Moderately Healthy

Mike loves his spuds - bake 'em, boil 'em, fry 'em.. Better yet smother them with cheese and bacon! While this appy looks like it might shave some minutes off your life, it is actually moderately healthy. Now by my way of reckoning, "moderately healthy" is a label that applies to those foods that should not be consumed excessively at every meal, but when stacked up next to their gut-busting, artery- clogging "real" counterparts, look like water and celery sticks.

Home-made, as compared to your pub variety potato skins are a good example. Instead of deep frying I baked these beauties. I even tested my version with low fat cheese. I could devote a whole other blog entry to low fat cheese. I typically use Cracker Barrel Old Light cheese for day to day cheese use - for sandwiches, bran muffins and such. I am more reluctant to melt it. However, for these potato skins the low fat cheese worked like a dream.

Haley's Potato Skins-

1) Bake some potatoes. I chucked four potatoes into a 400 degree oven and left them there for about an hour and a half. I think that an hour should do it though (Finn and I had an accidental siesta upstairs so I'm lucky that the potatoes even made it!).

2) Take your potatoes out of the oven and let them cook for a bit. When you can handle them (first deal with your and their emotional baggage), cut them lengthwise in half, and then each half in half again - so that the potato is in four length-wise quarters. Now scoop out the potato so that there is just a bit left, maybe a quarter of an inch. Save the "innards" for baked potato soup or mash them up for tomorrow's dinner.

3) Brush some olive oil on your potato skins and season with salt and pepper. Next put on some sort of sauce - I had leftover pureed tomatoes so I mixed a quarter cup of that with the same amount of barbecue sauce. You could also use straight barbecue sauce, salsa, or tomato sauce. Then load your skins with toppings. I use homemade bacon bits (organic-happy-pig bacon.. doesn't that somehow negate the fat??), lots of chopped green onion, and cheese. You could get creative with your own toppings. I was thinking that sun-dried tomatoes, chopped olives, feta and shrimp might be a nice switch up.

4) Take out of the oven and serve with sour cream or spicy yogurt and then eat quickly.. well, at least load up your plate so that Mikeyc doesn't oust you from your rightful share.