Meatless Recipes on Recipezaar for the Mayo Clinic Diet

On any given week in 2009, my grocery cart was filled with things like sirloin steak tips, chicken breasts and sausages but today the second day of 2010, my cart was filled with black beans, red kidney beans, hot sauce, chili powder, canned stuff like low sodium tomatoes, corn and fresh stuff like jalapeno peppers, onions, zucchini, apples, pears, and so on.

I am changing my meat-eating ways by taking the advice of the Mayo Clinic Diet book and its healthy weight pyramid. By building meals and snacks around fruits, vegetables and whole grains, while reducing the upper pyramid items like meats, dairy, fats and sweets, I hope to lose some weight in 2010! (Enter to win your copy of the book here. )

Among my many bad habits, I was breaking the number 4 habit of eating too much meat. I was following the "eat more protein to feel full" advice. However, the Mayo Clinic recommends that you limit your total daily consumption of meat, poultry and fish to 3 oz. (which is about the size of a deck of cards!) Why? According to the book: Even lean cuts of meat and skinless poultry have some saturated fat and cholesterol and can be high in calories. A 1/2 cup serving of cooked beans, peas, lentils or tofu is about the same as a 2 ounce serving of meat, poultry or fish.

The Mayo Clinic diet contains a small variety of 10 recipes, but I was searching for more recipes, specifically of the meatless, Mexican variety. Boy did I luck out when I checked out recipezaar.com! I find that of all the great, mega recipe sites, I really do prefer recipezaar for several reasons: the site has over 450 categories of recipes, you can create your own cookbook and menu of recipes that you select, you can add recipes, you can also join in the community forums. I really appreciate that you can read all of the member reviews (which helps me make my selections) and easily print recipes that include nutritional information, and it is all free!

Here are five tasty, meatless (mostly) Mexican recipes that are compatible with the Mayo Clinic diet:

Fantastic Mexican Corn and Bean Salad (Vegetarian) - 217605 - Recipezaar

Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas - 292128 - Recipezaar

Meatless Mission Chili - 6854 - Recipezaar

Vegetarian Mexican Lasagna - 352980 - Recipezaar

Healthy Mexican Tortilla Pizza - 228349 - Recipezaar

I made the first recipe, the corn and bean salad and true to its name, IT IS FANTASTIC! In place of white sugar, I used the blue agave nectar, which is a low glycemic organic sweetener.
I also made the meatless chili, which was chock full of veggies like shredded carrot and zucchini and is delicious with just a pinch of Parmesan cheese. I look forward to trying them all and hope you like them too.

If you decide to visit recipezarr.com, enter to win the Recipezaar Sweepstakes. Five lucky winners will win a $100 Gift Certificate for Recipezaar !

Have a happy, healthy 2010!