Healthier Filipino?

With aging family and their accompanying health issues, it's always a challenge finding new ways to enhance their diets while respecting the lifestyle and habits they're used to. Let's face it: it's difficult to ask someone who's lived for so long to make drastic changes to the way they've lived for so many years. I mean, they gotten by okay this far, right? Besides, I need to find ways to make the food I love enjoyable for my little one, too.



One of my favorite things to do is find ways to make some of the dishes I've grown up with slightly healthier. Yes, it does change the way they taste slightly... but you got to give a little if you're going to take a little. Take adobo, for example. I can't help but wonder if the original dish started similarly because it's hard to believe that people consumed so much MEAT in an island country without throwing in veggies to supplement. Haha!

Then again, I do remember an old college friend of mine confessing to me, after eating adobo for the first time, "Karm... I actually ate a chunk of fat... and you know what? I tasted GOOD! I wanted to eat all of the fat on the meat." Take that, health freaks! ;)

When I make the adobo, I often use boneless, skinless chicken thighs. To cut on cost at times (when I have the time to spare, of couse), I will buy the bone-in skin-on thighs and de-bone/de-skin them myself... and I trim off a bit of the fat. An old roommate of mine used to only use chicken breast, but I find chicken breast dry and uninviting. While dark meat is fatty, chicken thighs tend to be more economical as chicken breast... and just about as "healthy." Besides, they're one of the recommended meats in the hypertension-battling DASH diet.

When I cook the adobo, I tend to brown the chicken first and then proceed to cook the rest like a stew... and then I add all kinds of veggies, including (ta-da) zucchini! It gets very colorful and tasty... and I'm sure that there are other variations of veggies I can add, especially if I have to take the beans away (for my father's gout... poor guy!).



Anyhow, the end-product is still delicious and wrought with much vinegar-soaked glory. My husband is happy with the addition of veggies (since he's very health-conscious), and it gets my son to chomp down on veggies happily... AND, at the very least, my parents happily tolerate it when they have to eat it. ;)

On another note, my son (in his pickiness) also loooooooves SPAM with a passion. Luckily, I tricked him into eating the low sodium stuff. While most white people cringe at the thought of him eating "ham in a can," I don't mind it at all, since it gives me an excuse to make some, too! Besides, it's fun and easy to present it in a cute little package.



I can't wait until he's big enough to manage a Spam Musubi on his own. :)