I’ve compiled a list of the top 20 kitchen gadgets and equipment I consider “must-haves” in my own life as a busy mom who wants to stay slim and feed my family healthy fare. Please note that if you click on some of the links in this article, as is the case any time I recommend a particular product or service, I may earn a small commission if you place an order. However, my entire livelihood is based on your trust, and I never recommend anything that I don’t feel to be of excellent quality. Most of what I recommend here are the exact products I use in my own LeanGreenMama kitchen, in fact. If you happen to have problems with anything I recommend in this article or elsewhere, I want to know because my aim here is to give you the best of the best resources for leading a healthy, empowered lifestyle that lets you lose weight easily, and I will absolutely adjust my recommendations over time based on your input.

Here’s my personal top 20 kitchen devices for healthy eating and healthy weight loss:

1. A high-quality pressure cooker:
Pressure cookers aren’t exactly the “sexiest” of all kitchen gadgets to look at them. After all, they’re really just large pots with a special lid that you can make beans, soups, stews and other delicious healthy foods with. But I consider my own pressure cooker set to be pretty much THE best investment I’ve made in my household’s kitchen equipment because it saves me that precious resource we moms have in such scarce supply: time. You can cook up a pot of dried beans in under a half hour without even planning in advance (great for moms like me who like to decide rather spontaneously what to eat for dinner some nights – or, also like me, often forget to pre-soak dried beans and still want to have them for the night’s meal). Pre-soaked beans often take less than 10 minutes start to finish!

I highly recommend the model I use personally, the Fagor Duo, because in the smaller 4-qt. pot, you can cook up 1-1.5 lbs. of beans, and in the larger 8-qt. pot you can make 2+ lbs. of beans, throw together a quick stew, steam some veggies using the steamer insert or simply use the pot itself for making a double or triple batch of a healthy soup for the week (or the freezer!). Best brands include Fagor and Kuhn-Rikon (the latter brand is considered top in its class, with Fagor in a close second).

Fagor 5-pc. Duo Pressure Cooker Set
(here’s Amazon’s link to the same pressure cooker just for your reference)

2. A high-powered Vita-Mix blender:
What can I say about this incredible device? I held off personally from buying a Vita-Mix for well over 2 years after embarking on my own journey to health and my ideal weight, and if I could go back in time and do things over, I most certainly would have gotten the Vita-Mix on day 1 and never looked back. You don’t absolutely have to own what I consider the world’s greatest blender (they use the commercial-grade Vita-Mix blenders to make the smoothies at Jamba Juice, to illustrate 1 great use for them — not the same as what we use in home kitchens) in order to enjoy your healthy meals every day; I am living proof of that, after all, having lost all my weight using just an ordinarily department-store blender for my needs.

But the Vita-Mix opens up an absolute world of new healthy food options that make it so much easier to love what you eat every day. I know I’m gushing, but here’s the deal: with a Vita-Mix, you can make the smoothest of all smoothies, the creamiest of all homemade hummus in seconds, simple fruit sorbets in the blink of an eye (well, almost), creamy sauces, soups, nut butters … you name it. You can also grind whole grains into flour in under a minute, and did I mention the sorbets? It’s so much easier to enjoy a healthy lifestyle if you can make yourself healthy “ice cream” daily if you wish without worrying about calories, and it is so quick and simple that you’ll wonder where this incredible device has been all your life. You don’t need the Vita-Mix to lose weight healthfully, of course, but it’s probably the most fun, versatile and powerful addition to a healthy kitchen on the planet. Second in line only to a pressure cooker (and more fun than a PC by far), the Vita-Mix gets my top recommendation!

Vita-Mix 5200 Blender

3. Steamer:
Steaming veggies is quick and easy, and it also ensures that you get a maximum of nutrition as well, unlike boiling, for example. As a result, no healthy kitchen is complete without the ability to steam up a healthy batch of your favorites. I personally use the steamer basket that came with my pressure cooker set LINK, which saves space and also is much larger than many of the steamer inserts sold. You will also find a number of simple options at your local department stores. I personally am more comfortable with a high-quality stainless steel steamer than the silicone models for the same reason I avoid using much plastic in my kitchen; it’s less likely to leech chemicals that may or may not be dangerous. When I researched electric, standalone steamers, I found that none of them are BPA-free, so I strongly recommend against them for your family’s safety unless you can specifically confirm that the model in question is made with different, safer materials. Safety always trumps convenience in a healthy kitchen!

4. Ceramic knives:
There was a time in my life when I thought a knife was a knife. And then I began investing in ceramic knives for my food prep. As you know, I advocate eating plenty of healthy veggies and fruits, and while there are certainly shortcuts, when you want to chop some vegetables, it is nice to have excellent knives. Ceramic knives fill the bill. They are remarkably sharp, and experts swear that because they are made of ceramic rather than metal, foods chopped with them taste better and don’t take on a metallic taste during food prep (apparently a few metal molecules rub off onto food, changing the flavor). I haven’t personally noticed much of a difference in flavor.

However, ceramic knives are considerably more lightweight than regular steel knives (and yet surprisingly sturdy, though you don’t want to drop one very far onto a hard surface because they are, after all, made of ceramic), and when you need to make a large batch of vegetables, the lighter the cutting implement, the better because your hands won’t tire as easily. The knives I own personally and recommend:

Kyocera Ceramic Paring Knife

Kyocera 7-Inch Chef’s Knife

5. Cutting boards:
Though you can certainly thrive while following a healthy lifestyle without investing in some of the more expensive kitchen equipment, a good cutting board or two is invaluable in your healthy kitchen. I personally own at least half a dozen in different shapes, sizes and styles, though all you really need is one or two good-quality boards. In an omnivorous kitchen, it is always recommended to have separate cutting boards for meat/fish versus fruits and veggies to avoid contamination. In my own vegetarian kitchen, I keep one cutting board on hand exclusively for chopping fruit because when chopping onions, shallots and garlic, they tend to leave behind smelly odors no matter how well you clean them. (I throw non-wooden cutting boards into the dishwasher, and this still occurs.) Wooden and bamboo boards are the most natural of all, and wooden boards also have antimicrobial qualities.

6. Large salad bowl:
Toss your green leafies around in a bowl that’s too small, and you end up with a mess instead of a lovely salad. And if there’s one thing that’s really helpful if you want to get thin and healthy, it’s getting in your greens! So while this might sound like a simplistic recommendation, I strongly recommend you make your life infinitely easier by investing in a high-quality, large salad bowl for yourself and perhaps an even larger one for serving to a group. Better housewares stores like Crate and Barrel offer lots of options to choose from.

7. Garlic press:
As a shortcut when you’re in a time crunch (something we moms know a thing or two about), you may wish to keep jarred minced garlic in water on hand, but fresh garlic is so much more delicious. A sturdy, high-quality garlic press is invaluable. Look for one with few seams, nooks and crannies, as lower-quality presses tend to break easily and are difficult to clean. (Hint: To save time preparing dishes with fresh garlic, get your garlic prepeeled at any better grocery store.) The model I personally use and recommend (having gone through several less-expensive models before finding this one, which has held up well to more than 6 years of regular use):

Zyliss Garlic Press

8. Citrus press:
Another useful gadget that my household uses nearly nonstop is a simple, handheld citrus press. Lemon and lime juice are excellent additions to many healthy recipes such as salad dressings and as a simple topping for steamed veggies, and a sturdy citrus press makes it a snap to get all the juice you need in seconds. Here’s the style of citrus press I strongly recommend you pick up:

Citrus Press

9. Juicer:
You don’t have to drink healthy veggie or fruit juices in order to get thin and healthy, but you may want to once you notice how wonderful juicing is for you! To load up on additional nutrients without the bulk of an extra meal, a juicer’s absolutely the way to go. For juicing greens, the Green Star line of juicers is considered the best of the best, and the pricetag reflects that. I personally own a Breville juicer that does what I need it to nicely (green juices, carrot juice, occasionally apple juice), and juicing experts swear that the Breville models are the easiest to clean on the market as well! (Hint: Clean the juicer as soon as you’ve made the juice, and it will clean up quickly. Wait an hour or longer, and you’ll be scrubbing for a good long while.) They’re no longer selling the exact model I own, but this is the next in the same line of great juicers that I recommend:

Breville Two-Speed Juice Fountain Plus

10. Glass bakeware:
There’s not a lot of baking going on in my healthy kitchen most of the time during the warmer months, but when it’s time to roast vegetables, there’s nothing like glass bakeware. Glass is nonreactive and dishwasher-safe to boot. What more could a busy mama ask for? You’ll find a wide range of options such as Pyrex and Anchor Hocking at Target, and nicer department stores often have their own brands available in a variety of styles to match your needs.

That’s it for part 1 of my recommendations. How does your healthy kitchen currently stack up? It’s not that you have to get every detail right from the start, nor do you have to make a huge investment in new gadgets to take care of your body better. But there are absolutely tools that make your life easier and often safer to boot. Stay tuned for part 2 coming soon!

At first glance, the film might not look like it’s your thing — 2 old guys talking about disease and healthy eating doesn’t necessarily sound all that exciting, right? But what you may not know is that Campbell is a researcher who found a powerful connection between diet and long-term health while heading up the largest nutritional/health study ever performed — and the results, published in his book The China Study, are incredible (and I’ve been recommending everyone read this for years! See my Recommended Resources for a link). Dr. Esselstyn is known for getting near-perfect results for his heart patients who followed his dietary recommendations — meaning they never had serious heart problems again if they followed his recommendations.

Now, you may be wondering what diseases like heart disease have to do with healthy weight loss for moms, which is the main subject of this blog — and the answer is that these diseases have everything to do with healthy weight loss! Because, you see, how I recommend you eat is based on these same studies and results (among many, many others)! If you eat healthfully, you naturally lose weight *and* you also happen to pretty much ensure you’ll never have to worry about the most common diseases most Westerners die of too. Odd, perhaps, but very true. Healthy eating really does matter — and to more than just your waistline (though let’s face it — that part’s awesome too!).

So you can look great, feel great and be a true Lean Green Mama :) and also be healthier than 90% of the rest of the population to boot! No small feat!

And now, without anymore ado, here’s the trailer for Forks and Knives:

There’s a lot, no, a plethora of absolute and total junk floating around out there in the media and the world at large about nutrition. More junk than help, in fact. And much of what’s out there either caters to the idea of moderation (which only very rarely is “moderate” at all in our culture where highly processed foods are seen as the norm and folks like me who eat actual nourishment for our meals are the weird ones) and often tells you it’s fine to eat stuff I wouldn’t feed my worst enemy, or, even worse, the articles are geared to make you feel less bad for eating unhealthy foods but touted as featuring “facts on healthy eating.”

For the record, I for one don’t believe anyone should EVER feel bad for eating bad food because beating yourself up for eating poorly is just kicking you when you’re already down. Bad food = feeling bad and a body that’s at its less than ideal health, for certain, but I also know that for many women — I used to fall into this category! — you tend to view yourself as a bad person when you eat something less than optimal, and that often leads to emotional eating to compensate for the emotional pain, which feeds the cycle. It is a bad thing for your body to eat the junk, and you’re not doing yourself any favors by eating unhealthfully, but I think you’re a swell gal even if you eat M&Ms 3 meals a day. (But if that describes you and you’re overweight or dealing with pretty much any health problem, we should talk!)

As a curmudgeonly reader of all things related to nutrition, I’ve come to expect not to agree with most of what I read — not out of a sense of superiority, but because I sincerely wish it was more popular to just tell the truth — eat mainly plant-based whole foods, skip the processed stuff, and your waistline and your health will benefit. But just today I was pleasantly surprised and had to pass on what I found. It’s an excellent blog post from a physician (who appears to be an, ahem, lean green mama!) who shared a number of really important facts on healthy eating, namely on why you shouldn’t eat added salt.

One of the quotes I have to share with you even if you don’t take the time to read the full article:

A new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine used computer models to predict the effect of relatively small reductions in salt intake on Americans’ health and found that if everyone consumed half a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 and 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year, between 32,000 and 66,000 fewer strokes and between 44,000 and 92,000 fewer deaths. This small change could save from $10 billion to $24 billion in health care costs annually!

That alone is so powerful, and it’s just one killer reason to skip the salt!

Finding this post did my soul some good. :) It’s so hard to find good sources on nutrition, and I’m not in 100% agreement on everything the blogger above writes in this and her other articles, but I am very happy to see that there are others out there sharing REAL facts on healthy eating that can save your health and change your life so immensely for the better. We moms feed the world, and the more we incorporate these healthy habits into our lives, the healthier our whole families are — and the better we feel.

Other important facts on healthy eating to keep in mind regarding salt intake:

1. Most of us in the Western world consume far too much salt, and our tastes are accustomed to having the salt. That’s why when you eat something unsalted after eating lots of high-sodium foods, it tastes bland. But go a week or more without added salt in your diet, and you’ll find that natural, unsalted whole foods taste much more delicious than you remembered. It’s amazing how this works, and all it takes is a little time to put it into practice!

2. One of the best ways to put water weight gain to an end is avoid added sodium in your diet. Prior to changing my lifestyle now several years back, I wasn’t aware at all of how potent salt was or how much water weight I dealt with.  However, when I eliminated added salt from my diet, suddenly my rings were too big all the time (I’m talking before I lost a significant amount of weight!), and I never dealt with bloating again except on the rare occasions when I ate salty foods. Reducing or eliminating added salt is one of the easiest ways to lose a couple pounds that I know of very quickly and easily for most of us. Certainly, it’s not the same as losing bodyfat, but it is a good way to get the scales moving in the right direction so that you follow through long enough to lose more weight, which motivates you even further!

I’m always on the lookout for good references for facts on healthy eating that help you feel better, look better and get really, incredibly healthy (even to the point of being perky like me!) — so email me if you come across other resources your fellow LeanGreenMama readers may benefit from. I promise I’ll try to read with a kind, non-curmudgeonly eye. :)

“When Joel Fuhrman Speaks, the VIPs at Whole Foods Listen”

In case you don’t know Dr. Fuhrman yet, my favorites of his are:

Eat to Live: This is his basic program for healthy weight loss, with over 1,500 studies to back up his nutritional recommendations.

Eat for Health (2-book set): Here he outlines his ANDI and MANDI food scoring scales, which let you see how well you’re really eating and taking care of your health.

Disease-Proof Your Child: This is a really helpful reference for raising healthy children, complete with kid-friendly recipes.

Now, I’m the first to note that there’s more to healthy weight loss than knowing what to eat, but getting the nutritional side of things right certainly is a huge part of it, and Dr. F’s nutritional guidelines changed my life and the life of everyone in my family — and they’re what I recommend to the women I coach too because eating this way impacts your health and weight so powerfully. I’m thrilled that big influencers in the corporate world are finally beginning to see the incredible promise of nutrient-dense eating from Dr. Fuhrman; it’s the best way to care for your body and get thin and fabulous to boot!

This may seem harder to manage than other aspects of weight loss quickly, creating a healthier lifestyle and getting yourself on track to have a happier, more balanced life full of health. Certainly emotional eating sometimes makes incorporating diet and exercise into your life more challenging — in part because so many of us grew up in families where food was an expression of love or where the most accepted way of expressing our feelings was by eating. And we may not have witnessed many healthy habits either.

When I was growing up, every family event was all about the meal being served for the occasion, and I remember my lovely grandmother (who was obese and dealt with many health challenges in her life, including a really tough run with colon cancer) always overdoing it on the food she served — making enough food and enough different types of food to feed a not-so-small army, which we often ended up eating even though it was far too much and not healthy either.

Most of us women (in a family with lots of females) all took that focus on eating to heart, and I went on to make money during college and afterward for some time as a professional baker and dessert maker. I thought food was a part of who I was as a person, in fact, for a very, very long time. But I also grew more and more overweight, sicker and sicker, and my lifestyle had to change or else I was going to spend the rest of my years taking increasingly frightening amounts of very potent medications just to barely manage my symptoms. So change I did, and one of the things I had to tackle first and foremost was my relationship with food so that I could lose my emotional eating habit. Because no matter what, to lose weight, you do have to change your eating and reduce how many calories you eat. (And to lose weight healthfully, you have to replace unhealthy foods with healthy ones too, which happen to have fewer calories too — a nice side effect!)

The good news is that while emotional eating can certainly be challenging, it doesn’t have to be the way you live your life forever. I’m living proof, and I help clients improve their relationships with food as well all the time.

In fact, there are conscious steps you can take to eliminate your emotional eating habit, and I recently shared them all in a teleseminar I gave for my Inner Circle Coaching Club. You can access this Learning Module on conquering your emotional eating habit as a member in my Inner Circle.

Some simple things that may work for you right away include:

1) Asking yourself before you eat whether you’re hungry or lonely/frustrated/bored. Often that’s all it takes to avoid overeating and avoid weight gain — knowing the underlying emotions and working through them instead of trying to mask them with food.

2) Being mindful for the next few days of whether you’re eating due to real hunger or because you want comfort. If the latter, what else could you use to comfort yourself? Foods aren’t the answer — not even healthy ones. They’re like a band-aid over a wound that won’t heal on its own.

3) Working to avoid as much stress as possible or otherwise get upset to the point that you’re inclined to overeat for emotional reasons. You don’t have to make yourself gain body fat just because you’re upset, and your eating habits while under stress are probably far less optimal than they are in normal conditions. (And if stress is the norm, are there some larger shifts you can make?)

4) Knowing that food cravings aren’t always about emotional eating habits — they’re also sometimes physiological. Many women I work with initially feel that most of their overeating is due to emotional stress, and yet invariably it turns out that they have certain trigger foods that cause them severe withdrawal symptoms (not just cravings, but also depression symptoms, irritability, anxiety and other emotional symptoms) when they stop eating them, which is a sign NOT to eat these foods … again, no matter how healthy they are under normal conditions.

Certainly working on the underlying causes is important as well, but often just being mindful of the moments when you’d otherwise reach for food without actually being hungry can often impact your weight for the better. The most important thing to know as a current emotional eater is that even if you’ve struggled in the past with your emotional eating habit, you can take active steps to eliminate it entirely.

Stick to simple dishes. Odds are likely that Aunt Susan’s sweet potato-pumpkin-pecan casserole is a conglomeration of many, many not-so-healthy ingredients, any of which would trigger cravings in a horse! :) But simpler fare is typically not so tough to tackle. Think baked potatoes or sweet potatoes instead of that mountain of potatoes in cream sauce with a “cream of” soup mixed in for good measure.

Focus on fruit desserts. In fact, bring the fruit tray yourself, and you’re ensured of a lovely, delicious dessert that doesn’t hurt your waistline. Feeling decadent? Grab a jar of Wax Orchard’s delicious, but decidedly healthy fudge sauce (which you can find here and at better health food stores all around the country) to dip your fresh fruit in.

Make the sides your main meal. Have big group meals coming up? Even if you want to eat some of the main dish at the holidays, load up on the healthier side dishes such as veggies and salad. Again, bringing your own salad and salad dressing to gatherings ensures that you have something delicious to eat that’s also healthy.

Practice portion control ONLY when you have to. I hate, hate, hate portion control as a weight loss strategy because it forces you to rely on willpower. And while willpower is certainly a renewable resource of sorts, the less you have to use willpower, the more effective it is right there in the moment when you’re having your senses tempted with a particular food that isn’t as healthy as you’d like.

I recommend trying to set up holiday meals so that you can follow the broader healthy eating guidelines I follow as much as possible, but at the same time, don’t stress yourself out so much that you lose your commitment to eating more healthfully in the process! You can ALWAYS get back to effective healthy eating guidelines at the next meal or the next day. You don’t have to be perfect, just headed in a better direction, to make a big impact on your life and your health.

1. It isn’t necessarily dangerous to follow a low-calorie diet. There’s so much hype about how harmful it can be to try to lose weight by reducing calories. Now, granted I’m not a medical professional, but I’ve completed a LOT of reading on nutrition and haven’t seen anything anywhere that suggests any major risk for reducing calories — with the caveat that the foods you do eat, the calories you do eat are very nutrient-dense, which is the way I recommend you eat anyhow!

You see, nutrient density is a concept developed by Dr. Joel Fuhrman about how many micronutrients there are in a calorie of a particular food. So super nutritious foods like berries and dark, leafy greens are very rich in nutrients and low in calories, so we can say they are nutrient-dense. How this applies to what you eat is that when you eat lots of nutrient-dense foods, your body is getting better nutrition than it ever has in your life, most likely (I kid you not, this stuff works!). So you can get by with eating fewer calories and still feel fine and actually get healthy as you go.

But if you stick to lots of less healthy foods, then yes, you do run a risk of more serious malnutrition if you cut back on calories because the foods in question (particularly highly processed foods high in refined sugars, flours and fat sources like shortening) are so devoid of nutrition on a good day that cutting back is just that much worse for you. And that’s a reason why eating the junk also prompts your body to eat more, which leads in turn to more weight gain — because you’re basically starving your body of nutrients while eating too many calories — a lousy combination if you want to be thin and healthy.

Keep in mind that no matter what you eat, if you get in more calories than your body needs, you will gain weight no matter what. So you *have* to reduce calories to lose body fat. Why not reduce calories in a way that nourishes your body so that you not only lose weight, but also feel fabulous and get healthier as you go. Plus, the healthy stuff tastes great too, even if you’re not used to it just yet.

Which brings me to the second of these 3 healthy eating facts:

2. Healthy food tastes delicious! Did I say delicious? I mean absolutely wonderful! If you’re on the fence about healthy eating, you may think that it sounds like drudgery, like it might take away all your pleasure from eating. The simple truth is that the more healthfully you eat, the more you will enjoy healthier fare. It is incredible how effortlessly it tends to happen, in fact.

For example, I came to healthy eating as a junk-food vegetarian who lived on potatoes, bread, pasta and cream sauce, and yet within a very short while I had lost my taste for most of those foods and had grown to really love much healthier foods. I recommend to clients all the time that they consider practicing healthy eating because it gets easier every time, and before they know it, they’re discovering how easy it really is to change their tastes to better-for-them foods.

3. Losing weight doesn’t have to be hard. When you eat healthfully following the way of eating I recommend, you typically automatically lose weight quickly and easily. Granted, some of our bodies — especially as women — are more resistant to weight loss than others, but fundamentally, nourishing your body with healthful foods with lower calories than our bodies need to maintain a higher weight (because we’re overweight when we start this new way of eating!) is the easiest way to lose weight I’ve ever come across, despite the learning curve initially as you get used to the new lifestyle.

I imagine that if you’re coming to this blog for the first time and are just getting interested in healthy eating, you may have been shocked at what I’ve just shared. But the reality is that healthy weight loss is easier to achieve than you likely think. And a quick look at the Recommended Resources here on my site will get you pointed in the right direction right away — particularly the nutrition references, which share healthy eating facts that are scientifically substantiated and can improve your health immensely. And since truly healthy foods also help you lose weight healthfully, healthy eating is a no brainer — especially if you’re a busy mom with little time on your hands who needs to do the bare minimum to get healthy and thin.

Texture-wise, they’re a lot more like “regular” (i.e., non-healthy) cookies than any I’ve come across before — a real bonus! You’ll also notice that there’s no added salt, nor any leavening whatsoever; I didn’t realize it was possible to make a cookie without leavening myself, but I’ve made these enough times now to be convinced. :)

I developed this recipe recently because I needed a way to get walnuts into my son, and I recalled that German lebkuchen (gingerbread) often uses nut meals rather than flour as their base. This recipe contains a small amount of whole grain flour, but a large amount of ground walnuts. So they’re healthy and yet fairly high in fat, so budget accordingly if you’re in weight loss mode right now. (The recipe contains approximately 4 oz. of walnuts, so 1/4 of the recipe equals a 1 oz. portion of walnuts. That’s about 3 cookies.)

Here’s what you need:

1 c. raw walnuts, ground finely in food processor
1/2 c. brown rice flour or whole wheat flour (oat flour would also work)
3/4 c. unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. honey (optional)
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 apple, cored and chopped finely
1/4 c. raisins

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Oil a large (13″ x 9″ or larger) cookie sheet. (I skip this step sometimes.) Stir together all ingredients except chopped apple and raisins just until smooth. Fold in apples and raisins.

Drop by heaping tablespoon onto cookie sheet. Mash with fork or spoon to make cookie even. (Same principle as peanut butter cookies — the goal is even thickness across entire cookie.) Bake for 15 minutes or until barely brown and center of cookie is firm. Remove from oven; cook for 5 minutes before removing cookies from baking sheet with sturdy spatula.

Makes approximately 12 cookies (can easily be doubled or tripled)

Healthy eating notes:

Even if you’re tempted, don’t go overboard with the “stuff.” If you add in too many apples or raisins, the cookies will not stick together (but taste delicious nonetheless!). Just eat the remaining half apple or give it to someone in your household. My son happily munches the leftovers every time I make these.

If you happen to have some around, these cookies are to-die-for fabulous when made with homemade applesauce (I make a batch just about every week because my son loves the stuff). Otherwise, I recommend any of the unsweetened organic brands available.

As always, there is no salt added to this recipe because we get enough sodium from whole foods, but you can add a pinch (if you must). ;)

Copyright 2009 Jennifer McCay

www.LeanGreenMama.com

Here are a few things you can do to enjoy a healthier Halloween with your family:

1) Focus on the fun of trick-or-treating. Half the fun of Halloween is just plain going door-to-door, getting treats the likes of which you don’t know until you get there and seeing other folks in your neighborhood do the same. Special events are about more than just food, and Halloween is one of the most fun holidays there is!

2) Create a fun, spooky atmosphere. My son is still too young to appreciate scary stuff, and I tend to like the cheerier spooky stuff myself, so we stuck mainly to pumpkins for our decor. But there are so many options for creating a great Halloween atmosphere in your home that require little time or expense. Consider adding a soundtrack to your decor, such as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” At most local department stores, I’ve seen Halloween CDs available in the Halloween decor section. Growing up, we had a fabulous Disney album full of spooky sounds, but it’s sadly only available on vinyl (used) and is probably considered an antique by now. :)

3) Make rules about candy and avoid arguing. I recommend limiting the amount of candy your child can eat to, say, 2 pieces on Halloween night and 1 piece for the next few nights at most. Moms of older kids swear that you can throw out most of the candy without your kids even noticing, but I’ve not tried it. In my household, we’re not having any candy because of our food allergy issues, but I’ll be making healthy cookies for our Halloween treats and decorating them with cute Halloween-themed cat pop-ups on toothpicks (available at Target and craft stores) — adorable and isn’t bad for you in the slightest.

4) Instead of giving out junk food yourself, get creative. This year, we’re giving out several things, depending on the age of the child. We’re new to the neighborhood as well, so I’m not sure how many visitors we’ll get. Some of what we’ve bought to give away are Halloween pencils and notepads, boxes of organic raisins and glow-in-the-dark bracelets. (I believe I got this idea from Dr. Fuhrman’s newsletter, and it’s a great one!) We ordered our glow-in-the-dark items a few weeks back, but I saw them sold at Michael’s just this week when looking for other supplies for one of our household’s costumes.

5) Fill yourself and the kids up on healthy food before you go out trick-or-treating. Unlike adults, most kids just plain do not eat when they’re not hungry — at least not much. So fill up your kids’ bellies (and your own!) with a hearty meal. I recommend something very filling like a vegetarian chili or stew, as well as a healthy dessert such as my Banana Oatmeal Cookies. As a treat, some apple cider that’s been simmered with a few cinnamon sticks would be warming without being very unhealthy.

6) Create events to take place on Halloween that aren’t about food. I haven’t tried this yet for Halloween because my son is so small, but it has worked for other holidays quite well. You can create family traditions that are non-food-related by coming up with fun games to play, telling ghost stories, going for a drive to see Halloween decorations in neighborhoods farther afield … The possibilities are endless! But the basic concept is to come up with fun things to do that don’t revolve solely around food. One of the biggest challenges many of my coaching clients come to me with is how to deal with holidays and special events, and in reality, you have full control over so much of how your family’s time gets spent.

If you’re doing special stuff for Halloween that’s healthy that I’ve overlooked here, shoot me an email to share your ideas. I’d love to hear them!

When I opened my BodySoul Balance Coaching practice last year, I immediately began taking on new clients — women who wanted to beat their struggles with weight loss, emotional eating and unhealthy living — and have kept *very* busy since.

But early this year, I realized I needed to make a big shift. Why? Because if I can only coach individual moms one on one, that limits how I can help women just like you. (It would mean working around the clock to help no more than maybe 30 women at most!)

But other than working hard to be a great mom to my son, my biggest goal in life is to help as many struggling women as possible to take charge of their lives, to find out once and for all how fabulous it feels to love how you look and feel every day, to feel balanced and happy and empowered.

So I decided to create a unique coaching program where I can help you…

Even if you’re not ready for one-on-one coaching…

Perhaps it isn’t financially feasible for you in this tough economy…

Perhaps you’re still working up the mental energy to give healthy
eating and healthy living a real go and need motivation…

I’ve also gotten lots of requests from women just like you — so I know you’re craving more knowledge, more motivation, the proverbial kick in the pants you need to make big changes in your life (but as painlessly as possible!). That’s what my Inner Circle Coaching Club is all about.

If you decide to become a member, you’ll join a group of likeminded moms who are also in your same situation — stressed out and frustrated with your weight loss attempts, and very ready to get from that state of struggle to a place in your life where being thin and healthy is the norm, is simply the way you live your life.

I’m so proud to be able to offer this kind of coaching to you because I wish I’d had this kind of mentoring available when I was in need of it. It was much harder to learn the ropes of a healthy lifestyle and put it into action when I had to make up all the rules myself than it is when someone’s done the legwork for you! (I’m not talking about just what to eat. There’s so much more to it for most of us moms, who have so much going on taking care of our families that we have to get used to taking care of ourselves for a change.)

Have you recognized that you need the help of a mentor who’s been exactly where you are now in the past (overweight, feeling stuck, unhappy, not sure where to turn, in need of reassurance as you make your way into a healthier, happier way of living) and can guide you so that you don’t have to do it all by trial and error?

If that sounds like you, if you’re not getting where you want to go as quickly and easily as you’d hoped, if you need a kickstart, I strongly recommend that you consider becoming a part of my Inner Circle Coaching Club.

To get all the details, simply head to:

www.lgminnercircle.com

Oh, before I forget, I should also mention that there are some great bonuses for the first moms who join (like a free 30-minute coaching session with me!), but you can read more about all that at www.lgminnercircle.com