If there's a nutrition-minded cook in your kitchen

Sunset, Dec, 1989

If there's a nutrition-minded cook in your kitchen Santa has a new bag of gifts that nutrition-minded holiday-makers can draw from. They'll help you skinny through this season of indulgence without a sense of deprivation--and make it easier to achieve New Year's resolutions to eat more healthfully.

A light touch with beverages

On a moment's notice, you can produce deliciously fresh drinks from fruits and vegetables, and create quick holiday refreshments that are naturally low in calories. The tool you use to do this can be as sophisticated as a high-speed juice extractor (1) or as basic and inexpensive as an old-fashioned hand-held juice reamer (3). Other tools for extracting juice from citrus fruits range from a simple, quick leverage press (5) to an electric version that's activated when you press the fruit against the cone (4).

A hand-powered tomato press (2), designed for the cook who preserves tomatoes, also makes a thick, satisfying juice. Adding bubbles gives holiday drinks a festive lift without adding calories. A soda siphon (15) or seltzer maker (16), both fueled by carbon-dioxide cartridges, adds effervescence to any liquid. Squirt from the siphon, pour from the seltzer maker.

A lean approach to cooking

What to cook with less fat? The simplest approach is to choose cooking techniques that don't require fat.

Steaming is the classic fat-free cooking method. Equipment options are numerous: a simple rack fitted into a deep pan with a lid, a set of stacking bamboo or metal steam trays (available in many widths), a cooking pan with its own steaming basket (7), a rice cooker that can also be used as a steamer (6), or a free-standing steamer-oven that can also be used to brown foods (8).

For a spur-of-the-moment snack, make popcorn--in an electric air popper (9) or in an old-fashioned popper (10) over direct heat--and flavor it not with butter but with one of the many herb-seasoned salt preparations now available.

A measures of control over amounts

Weighing ingredients is the most reliable way to keep track of serving portions when you are watching your intake.

You can choose fro a variety of scales for kitchen use. Balance scales with weights (11) are durable and accurate. Electronic scales with digital read-outs (12) are very easy to check. The familiar spring-action scales (13, 14) are considered less precise but are least espensive. How about measuring liquids? Laboratory beakers (17), available at scientific supply stores, have no tolerance for error-unlike more commonly used kitchen volume measures.