Healthy Cheese Ball Recipe

In this week's Made Fit TV episode, Jennifer DiDonato her sister Nicole show you a delicious, super-healthy, virtually fat-free cheese ball recipe.

Jennifer: Hi and welcome to made fit TV. I’m your host Jennifer Didonato and this is episode number 77. If you’re new to this, made fit TV is everyone’s source for health and fitness information and entertainment and it’s where fit bodies don’t just happen. They don’t just boom, wake up and you’re there. You can make it. So bodies don’t just happen, they’re made. That’s right so I’m Jennifer DIdonato and this is a podcast for everyone that can benefit from beginners all the way up to seasoned athletes. We do recipes, we do workouts, we do training methods, a bunch of good stuff all wrapped into a nice package. So I have a special guest today. Nicole: Hi my name is Nicole. I’m Jenny’s sister, older sister. Jennifer: Yes, you’ve probably seen her on a couple of my other episodes, she’s home from Indiana so she’s going to help me do a recipe today. Nicole: I always help out with the food. Imagine that. Jennifer: Come on we work out a lot and we need food. We do, so Nicole, what is our episode today? Nicole: We’re doing healthy cheese balls, it’s not even low fat, it’s fat free almost right? Jennifer: Practically fat free, exactly so a big giant cheese ball. Nicole: You can't have a family dinner or a family Christmas dinner without a cheese ball, it’s always sitting there, you’ve got your nice little crackers there. So it’s artificial for you. Jennifer: But I have a twist though. Instead of crackers, we’re going to be using something else. It’s pretty cool. So let’s get started. So Nicole, she’s going to take the cream cheese, what you’re going to do is you’re going to take two 8 ounce packages so 16 ounces of fat free cream cheese so Nicole go ahead and open that up and we’re going to soften it. Now while Nicole’s doing that, I just want to remind all of you that, we’re doing an awesome giveaway for the holidays, if you watched episode number 76, please do because we’re doing a giveaway, two giveaways. You have to comment on madefitTV.com at the bottom at the comments section right under the video and you’re going to tell me one thing. You’re going to tell me how is made fit TV going to help you with your new year resolution goal and you’re going to put it in the comments section on December 23 is the cutoff date and we’re going to announce the winner on the day, the 26th I believe, we’re announcing the winner so it’s great giveaways. Check out that episode to see what we’re giving away. So Nicole’s going to keep on creaming that up. Nicole: I’ve got my own workout here. Jennifer: I want to show the consistency. Be a little aggressive. Mixing it up in there. Nicole: So it’s room temperature but it’s still obviously with cream cheese, it’s just a little bit thicker so you just kind of work your fork whatever type of utensil you’d like in there. Work that cream, that’s what I’m doing. Jennifer: So we’re just going to do that for a couple minutes, it will probably take about 3 minutes to do that. So as you can see, Nicole did a fine job of creaming that all up together, good job Nicole. Because it’s fat free, the consistency is a little bit different and I just like to tell everybody if you don’t want to use fat free of anything, if you don’t like certain chemicals or I’m always open for you to modify yourself so if you want to use regular cream cheese, by all means go ahead but when I read the nutrition facts at the end of this podcast, they’re going to be a little different in your recipe because you’re using the different recipe or the different ingredient that I used. The next thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to add in fat free feta. Oh boy, so I’m just going to pour it on in. Nicole: Do you crumble that or is it already like just to make it even smaller? Jennifer: You can buy the block or you can also buy it crumbled. What I did is I bought it in the block. This is eight ounces right here. So I’m just going to mix this all together and it will take a couple of minutes and if I turn it and show you, it’s going to fly all over the place. Nicole: I’m exhausted. This is a good forearm workout. Jennifer: So what I did is I mixed the feta with the cream cheese right here and so the next ingredient that we’re going to add in Nicole is the spinach. Nicole: I love spinach, it’s just an easy kind of vegetable to eat canned or in those little blocks, those frozen blocks. Jenny used the frozen blocks, it’s chopped up, you have to obviously wait awhile for it to get room temperature but get all the water out of it too. Squeeze, I squeeze it. Jennifer: Exactly. You wash your hands too but you want to make sure, go ahead and throw it in. What you want to make sure though is when you are working with the spinach, if you buy in the blocks and they’re frozen, you want to keep it frozen or you thaw it as soon as you’re going to use it because if you leave it thawed in a refrigerator, it could get some of that food borne illness thing going on like ecoli because you know there’s always recalls in spinach. It’s so gross, so you want to be careful of that. Nicole: I still love it. Just because it’s so easy to add into any kind of recipe so I don’t know for sure. So she’s just going to mix that up for a minute or two. Jennifer: Check it out guys, Nicole is getting that nice Christmas green color all mixed in there. It’s like snow and a Christmas tree. So what I’m going to do is I’m just going to scrape the sides a little bit. Now, these last ingredient that I’m going to add in to give it a little bit more of a cheese, because we have a lot of cheese right here is a half a cup of parmesan cheese, you can get it, I just used the regular, already shredded, you can go to anyplace and get the fresh one, whatever you want to use. This is what you do, but I’m going to be like giving you the nutrition facts at the end so this is the nutrition facts are based on the ingredients that I’m using here so I’m just going to mix it on in so it’s just going to take a moment. Check it out, it’s almost in a really big ball right now as it is. It’s going to be for a lot of people so what I’m going to do is I’m going to dump it onto some wax paper and while I’m doing that, Nicole is going to chop up some cucumbers- Nicole: No crackers. Jennifer: There you go folks because we’re going to be using the crackers in place of the crackers because then you’re going to be eating a lot of cracker type stuff as it is at your function so I’m just going to go ahead and plop this on here and Nicole, go ahead and make about one to two inch slices, thick enough so you can put the cheese ball, perfect. Nicole: This cuts so nice. Jennifer: So I’m going to try and get this in a ball and there’s Nicole chopping away. So I’m going to do a ball. I had it. Spank it, I’m kidding. Taste test time. Have a little ready? Nicole: Ready to do it the barbaric way, just stick it in there? Jennifer: We’ll just do it the barbaric way. Usually, you want to use a knife. Ready? It’s really good. It’s healthy and you can tell it’s fat free. Nicole: You have like that kind of tanginess and stuff and you can taste the chucks of the feta in there. Jennifer: Check it out guys, two tablespoons is one serving and it contains are you ready, have it on the bottom of the screen here, 26 calories in two tablespoons, half a gram of fat, awesome, one half grams of carbs, even awesome, only one sugar, not that you guys even care but I always like to tell you how much sugar is in something and three and a half grams of protein. So this is an awesome thing that you can have at your holiday, put it out for a nice Christmas spread or holiday spread, put it out for appetizer and use a cucumber because like I said, you’re going to be, if you’re going to eat the carbs, you may as well save it for the cookies or save it for grandma’s famous pie of course. Nicole: Its not that worth it but at least you can cut corners in a healthy way. This is still healthy. Jennifer: Still healthy and it’s still great and it still looks beautiful. We’re going to be putting our cucumbers all around here. Nicole: And that was an interesting idea to have in the kitchen, because there’s still – on them big enough. Jennifer: You just take a knife, boom put it on there, not barbaric like we just did so thanks os much for joining us. Nicole, did you have fun? Did you like it? Nicole: I did, I love coming for the food recipes so it’s always-I love eating. Jennifer: We do so follow me on Twitter, I’m Jenny Didonato. I’m also on Facebook, Jenny Didonato as well. Email me at jenny@madefittv.com. I want to thank all of you who follow us and watch us on Ustream every Saturday. We do it live every Saturday 12 p.m noon eastern standard time, you can join us and chat after the show, we’re going to be chatting with people and don’t forget to comment on episode number 76. We did the healthy stocking stuffer recipe-episode and so on there, we’re going to give away and the only way you can participate is if you comment on madefittv.com right underneath episode number 76. So I wish you all the best of luck and we’re going to do the winners on-we’re going to pick on the 23rd so wish you the best of luck and also happy holidays. Nicole have a happy holidays as well and we’ll see you next time. Bye.