Blog Posts by The Editors of EatingWell Magazine

By Emily McKenna, Recipe Developer & Tester for EatingWell Magazine

Banana bread is a great solution for using overripe bananas. To lighten up your favorite recipe, use all whole-grain flour or whole-grain flour mixed with white all-purpose flour, and rely as much as you can on the natural sweetness of the bananas to cut the total amount of granulated sugar called for in the recipe. If you roughly mash or chop your bananas, there are big chunks of fruit to bite into. Consider a handful of toasted chopped walnuts or a pinch of cinnamon or nutmeg and a handful of dark chocolate chips for a flavor boost.

Don't Miss: Watch our food editor make healthy banana chocolate chip bread

Want to lighten up your favorite banana bread recipe? Here are 4 of our best tricks you can use to make your banana bread recipe healthier and delicious, and a recipe for EatingWell's healthy Banana-Blueberry Buttermilk Bread.

1. Use Less Sugar
This is really a two-part tip. I try to add as

By Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D., EatingWell Magazine

Breakfast is important-it fuels your morning and may help keep your hunger in check so you don't overdo it at lunch. Although making breakfast at home is ideal-you have more control over the ingredients and can make sure you have a healthy, balanced meal-there are times when you need or want to pick up breakfast on the go. Many popular fast-food restaurants now offer breakfast sandwiches, which spurred me to look into the healthiest (and least healthy) options.

Here's what I found out about some of the healthiest breakfast-sandwich choices and the worst, which you should skip.

Don't Miss: Healthy 5-Minute Breakfast Sandwich Recipes

Starbucks
The Best: The Starbucks Spinach & Feta Breakfast Wrap (pictured, left) has 290 calories, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 6 grams of fiber, 19 grams of protein and 830 mg of sodium. It's Starbucks's lowest-calorie breakfast sandwich option, plus the 6 grams of fiber will help

By Wendy Ruopp, Managing Editor of EatingWell

How many meals can you make with a corn tortilla? The outside-the-box cooks in the EatingWell Test Kitchen gave themselves the challenge of creating a few new dinners based on corn tortillas for the May/June 2013 issue of EatingWell Magazine. But they really outdid themselves with this new Chicken Taco Bowls recipe and guess where they found their inspiration? At the bottom of a muffin tin.

By flipping the muffin tin over and nestling a tortilla into the creases between four cups, they were able to turn softened tortillas into little bowls. They filled the bowls with an easy-to-whip-up filling of chicken and your favorite healthy taco toppings.

Don't Miss: How to Make Killer Guacamole

To make the bowls, you'll first need to warm the tortillas to prevent them from cracking and breaking. Here are three ways to warm your tortillas:

In the oven: Wrap stacks of 8 tortillas in foil; place in a 375°F oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

On the stove: Turn

By Breana Lai, M.P.H., R.D., Associate Food Editor, EatingWell Magazine

Whether you enjoy smoothies for breakfast, a snack or even dessert, they're a great way to increase your daily servings of fruits and vegetables. But depending on the ingredients they're made with, smoothies can quickly turn into unhealthy calorie-bombs filled with sugar and saturated fat. And drinking too many high-calorie smoothies could counteract their health benefits and sabotage your efforts to stay--or get--slim.

Don't Miss: The Best & Worst Fast-Food Smoothies

The healthiest way to enjoy a smoothie is to make your own. Blending your own choice of ingredients assures you know how much of and what foods you are getting. Wondering how to make a smoothie? A good smoothie should contain a blend of ingredients with protein and fiber to help keep you full and provide antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.

And when it comes to smoothies, don't forget to keep an eye on portion sizes! If you are

By Wendy Ruopp, Managing Editor of EatingWell

Unpredictability may spice up a marriage, sure--but predictability can be comforting without being boring. For instance, when my husband and I go out to eat, we can predict with a pretty high degree of accuracy what each other will order. If we're out for Asian food he'll go for spicy and garlicky--and I'm going to want sticky chicken with sesame seeds.

Don't Miss: Sweet & Sour Chicken and More Better-Than-Chinese-Takeout Recipes

The unpredictable part is that it turns out I can make sticky chicken we'll both love at home (it's so easy!). This EatingWell recipe for Oven-Barbecued Asian Chicken is everything we're looking for. The sauce has fresh ginger and plenty of garlic and just enough hot sauce to satisfy my husband, and the hour it spends on the chicken in the oven turns it into the rich, savory, sticky glaze I'm hungry for. I also like how simple this recipe is to put together (cheaper than going out for dinner, for

By Wendy Ruopp, Managing Editor of EatingWell

Confession time: I'm a brownie snob. For years I've turned up my nose at "blondies." (OK, maybe there's a little "brunettes vs. blondes" thing going on too.) Given the choice, I'd always pick a fudgy brownie over a wan beige blondie more defined by its lack of chocolate than the presence of any particular identity of its own.

Don't Miss: Rocky Road Brownies and Skinny Dessert Bar Recipes

But recently I've reconsidered my prejudices. A story in the March/April issue of EatingWell Magazine, "Rediscovering Quinoa," brought Almond Butter-Quinoa Blondies into my life and that changed everything.

These beautiful squares mix up in 10 minutes with just a few ingredients--and best of all, one of those ingredients is chocolate chips. That means I get to have it all: a sweet little treat made with luscious almond butter and trendy quinoa flour (what a great discovery for people who are eating gluten-free!), for just 146 calories.

By Wendy Ruopp, Managing Editor of EatingWell

I just have two questions about this chicken recipe: Why is it called "Three-Cup Chicken"? And can I please have it for dinner tonight? It has the Asian flavors I love: Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, fresh ginger and fresh basil. And lots of garlic: 12 cloves plus 1 tablespoon minced garlic. That's why Kathy Gunst included it in her story "A Fresh Look at Garlic" in the March/April issue of EatingWell. (Find 25 healthy garlic recipes, including more of her new garlic recipes for garlic scape pesto and more.)

According to her, the name of this classic Taiwanese dish comes from the combination of soy sauce, rice wine and rice vinegar in equal measure (actually 3 tablespoons each in this recipe, not 3 cups--I suppose if you wanted to multiply it to serve 64 instead of making 4 servings, you'd use 3 cups of each…and an awful lot of chicken).

To make it for dinner tonight, I just have to spend a fragrant hour in the kitchen with my

By Gretel H. Schueller, Contributing Writer for EatingWell

On his 12th birthday (Earth Day), Danny Seo founded Earth 2000, which quickly exploded into the country's largest teenage activist charity, and he's been campaigning for sustainability ever since. Today, Seo (now 36) has a syndicated column and an extensive line of eco-friendly home and food products, including nonstick cookware that is free of two controversial chemicals (PTFE & PFOA). He is also the best-selling author of nine books, including the Up-cycling series, featuring eco-friendly craft projects. Here he shares his five changes that would have the biggest impact on the planet.

1. Eat Local
Food shouldn't have more frequent-flier miles than you do. While it may not be possible to find locally grown oranges where you live--I live in Pennsylvania--that doesn't mean things like milk, cheese and eggs have to come from other states when local options exist for most of us.

Don't Miss: 5 Ways to Eat Local