One way to optimize your nutrition this year is to focus on eating meals at home more often. I'm not demonizing restaraunt dining (Shout out to all of my hometown favorites who do  local and fresh farm foods)! But for many people, eating out usually means more fat, more sodium, and bigger portions. This week, the Healthy Eats challenge was to eat at home more often. While I did splurge for this ugly but oh-so-delicious sub I've raved about before, I do normally eat at home. I always hear one major hurdle to en casa dining:" What do I make?!" Many of us horde cookbooks, but they can end up as end tables instead of dinner inspiration.

Here are my top 4 websites for healthy, in home cooking inspiration: 

Healthy Aperture: This food gallery is all about what's healthy online. Created and maintained by two RDs, they select submitted healthy recipes and photos

Pinterest: Lock me up. I'm addicted to pinterest. It's recipe and food photography heaven! Just click the food and beverage category to browse things users have 'pinned' on an inspiration board. Have something specific in mind? Use the search bar to look for those vegetarian tacos. You can also use Pinterest as a 'cook later' file for all of your ideas!

Foodily: This is a recipe aggregator that pulls from a variety of other websites. What I appreciate are the 'at a glance' results that show ingredients, time, and ratings side by side. Small buttons also indicate nutrition notes like 'low fat' or 'high fiber'.  Need a recipe without an allergen? Search any thing and pick 'without' to exclude results with dairy, nuts, gluten, etc...

Recipe Redux: While this isn't a website, you'll love the frequent updates in this monthly blog challenge by RDs. Each month we get a food or theme challenge and bloggers work to boost the health rating of the recipe. We've done healthy breakfast, pumpkin, whole grains, and more! Look for the monthly challenge with all participants' links on the blog and see previous ones here.

What are your favorite sites?

-Carlene Future RD

Dietitian Nutritionist and cookbook author sharing flavor-forward recipes and simplified science-driven wellness.