Viva Fiesta Cooler Cuisine
Tips for Packing your Fiesta Cooler with Healthy Choices
Fiesta is just around the corner, and hundreds of San Antonio families will be packing their coolers and going to parades, fire works displays and other Fiesta events. Unfortunately, the foods carried in these coolers often are high in fat and sugar. The Health Collaborative, a nonprofit organization working to take San Antonio from a fat city to a fit city through its Fit City/Fit Schools program, has ideas to share for packing coolers with foods that are tasty as well as nutritious.
- Stock your cooler with sandwich meats, cheeses and condiments for built-your-own sandwiches. Select low-fat meats and cheeses. Add sliced cucumber and lettuce.
- Buy a roasted chicken or roast your own ahead of time. Slice, chill and serve on sandwiches. Roast beef works great, too.
- Zip lock bags and the new, low-cost plastic wear make storing and serving vegetables much easier. Serve a variety of sliced veggies with dip as munchies. Use snack size baggies to help with portion control. Measure out servings ahead of time.
- Cooler salads don't always have to be potato salads. Instead, use fresh leafy salad greens, crisp vegetables and fragrant herbs. Keep salad greens fresh by surrounding them with well-dampened paper towels and sealing them in zip lock bags. Pack the dressings separately and add at serving time. The extra lettuce works great for easy to hold, easy to eat lettuce wraps made with deli meat.
- For elegant cooler cuisine, pack antipasto with low-fat cheese and chilled boiled shrimp.
- Treat your family to the delicious natural sweetness of seasonal fruits by serving them for dessert. Strawberries, apples, bananas and grapes are good choices. Fresh fruit is nature's original fast food.
- For beverages, serve plenty of bottled water and naturally sweetened 100% fruit juices.
- Pre-freeze fruit juice-based smoothies and let thaw in your cooler for yummie, cool refreshing and healthy treats.
- Consider taking two coolers--one for food and one for drinks. Coolers with drinks will be opened more frequently, lowering the temperature for foods stocked inside.