Jafo232
New member
More this time of year than anything else, the wife and I find our available time dwindling away. It really affects the menu around the house as we need to make dinner faster and faster. It is to the point that basically I find I only have time to focus on the main dish, and then most of the side dishes I have to use some sort of boxed solution like rice, pasta, instant potatoes, etc..
The one thing I hate about having to do this, is the fact that most of these dishes are far from healthy. Almost without exception, many of these sides call for either butter or margarine.. Now I enjoy the taste of butter, but when I began noticing that as a family of four, we were going through about 1- 2 pounds of it in a week, it made me a bit concerned.
Well, I decided that for all of these dishes, I would substitute olive oil (sometimes extra virgin, sometimes not) tablespoon by tablespoon for butter. Olive oil of course is much better for you. Well, after about a month of this, I would like to report that it has been quite a success. 99% of the time you really cannot tell the difference (or I am getting used to it). The only exception was with instant potatoes. I found I had to use just regular olive oil instead of the EVOO as the strong flavor of the EVOO was a bit obtrusive... Otherwise, it even worked well for them. In fact, I would say the potatoes were silkier and lighter than when I use butter.
Now I still use butter on say, toast, and I still use it if I get time to bake (which is very rare this time of year), but otherwise I have found that I have practically dumped butter.
Now if I could just find a way to take all the sodium out of these boxed side dishes..
The one thing I hate about having to do this, is the fact that most of these dishes are far from healthy. Almost without exception, many of these sides call for either butter or margarine.. Now I enjoy the taste of butter, but when I began noticing that as a family of four, we were going through about 1- 2 pounds of it in a week, it made me a bit concerned.
Well, I decided that for all of these dishes, I would substitute olive oil (sometimes extra virgin, sometimes not) tablespoon by tablespoon for butter. Olive oil of course is much better for you. Well, after about a month of this, I would like to report that it has been quite a success. 99% of the time you really cannot tell the difference (or I am getting used to it). The only exception was with instant potatoes. I found I had to use just regular olive oil instead of the EVOO as the strong flavor of the EVOO was a bit obtrusive... Otherwise, it even worked well for them. In fact, I would say the potatoes were silkier and lighter than when I use butter.
Now I still use butter on say, toast, and I still use it if I get time to bake (which is very rare this time of year), but otherwise I have found that I have practically dumped butter.
Now if I could just find a way to take all the sodium out of these boxed side dishes..