under four hours that night, even with a decent 1/2 sandwich and salad dinner on Saturday night. We also hung out afterwards, having pizza at 1 a.m. Sunday as well as lunch at Buckhead Mountain Grill in Jeffersonville (just across the river from downtown Louisville) at 2:30 p.m. that day (where we also ate dinner Saturday night). There are some healthy things on the menu, and my entrees were not only excellent, but fairly good for me. Unfortunately, their rolls and cinnamon butter are also wonderful. Stopping at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday at a McDonald's in Ohio didn't help, either.

On the up side, I did stay away from the ice cream and the cotton candy that were everywhere the eye could see at the convention center. The healthiest things there were smoothies and pizza.

If I had to do it over again, I would have tried to get more sleep so I wasn't starving and walked to get the salad, fruit and hard-boiled eggs out of the cooler Friday night and Saturday afternoon. I'd also have skipped the pizza. I'll need to eat very healthy food the rest of the week and do a little exercise to make up for it!