Rachael Ray: Rachael's Daytime Talkshow

Food Combos from the "Hungry Girl"

Aired on: August 23, 2011, October 15, 2010

Lisa Lillien, aka "Hungry Girl", has wowed Rachael's viewers over the years with her tips for guilt-free eating, and now she's got her own show on The Cooking Channel, where she continues to share her tricks and secrets of how to eat beloved foods without the calories! Today, Lisa is sharing her "hot couples" foods. "Hot Couples are two ingredients that work incredibly well together," she explains, "so it’s a two-ingredient recipe that makes it a couple, and the hot part is how delicious and easy it is!"

Egg Substitutes & Laughing Cow Cheese
Lisa points out that a regular cheddar cheese omelet has about 280 calories and about 22.5 grams of fat. "If you want to make a hot breakfast at home and you don’t have a lot of time and don’t want to break out the pots and pans, you just throw some egg substitute and a little Laughing Cow cheese wedge in a mug and microwave it for two minutes!" The result is a quick and easy breakfast at only 95 calories and 1.5 grams of fat!

Apples & Red Hot Candies
Even a small slice of apple pie could have about 500 calories and 25 grams of fat, but Lisa has a trick to get the same delicious taste for a fraction of the calories. "You take an apple - I like Fuji apples - cube it and throw the cubes into a mug with about 12 or 15 red hot candies. Cover it and put it in the microwave for a few and they melt and get all gooey and it tastes a lot like apple pie!" The treat will run you only 130 calories and less than one gram of fat, and if you want other items to "crash the party" and have it taste more like apple pie, you could add graham crackers or fat-free whipped cream.

Cake Mix & Diet Soda
"A lot of box cake mixes tell you to add eggs or oil or eggs and oil," Lisa says. "You don’t really need to!" She explains that if you prepare the cake the way it is on the box, each slice could be 250 calories with 10 grams of fat. Lisa suggests adding only one ingredient to the cake mix - diet soda! "It bakes up and you save a ton of calories and fat; each slice has only 170 calories and 3.5 grams of fat." Lisa says you can add orange soda to make the cake taste like orange cake, but you could also use cream soda, raspberry soda, club soda, depending on the flavor you want to achieve.