Quick

Serve this chilled fruit soup as a light summer appetizer or with your favorite sandwich or salad.

Probably one of the easiest soups you will ever make, this smooth, creamy delight is perfect whether you’re entertaining or curling up in front of the fire.

This sparkling drink is ideal as a refreshing spritzer for brunch or on a hot summer day.

Fresh herbs add a lively taste to this refreshing, light soup.

This trail mix, updated with crystallized ginger, is ready in a flash. It’s great to have on hand when you need a grab-and-go snack.

These nachos use mushrooms instead of high-fat fried chips as their base. Plan on having plenty around—they disappear quickly!

This recipe is a great one to make on a Sunday night. Not only will you have a great dinner, you’ll have leftovers (unless, of course, you have a large family, in which case I suggest you make two at the same time) to slice thinly for use as deli meat or to cube for use in salads. It’ll have a lot less sodium and less processing than most deli meats you’d buy at your grocery store, and it’s much less expensive. Though I always love the flavor an outdoor grill provides, as a second option, this dish can be prepared under a broiler for 4 to 5 minutes per side for medium-rare, or longer until desired doneness is reached.

I always keep shrimp in my freezer. I buy it in bulk or when it’s on sale so it’s there when I want it. Shrimp is a great source of lean protein and one of the few proteins you can easily defrost in minutes and without affecting quality. Simply run the frozen shrimp under cold water until it thaws. This recipe technically makes boiled, not steamed, shrimp. The result is similar, but I have found boiling to yield more consistent results.

This is a great, colorful treat to serve when hosting a girls’ night or cocktail hour. It’s fun and extremely easy to make in large quantities, since you’re just skewering one piece of marshmallow, strawberry, and banana on each skewer. When buying hot fudge, you may need to read the nutritional information to determine whether or not it’s fat-free. Some brands say “fat-free” directly on the label, but others that are may not say so. Just be sure that “0 g fat” is listed on the nutrition label.

Let’s face it, baking cookies or making candy can take a lot of time—time we sometimes just don’t have. But we do still want to offer treats that are made with love. These truffles are a simple, fast, and fun answer that will keep you from slaving over a stove and will keep your family fit and happy. In fact, they’re the perfect homemade sweet treat to impress everyone whether they’re interested in eating healthfully or not. And, they’re even perfect for getting the kids in the kitchen with you.

This dessert is great to take out the door, to sell at a bake sale (if you store the cups in a tub of ice), or even to just open the refrigerator to. There’s just something so much more appealing about food that’s ready to go. Feel free to make this in any resealable plastic container you have sitting around your kitchen. But if you want it to look like it was made by the pros, next time you go to a warehouse or club store, buy 12-ounce clear plastic take-out cups with lids. If you’re making a lot, line them up and fill them assembly-line fashion. If you have a few extra minutes and want the shortcakes to be even more decadent, try following this recipe using the Sexy Strawberry Tapenade (see page 207) instead of plain strawberries—a 1/4-cup serving of the tapenade has only 50 calories and 2 grams of fat. Just layer a serving (or two) of the tapenade between the angel food cake and whipped topping in a 12-ounce cup, and you’re in for an extra-special treat.

Depending on the flavor and thickness of the brand of dressing you buy, you may want to consider adding a little lemon juice to it before tossing it with the salad. Lemon can really brighten the flavor and/or thin thicker dressings (thus requiring less dressing). Be careful, though—some brands are already pretty acidic, so adding lemon juice may make the dressing sour. Buy prewashed lettuces to save time.

When making salads at home, make sure your lettuce is well dried. Here, also be sure the salsa or pico de gallo is completely drained of extra moisture by quickly throwing it in a fine sieve and then gently pressing it with a spoon. Eliminating moisture from the ingredients ensures the finished salad isn’t watery. Well-dried ingredients yield a restaurant-quality (or better!) salad. To make this dish even more special, add low-fat cheese or fresh cilantro.

You’ll notice the cooking time of the mushrooms may be as short as 5 minutes or as long as 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the sliced mushrooms you buy. If your mushrooms are thinner, they’ll take less time. Thicker slices will obviously take a bit longer. However, thick or thin, this recipe will cooperate nicely. Just make sure to pay attention to the cooking time.

As with other nuts, you may find a variety of pine nuts available in your local grocery store. Toasted, salted, dry-roasted, raw, and even seasoned varieties are available in markets today. Be sure to look for pine nuts that are raw or dry-roasted, which means they’ve been roasted without any added oils or fats. Though I normally prefer dry-roasted, here they’ll toast in the pan, which will give the dish great flavor. To trim peas, just break off the stem end and strip the string away from the edge. It’s a great project for the kids.

If you can’t find 6-ounce potatoes or don’t have them on hand, you can simply use one 12-ounce potato. Add 1 minute to the microwave cook time if the potato isn’t tender after the 5 to 6 minutes, or an additional 10 to 15 minutes in the oven, and use all of the butter and brown sugar for the one large potato. A 12-ounce potato will make two servings, so the recommendation is to eat only half.

I think this might be the most guilt-free pizza I eat. Not only are you getting the health benefits of whole wheat from the tortilla, in addition, nutritious salad greens are included, along with plenty of lean protein. If you can’t find the garlic blend, you can use a garlic spread. Just be sure you find one without too much fat. That said, since you’re using only a teaspoon, even one with a bit of fat won’t hurt. Just be sure not to use the leftovers of a more fattening one in bulk in another recipe.

Potatoes have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but the hype is just that—hype. A 5-ounce potato with skin has only 110 calories and more potassium than a medium banana. It also contains 45 percent of the daily recommended value of vitamin C and is a significant source of dietary fiber. It’s the toppings that are the problem, not the potatoes themselves. If you don’t love steak fries as much as I do, feel free to make your fries any size—just be sure to watch them carefully, as the cooking time will vary.

At first glance, it might seem strange to see the words ravioli and soup together. But I figure if Jewish folks cut through matzo balls and Chinese folks break apart wontons, we Italians should be able to join in by throwing ravioli in our soup. Though I’d like to pretend I’m a trendsetter, I’ve really just created a twist on tortellini soup for the sake of saving fat and calories. In my grocery stores I can find lower-fat ravioli, but I can’t find lower-fat tortellini. If you do find the tortellini, feel free to return to the more traditional and make this soup with tortellini. But I’m pretty happy with it as is, and I think you will be too. Note that if you can find it, Rosetto also makes a whole-wheat ravioli that’s delicious and just as low in fat and calories but packs 6 grams of fiber per serving (I buy it at Whole Foods). The bag is slightly smaller (22 ounces instead of 25), so you’d need a bag plus a few more ravioli to make the recipe as written, but it’s worth buying.

I love olives. If they had no calories, I would eat them by the bucket. Again, though, they are another ingredient that when eaten in moderation provides good fats our bodies do need. Here, I’ve used them to make pizza, another of my favorite foods. This throw-together meal will take significantly less time than waiting for takeout. And it’s especially great because you can stock the ingredients in your kitchen for that night when you just don’t have time to cook.