Cranberries have become a Thanksgiving dinner staple. How about making a heart-smart cranberry apple crisp this year?

Jen Welper, a wellness executive chef with the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program, demonstrates how to make a delicious dessert for your Thanksgiving table that is full of fiber, low in fat but rich in flavor. Mayo Clinic News Network photojournalist Kevin Sullivan joined Jen in the kitchen to find out how a few ingredients and 40 minutes can taste so good and be so good for you.

It's a recipe from her new cookbook, "Cook Smart, Eat Well: Mayo Clinic Recipes and Strategies for Healthy Living."

Watch: Heart-smart cranberry apple crisp recipe for the holidays

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video (2:37) is in the downloads at the end of this post. Please courtesy: "Mayo Clinic News Network." Download the recipe. Read the script.

APPLE CRANBERRY CRISP

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 cups Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced
• 2 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen/thawed (doesn’t matter too much they thaw quick)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons flour
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
  Topping:
  • 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • ¾ cup flour
  • 1 cup rolled oats
  • ½ cup flax, ground
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • ½ teaspoon cinnamon

PREPARATION:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place apples, cranberries, sugar, flour and cinnamon in a bowl and toss until evenly coated.
3. Lightly grease 9x13 baking pan and spread apple cranberry mixture on the bottom.
4. Mix softened butter, flour, oats, flax seed, brown sugar and cinnamon in bowl until butter is incorporated into flour mixture and turned into crumbles.
5. Place crumble mixture over apples.
6. Place in oven for 35-40 minutes.

Serves: 18
Calories: 192
Fat: 7

Recipe from:
Jen Welper's cookbook, "Cook Smart, Eat Well: Mayo Clinic Recipes and Strategies for Healthy Living."

Related stories:

• Mayo Clinic Minute: Popping a healthier high-fiber snack
• Mayo Clinic Minute: Flaxseed – tiny seed, nutritional powerhouse

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For those who are vegetarian, gluten-sensitive or have celiac disease, this recipe is one you may safely enjoy as well. It's packed with fiber, protein, vitamins A, B, C, E and other nutrients. And it's tasty, too.

Watch: A holiday side dish everyone might like

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video (2:01) is in the downloads at the end of this post. Please courtesy: "Mayo Clinic News Network." Download the recipe. Read the script.

Quinoa cakes with sweet potatoes

Serves:  6-7 

Ingredients:

• 2 cups                        Quinoa, cooked
• 2 cups                        Sweet potato, cooked, mashed 
• 2 each                        Eggs
• 3 cloves                     Garlic, minced
• 6 ounces                    Gruyere or parmesan cheese, shredded
• 1 teaspoon            Salt
• ¼ teaspoon            Black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon            Nutmeg
• 2 tablespoons         Parsley, fresh, chopped very fine
• 2 tablespoons         Olive oil for searing 

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 375 F.  Spear sweet potatoes, then bake in oven for about 45 minutes or until they are completely soft and cooked. Cook quinoa, then let cool.  
• Once sweet potatoes are baked, allow to slightly cool until able to handle. Mix cooled quinoa, sweet potatoes, eggs, garlic, cheese, salt, pepper, nutmeg and parsley.
• Preheat sauté pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil unless you have very large sauté pan for all quinoa cakes. Form quinoa cakes into ¼-cup patties and then sear in pan until golden brown on each side.  To ensure heated through patty, you may bake in oven for additional 5 minutes.  

Chef’s Note: This recipe should make 14 ¼-cup patties. Two quinoa cakes would be appropriate per main meal. 

Nutrition information for 2 quinoa cakes: 260 calories; 12 g protein; 26 g carbohydrate; 12 g fat; 340 mg sodium; 4 g fiber.

This recipe is from Welper's new cookbook, "Cook Smart, Eat Well: Mayo Clinic Recipes and Strategies for Healthy Living."

Related posts:

• Heart-smart cranberry apple crisp recipe for the holidays.
• Mayo Clinic Minute: More people are developing celiac disease.
• What is Hashimoto’s disease?

For the safety of its patients, staff and visitors, Mayo Clinic has strict masking policies in place. Anyone shown without a mask was recorded prior to COVID-19 or recorded in an area not designated for patient care, where social distancing and other safety protocols were followed.

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If your child is a picky eater, the battle over healthy foods can be a challenge. Being fussy about food is common in toddlers and small children, but parents can try some tips and tricks to introduce new foods. One approach to improving eating habits is to get kids involved in the kitchen.

Involving children in meal planning and teaching kids to cook can have multiple benefits. Not only is cooking a necessary life skill, learning how to cook teaches math, science and creativity. Using fresh fruits and vegetables encourages healthy eating and children are more likely to eat food they've helped prepare.

Other tips include:

• Let your child pick which fruits and vegetables to make for dinner or during visits to the grocery store or farmers market.
• Read kid-friendly cookbooks together and let your child pick out new recipes to try.
• Toddlers and children can help with some cooking tasks — with supervision — including sifting, stirring, counting ingredients, picking fresh herbs from a garden or windowsill, and “painting” on cooking oil with a pastry brush.

On the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, a special edition of "Ask the Mayo Mom" pediatrician and host Dr. Angela Mattke is joined by Kate Zeratsky, a Mayo Clinic registered dietitian nutritionist, and Jen Welper, Mayo Clinic executive chef, for a discussion on teaching children how to nourish their bodies with healthy foods, encouraging kids to try new foods, and getting kids involved in cooking.

For more information and all your COVID-19 coverage, go to the Mayo Clinic News Network and mayoclinic.org.

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Jen Welper, a wellness executive chef with the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program, has just such a dinner in mind. It's a quick and easy meal that's good for the heart in more ways than one. And the recipes are taken right out of the pages of her new cookbook, "Cook Smart, Eat Well: Mayo Clinic Recipes and Strategies for Healthy Living."

Watch: Chef Jen Welper prepares a healthy Valentine's Day dinner

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video (3:25) is in the downloads at the end of this post. Please courtesy: Mayo Clinic News Network. Name super/CG: Jen Welper/Wellness Executive Chef/Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program. Read the script.

The following is a transcript from Chef Jen Welper's cooking video:

"So today we're making a maple balsamic pork tenderloin with honey sage carrots. So what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and get our pork tenderloin already marinating so it has a little time to sink in. So we have some balsamic vinegar, just basic balsamic vinegar, and then we're going to do some really good maple syrup. This is going to be that sweet and savory. And as it sears, we're going to add some herbs to it. So you want those herbs to be chopped really small. Every bite should be a good bite, essentially."

"So we'll just sprinkle a little bit of kosher salt right there on the tenderloin and do some cracked pepper. Then I'm going to go ahead and peel our carrots because the flavor is just a little bit better. Because my tenderloin is round, I'm going to cut these into sticks. I'm going to kind of cut these into long logs here and then take my logs, cut those in half. We're just going to blanch these for just a little bit. And so it's really about making sure we have a nice tender carrot. When you chop sage really small, again, that's going to give you that really nice, even seasoning throughout the carrot. So I'm just going to use some long strips here and chop. Just put a little bit of olive oil, I'm just going to move it around just a little bit."

"We'll go back to our pork tenderloin. You want to hear that sizzle. That sizzle is extremely important. But as juices are going to be pulling out, you want to leave it in the pan and not touch it. It's so important to do that. You can always just take a peek, see how it's looking and then put it back. I really want to get some color on that. You want to make sure that you just let it do its job. So what's so simple and beautiful about this recipe is we're taking first sage, some honey, salt and a little bit of olive oil, nothing crazy — and, of course, our carrots. We'll put just a little bit of oil in the pan. And again, we'll use the same spatula and kind of move it around. We can always do a little test here. Perfect, heard that little sizzle and we can put in our carrots. There's not a lot of extra work, that's so nice. We've got so much flavor and love in your carrots in your pork tenderloin, do another check. Looks pretty good. I'm going to even lay it a little bit longer."

"So with our carrots, we can just make sure that we're kind of moving it around a little bit but not too much. And the last-minute thing we will do is add the honey, but we can go ahead and add just a little bit of salt. You can add in our sage what those flavors really release, yummy! So I think it's a good time now to pull our pork over, so we have a really nice color. The balsamic is also going to add in some color, too, so that's always handy — and then that maple. And at any time, you have some, what I've called, stickage in your pan. Go ahead and use the pork to kind of clean that up because that's going to be flavor. From there, our carrots are just about done. What I'm going to do is add just a little bit of our honey — doesn't need a whole lot."

"It's going to be quick because it's already hot — excellent! We'll give that just another 30 seconds, and then we'll put this right in the oven. And then we are good to go. It'll take about 15 minutes. Oh my gosh, this smells so good! I'm excited. What I'm going to do is slice this at a little bit of an angle. I like to slice it really thin and it helps create a nice look to it. Then we add some of our carrots. Make sure there's lots of love in it, vegetables and flavor. And there we go. So this is a cute, little, quick, easy, healthy Valentine's meal."

Maple Balsamic Roasted Pork Tenderloin Recipe

Honey Sage Carrots Recipe

For the safety of its patients, staff and visitors, Mayo Clinic has strict masking policies in place. Anyone shown without a mask was either recorded prior to COVID-19 or recorded in a nonpatient care area where social distancing and other safety protocols were followed.

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In this Mayo Clinic Minute, Mayo Clinic experts weigh in on how to avoid an unnecessary trip to the emergency department for a kitchen knife injury.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video (0:58) is in the downloads at the end of this post. Please courtesy: "Mayo Clinic News Network." Read the script.

People tend to do a lot more cooking around the holidays, and all of that chopping and carving in the kitchen can lead to more hand injuries.

"We've had patients who have, unfortunately, stuck a knife through their hand as it slipped," says Dr. Sanj Kakar, a Mayo Clinic orthopedic surgeon. "So we see a lot of these injuries happen over the holiday season."

Dr. Kakar says kitchen knife cuts can be serious, even devastating.

"In the hand, you know, it's very complicated. We worry about injury to bones, hand fractures, but other things, (such as) if we cut the tendon, which is the rope that moves our hands and fingers, or nerve injury or even blood vessel injuries."

Before you take a stab at carving up that tough autumn vegetable, make sure you're using the right technique. Mayo Clinic Executive Chef Jen Welper explains a common mistake people make while using a knife:

"Don't go straight down with your knife. Just kind of already make contact inside of it, and then help push down," Welper says.

She adds that using sharp knives to drive into what you're cutting will not only require less pressure but also can help keep the food or knife from slipping.

Some other tips to avoid hand injuries include:

• Slice away from your hand and keep your fingers clear of the blade.
• Never use the palm of your hand as a cutting board.
• Keep your eyes on your cutting. Avoid distractions and alcohol.

The post Mayo Clinic Minute: Sharpen your knife skills to avoid injury appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video pkg (0:59) is in the downloads at the end of the post. Please "Courtesy: Mayo Clinic News Network." Read the script.

"Usually a lot of heavy frying," Welper says is the biggest problem making party food favorites unhealthy. "The other thing is a lot of heavy dips."

Welper says the first solution to cutting out some calories is using boneless wings with white meat. She also suggests baking them instead of frying.

What about the ever-popular ranch and blue cheese dips that are full of calories?

"Usually, it's like a tub of sour cream or a tub of mayonnaise," Welper says. "And, so, that base right there is kind of a red flag. So what we're going to do is we'll use a nonfat plain Greek yogurt. And then we'll use a little bit of low-fat mayonnaise."

Welper says all you have to do is add a few spices to make a ranch dip, or some low-fat buttermilk and blue cheese crumbles to make blue cheese. Welper says most people won't be able to taste the difference.

Welper says fried Buffalo wings are usually smothered in butter to cut the edge off the heat of the buffalo sauce. She recommends skipping the butter with the healthier baked wings and instead encourage people to dip the wings in the healthier dips to cut the heat and acidity of the sauce.

Get the recipes here:

• Boneless Buffalo wings
• Low-calorie ranch dip

____________________________________________

For the safety of its patients, staff and visitors, Mayo Clinic has strict masking policies in place. Anyone shown without a mask was either recorded prior to COVID-19 or recorded in a nonpatient care area where social distancing and other safety protocols were followed.

The post Mayo Clinic Minute: Take the guilt out of football food appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video pkg (0:59) is in the downloads at the end of the post.
Please "Courtesy: Mayo Clinic News Network." Read the script.

"Usually a lot of heavy frying," Welper says is the biggest problem making party food favorites unhealthy. "The other thing is a lot of heavy dips."

Welper says the first solution to cutting out some calories is using boneless wings with white meat. She also suggests baking them instead of frying.

What about the ever-popular ranch and blue cheese dips that are full of calories?

"Usually, it's like a tub of sour cream or a tub of mayonnaise," Welper says. "And, so, that base right there is kind of a red flag. So what we're going to do is we'll use a nonfat plain Greek yogurt. And then we'll use a little bit of low-fat mayonnaise."

Welper says all you have to do is add a few spices to make a ranch dip, or some low-fat buttermilk and blue cheese crumbles to make blue cheese. Welper says most people won't be able to taste the difference.

Welper says fried Buffalo wings are usually smothered in butter to cut the edge off the heat of the buffalo sauce. She recommends skipping the butter with the healthier baked wings and instead encourage people to dip the wings in the healthier dips to cut the heat and acidity of the sauce.

Get the recipes here:

• Boneless Buffalo wings
• Low-calorie ranch dip

The post Mayo Clinic Minute: Take the guilt out of Super Bowl party food appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

July 31 is National Avocado Day, and Dr. Sanj Kakar, a Mayo Clinic orthopedic hand surgeon, says he's seen an increase in hand injuries requiring surgery as a result of the rise in popularity of avocados.

Jen Welper, an executive chef with the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program, says most of the injuries can be avoided with four simple tips.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video pkg (0:59) is in the downloads at the end of the post. Please "Courtesy: Mayo Clinic News Network." Read the script.

"You want to make sure – first of all – your knife is sharp," Welper says.

She says if your knife isn't sharp enough, you'll have to use more force, which increases your chance of something going wrong.

Tip No. 2: "We want to make sure that our avocado is ripe," Welper says. An unripe avocado will be much harder to cut.

Tip No. 3 is about knowing the proper way to cut into the avocado. "[You need to know] how to kind of glide into things, versus trying to just chop," she says.

Taking the pit out can be the last hurdle. "Stick [the knife] into the pit there and then just turn," Welper says.

But the most important advice Welper says she can offer is to slow down and take your time anytime you're cutting fruits or vegetables.

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"The No. 1 thing would be added sugar," says Jen Welper, an executive wellness chef with the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program. "Even though it might say it’s light or fat-free, there may be sugar added to replace the creaminess in those yogurts."

Added sugars include syrups and other caloric sweeteners. When these sugars are included in foods, they increase calories without contributing essential nutrients.

In this Mayo Clinic Radio Health Minute, Welper explains how to avoid added sugars by building your own yogurt breakfast.

To listen, click the link below.

Creating Healthier Yogurts

The post Creating healthier yogurts: Mayo Clinic Radio Health Minute appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video pkg (0:59) is in the downloads at the end of the post.
Please ‘Courtesy: Mayo Clinic News Network.’ Read the script.

"Usually a lot of heavy frying," Welper says is the biggest problem making party food favorites unhealthy. "The other thing is a lot of heavy dips."

Welper says the first solution to cutting out some calories is using boneless wings with white meat. She also suggests baking them instead of frying.

What about the ever-popular ranch and blue cheese dips that are full of calories?

"Usually, it's like a tub of sour cream or a tub of mayonnaise," Welper says. "And, so, that base right there is kind of a red flag. So what we're going to do is we'll use a nonfat plain Greek yogurt. And then we'll use a little bit of low-fat mayonnaise."

Welper says all you have to do is add a few spices to make a ranch dip, or some low-fat buttermilk and blue cheese crumbles to make blue cheese. Welper says most people won't be able to taste the difference.

Welper says fried Buffalo wings are usually smothered in butter to cut the edge off the heat of the buffalo sauce. She recommends skipping the butter with the healthier baked wings and instead encourage people to dip the wings in the healthier dips to cut the heat and acidity of the sauce.

Get the recipes here:

• Boneless buffalo wings
• Low-calorie ranch dip

The post Mayo Clinic Minute: Guilt-free Super Bowl party food appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.