Recipe: Brown Rice Jollof

We have a guest post! Yay! If you are a fan of Nigerian food, you may constantly be asking how to make your recipes healthier. Well, while I share how I make my recipes healthier, it is great when we can hear from experts in the kitchen as well. If you have ever heard about the blog 9jafoodie, you know that she has great overall Nigerian recipes, but I love when she puts a healthier spin on things. Today, she has shared her recipe for jollof rice with us, which has been modified to use brown instead of white. Enjoy!

Barbecued Marinated Croaker Fish Recipe

by Dobby from Dobbys Signature

Today we have a guest blogger! Dobby blogs about recipes and delicious food at DobbysSignature. I asked her to share one of her healthy recipes with out readers, and here it is.

Chicken: To Skin or Not to Skin?

When I cook chicken that I didn't already buy skinless, I usually go through the motions of skinning the chicken. Yes, people have varying opinions of this is really necessary or not. My position is that it is not particularly necessary, but it definitely helps to reduce the temptation to eat the skin when I'm done cooking the chicken.

Okay, that just broke a lot of people's hearts, right? Well, here's a little fact to help you understand how many calories you are cutting down. Unlike other kinds of meat, most of the fat in chicken is in the skin. A 4oz regular chicken breast with skin has about 188 calories, and 3g of saturated fat. If you skinned that same chicken, it would have about 118 calories, and 0.4 grams of saturated fat. Multiply that to the amount you may actually be eating and you see how much of a difference that is!

So you're probably now wondering why I'm all for skinning it BEFORE you cook the chicken. Isn't it the same as just cooking it and then peeling it off? Plus, isn't it way easier that way? I'm not sure about you, but I don't always have the most control in the world when it comes to food, and so it's easier for me to avoid stuffing my face when the food is not on my plate or in my pot. I'm pretty sure some of you are the same. So I skin before I cook so I don't have to look at the juicy piece of skin and then will myself to not eat it.

Also, you may not know this, but the skin actually absorbs most of the spices when you cook the chicken. So peeling it off after you cook it sometimes means losing the flavor of what you just cooked. If you peel it off before, you allow the meat to absorb the spices.

Cheers Eights & Weights!

Healthy Nigerian Recipe: Baked Plantain Chips

So I sometimes watch videos by another fitness blogger Adura, and in watching some of the videos yesterday, I wanted to share one I thought was great. In Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, a lot of countries eat deep fried plantain as one of the staples. Needless to say, it contains a lot of oil, and regardless of what oil you use, too much oil could pose a caloric problem.

I watched this video, and really wanted to share with you because it is an easy alternative for those who love plantains. For more information on Adura, visit her website here or check it out on my blog list on the side bar. Check out the video on Youtube to see calorie information as well, and while you're there, subscribe to her channel!

Cheers Eights & Weights!

Video credit: Adura-o.com