People will often ask if I have a recipe for no-cholesterol pumpkin pie or how to adjust their recipe so that it is sugar free. Whether it's a family member’s medical condition or that of one of the guests to be at your table, seeking someone else's recipe is an option—learning how to alter your own recipes to make it healthier is another option.

We can alter recipes to lower the fat, increase the fiber, decrease the sodium, decrease the cholesterol—whatever our health reason.

In altering recipes, your choices include:

Often we forget that ingredients do more than add cholesterol, fat, sweetening, or flavor. They serve a purpose or function in the recipe. You see, recipes are chemical formulas and the ingredients have certain affects on each other that lead to success in making the final product.

Let's take a recipe for yeast bread for example. Below is a table listing the ingredients and the function of each ingredient.

Each ingredient has a function that impacts the end result. One just cannot leave the salt out because you are reducing salt in your diet. If you do, you'll likely end up with a loaf of bread that rises too fast and falls when baking. If you leave the sugar out, the loaf will take forever to rise, if it rises at all! These five ingredients are what make bread and they have a specific function.

Often we lean towards "making over" the recipes which are the stickiest and the gooiest! Sometimes the ingredient we want to avoid is key to the recipe. Therefore, our efforts are best focused on the amount we eat and how often we eat the food. There are simple changes we can make in our everyday cooking that can result in big dietary changes—like with sauces and gravies. Check out the casserole sauce mix on the back of this newsletter.

When altering recipes, remember that when changing recipes, it is an experiment. There will be wonderful discoveries and disasters. What is important is that you learn to modify what you put on the table every day.