Healthy Recipe: Shrimp Jambalaya

Chicken gumbo, crawfish etouffee, beignets, king cake … unmask those Mardi Gras-inspired foods destined to increase your waistline and make inspired choices instead. Click here for a delicious shrimp jambalaya recipe from the American Heart Association’s Slow Cooker Cookbook.

Becky Charlton Smith, a clinical dietitian with Memorial, offers these tips to help make “Fat Tuesday” – and every day – less of a plunge to the nutritional dark side.

• Choose lower-fat versions of foods.
• Bake and broil instead of frying.
• Reduce the higher fat ingredients by one-third in your recipe.
• Substitute these items to make your recipes low-fat: skim milk instead of whole milk; fat free half and half instead of half and half or cream; two egg whites or ½ cup of egg beaters instead of one whole egg; ½ cup of applesauce instead of ½ cup of oil; reduced fat cheese instead of whole fat cheese, light sour cream instead of regular sour cream; Neufchatel cheese rather than regular cream cheese.