Food

Easy Meal Makeovers-One Can At A Time

Posted: 12/3/2010

Just adding one can of fruits or vegetables to a meal can greatly improve your family’s nutrition.

(NAPSI) - A little creativity and one canned ingredient can turn an ordinary dish into an extraordinary meal. The Canned Food Alliance (CFA) asked Allrecipes.com site users to share how they “Just Add One” canned ingredient to their favorite go-to recipes through the “Just Add One” Recipe Contest. In an effort to inspire moms to “Just Add One,” the CFA gathered real content from real home cooks to provide easy new recipe ideas without asking mom to look beyond her mental cookbook.

Erin Chase, mother of three and author of “The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook,” shares mealtime tips every day through her website, www.5dollardinners.com. Knowing how hard dinnertime can be, Chase agrees that the concept of just adding one can create easy, new mealtime solutions.

“Moms are always looking for creative and affordable ways to get their kids to eat healthy meals and snacks,” said Chase. “That’s why I love the ‘Just Add One’ concept. Adding a can of peas to a soup or favorite weekly dish is a simple way to get more fruits and vegetables into my kids’ diets.”

Like Erin, home cooks who entered the “Just Add One” contest shared other benefits of just adding one:

• Seventy-one percent said they added canned ingredients to boost the flavor of the dish.

• Twenty-six percent added a canned item to increase the nutritional value of the dish. Canned foods are just as nutritious as their fresh and frozen counterparts, and in some cases, such as with canned tomatoes or pumpkin, are more nutritious.

Home cooks responded with more than 400 ideas that used more than 100 varieties of common pantry staples, such as beans, tomatoes, corn, pineapple and tuna. Some of the “Reci-tips” include:

• Add one can of pumpkin into simple vanilla pudding to trick finicky eaters into having a serving of vegetables disguised as a beautiful dessert.

• Stir in one cup of canned cranberry sauce to your meatloaf recipe. The cranberry sauce adds a juicy, tangy sweetness to the meatloaf and the small bits of cranberry complement the onion.

• Top off a healthy salad with a can of garbanzo beans for a healthy dose of protein on the go.

• Mix a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes to any chili for a homemade taste and added nutrition.

• Add a can of low-sodium mushrooms to an easy chicken marsala recipe. They stay fresh longer in the can and cut the prep time to seconds.

The CFA has created more tips and tools available at www.Mealtime.org to help moms and home cooks alike just add one canned ingredient to their favorite recipes.

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