A second new food crush

My second new food celebrity crush is Ellie Krieger. She's a registered dietition who specializes in nutrition and health communications, and she has a show on the foodnetwork.

Truthfully, I haven't tried many of her recipes either, but I went through a brief spell where I was obsessed with watching her little videos online. Her approach to food seems really balanced. She doesn't use anything artificial to lower the fat and calories in her food. Rather, she uses whole-food tricks to moderate the amount of high fat/calorie ingredients like butter (moderate, not remove). She also uses whole wheat flour most of the time but includes white flour when it really is necessary. Like I said, I haven't made many of her recipes, but her online videos make me believe that she really knows what she's doing when she makes these substitutions, that she doesn't substitute when flavor/texture of the food would suffer from the substitution, and that her food tastes at least almost as great as the original.

Ellie also does a lot of advocating for portion control....which I can't really get on board with (which is precisely why most of my college clothes don't really fit). However, cutting fat and calories and increasing the nutritional value of my food seems like a good idea even if I do continue to fill my plate....twice. ;)

So far I've made both of her energy bars. Excellent. I keep them in the freezer and eat one for breakfast and one for a mid afternoon snack.

Up next....rustic apple pie with dried cherries and dark chocolate brownies.

...and maybe her cookbook. We'll see.