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Having a large family growing up, I learned to cook in a big way. With 5 brothers and 3 sisters plus Mom and Dad, I started out cooking for eleven people by the time I was twelve. Mom needed help and taught her daughters to cook at an early age. I’ll never forget the first time I fried chicken all by myself. My brothers ridiculed my over-done chicken mercilessly.

I’ll never forget the first meal I cooked away from home. My sister and I moved out together, just the two of us, and, after settling in, prepared our first meal for just us. We cooked like we were taught: 5 pounds of potatoes for mashed potatoes, 2 whole chickens for fried chicken, 2 quarts of green beans. To this day, we still laugh about all that food we had left over.

So needless to say, cooking for a large gathering is no problem for me. I take on the task of hosting my husband’s family for Thanksgiving and while most people worry about having a dry turkey, my biggest dread is cleaning the house.

So what is the secret to cooking large?

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One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was a Belgian waffle maker. So much to my kids' delight, I've been making waffles every weekend. Now waffles are not the most healthful of breakfast foods, but with a little tweaking, it's possible to make delicious low fat waffles such as these. Top them with fresh fruit, and a little powdered sugar or low fat vanilla yogurt.

How can we explain why two people following one particular diet program, whether it's low fat or low carb, have varying degrees of success? Well, a few of us have said for a while that one dietary approach doesn't fit all, and it seems that there is some substance to this.

Preliminary research* carried out by Interleukin Genetics and Stanford University suggests that we have a genetic predisposition to benefit from a particular type of diet. In my case, a low fat diet seems to work pretty well. For others, it's low carb. Instead of squabbling over who's found the Holy Grail of diet success, perhaps we should take a simple genetic test to figure out which kind of diet would reap the most benefit, not only in terms of weight loss but also in terms of clinical measures related to weight loss, such as blood lipid levels. The study, which focused on 141 overweight premenopausal women following four different diets, while small, is intriguing.

Those who followed the right diet for their genotype lost 5.3 percent of their body weight compared to 2.3 percent in those who were eating the "wrong" diet for their type. The differences were even more marked in those following the lowest-carb and the lowest-fat varieties of the four diets: 6.8 percent weight loss in those eating the right diet for their genotype compared to 1.4 percent in those who were not.

If further research bears this out, then paying $150 for a genetic test may seem like a bargain compared with the expense of diet pills, meal replacements, or medications to treat weight-related health conditions.

_{* "Genotype Patterns Predict Weight Loss Success: The Right Diet Does Matter." American Heart Association's Joint 50th Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention / Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism Conference. March 2 - 5, 2010, San Francisco.}

If chocolate is your downfall, there may be some good news. Scientists at Birmingham University in England have developed a chocolate bar that replaces 60 percent of the fat content with water. It's bit more complex than it sounds: scientists employ a method that produces stable cocoa butter by connecting water particles with cocoa butter crystals. With an identical melting point to chocolate, and an apparently authentic taste, smell and mouth feel, this low-fat chocolate sounds like a promising alternative to the real thing. The question is, will it sell? Please vote in my poll, and feel free to add your comments.

Spaghetti and Meatballs is a favorite in our house, but it's not exactly a low-fat, low-calorie meal. I shave fat calories by substituting lean ground turkey for ground beef, and using a little less meat overall. To boost the nutritional value of the meal, I serve the meatballs with a low-sodium tomato sauce and whole-wheat spaghetti. Since meatballs are pretty much a weekly staple, I like to keep them interesting by messing with the flavorings a little. These slightly spicy turkey meatballs have a distinctive southwestern flavor. You can ramp up the heat by adding some hot sauce to the mix.

Comfort food needn't be heavy and unhealthy. It can be filling and nutritious like this chicken, kale and white bean stew. I love the earthiness of kale, which adds its own flavor to this stew. Plus, it makes a nice change from spinach, which tends to be my default green. As for the white beans, I like to use cannellini beans, but navy beans would be just fine.

_{Chicken, Kale and White Bean Stew © Fiona Haynes, licensed to About.com, Inc.}

If you keep your pantry well stocked, you're bound to have most of the ingredients called for in this easy rice and beans recipe. And if you don't, it's easy to switch a few ingredients here and there. What I like about this meal is that it's healthy, low fat and low cost. What more could you want?

Crêpes are thin pancakes which can be eaten in the same way as regular pancakes or rolled up with a filling of your choice. Traditionally, though, these are eaten with a sprinkling of confectioners' sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice. These are the kind of "pancakes" I used to flip on Shrove Tuesday when I grew up in England.

Some folks are very particular about cookies. There are those who prefer a nice, crisp cookie, others who prefer a slight crunch with a chewy inside, and people like me who enjoy soft, tender cookies. And to me, soft, tender cookies seem to be just the thing to bake for your sweetie for Valentine's Day, especially as they're dark and chocolatey, with a slight sweetness imparted by the chopped dried cherries. So if you're looking for a low-fat way to get or give a chocolate fix this Valentine's Day, these chocolate cherry cookies should do the trick.

How many calories did you eat for breakfast this morning? You may be tell yourself you ate a 110 calorie cereal, but unless you're measuring the suggested 3/4 cup or, in some cases, 1 cup serving, you may be pouring twice as many calories before you even add milk. If you ate one of those handy microwaveable pots of soup for lunch, did you realize that many of these pots contain two servings? If you ate the whole bowl, your 90-calorie soup you thought you ate turned out to be 180 calories, with double the amount of fat, cholesterol (if any) and sodium.

As much as we might scan a label to see how many calories are in a food, and how much fat, cholesterol, salt and sugar is inside, we seem to gloss over the amount of food those numbers refer to. Serving sizes tend to be much smaller than we imagine because we've become so accustomed to eating ever-larger portions of food. Food manufacturers often package multi-serving items as single units. In some cases it's obvious from the size of the package, but it's not always clear cut -- those soup pots are one such example.

We tell ourselves we're eating only this many calories and that much fat, but unless you're an expert calorie counter, the reality is very different. Soon food labels will be overhauled to make consumers more aware of how many calories the package really represents, and perhaps serving sizes will be adjusted to bring them in line with reality. Key data will appear on the front of the package instead of hiding on the back or side. What we do with that information, of course, is entirely up to us.

Flowers are nice, chocolates are nicer, but dinner at home with my husband is what I like most about Valentine's Day. Quite honestly, it doesn't have to be anything terribly fancy, just something we both enjoy eating. The advantage of eating at home is that it's easier to stick with your healthy eating plan; and even if you choose to indulge a little more than usual, you can control portion sizes.

For example, if you choose to cook your sweetie some steak as a special treat, you can limit yourselves to a nice, lean 4-ounce filet mignon, served with some skinny mashed potatoes and your favorite steamed vegetables. Then you might serve some ruby-red strawberries dipped in a little dark chocolate for some dessert. That sounds pretty nice to me.

At your local steakhouse, you might be tempted to have the lobster tail with butter, followed by a "small" 10-ounce steak with creamy mashed potatoes and vegetables drenched in butter. Then there's the whole matter of dessert: mile-high cheesecakes, decadent chocolate mousse, and so on. By the end of the evening, you'll have consumed at least a day's worth of fat calories in one meal.

So if you want to enjoy a nice, light romantic meal with your loved one, consider eating at home. Keep things simple rather than attempt your first ever soufflé or some other potentially tricky culinary technique. Instead, serve one of your favorite light dishes but dress it up with pretty napkins, candlelight and some romantic music.

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