Hungry for some creative food ideas? Chew over this

You might not recognize Lisa Lillien's name, but you may have heard of her Web site, www.hungry-girl.com.

Lillien began with a simple idea: share guilt-free recipes, food and product reviews and weight loss diet news with a handful of friends and family. Today, she communicates with almost half a million subscribers hungering for help to get and stay on a leaner path.

Now, Lillien's "Hungry Girl: Recipes and Survival Strategies for Guilt-Free Eating in the Real World" (2008 St. Martin's Griffin, $17.95) brings it all together in a single book. Lillien shares 165 easy recipes that include complete nutritional information. And, when important to a recipe, she specifies brand, something I appreciate so I'm not hunting store shelves.

Lillien makes it simple, too. No esoteric, hard-to-find, wait-until-the-UPS-guy-gets-here ingredients. No. She uses only those ingredients she can find in her (California) supermarket.

Just as I've locked onto drained, unsweetened applesauce as a fat alternative, Lillien is hooked on canned pumpkin for many of the same reasons. About it she writes: "Canned pumpkin is magical. Pumpkin is super low in calories (40 per ½ cup) has practically no fat, and is loaded with fiber (3.5 grams per serving)."

She uses canned pumpkin in interesting ways, like her dreamy chocolate peanut butter fudge (a blend of boxed brownie mix, canned pumpkin and reduced-fat peanut butter) and fancy-schmancy oatmeal.

Lillien also has a variety of uses for Fiber One cereal; she turns it into crumbs in a food processor making it a crunchy coating for oven-fried chicken, onion rings, as well as her take on jalapeno poppers. That's a dandy high fiber, very low fat, low-calorie idea I'd never considered.

Lillien frequently uses two products that I don't: light soymilk and House Foods brand Tofu Shirataki noodles (available at Sunset Foods and Wild Oats). I prefer using either skim or 1 percent organic milk when I cook, for its predicatble flavor notes.

Lillien considers shirataki noodles (tofu-infused strands of yam flour) "life-changing," and uses them exclusively for all recipes that would use wheat pasta because they're "super low" in calories (20 per 4 ounces).

Lillien covers the mealtime bases with cleverly named offerings such as Sliced and Diced Fajita Steak Salad, Kickin' Chicken Tortilla Soup, Rockin' Shrimp Pad Thai, Hot Diggity Chili Dog, T-rific Turkey Reuben, Cheery Cherry Cobbler, Fettucine Hungry Girlfredo and Rockin' Tuna Noodle Casserole.

The book also guides readers through all sorts of dieting challenges. The final chapter, "Survival Guides," overflows with information about restaurant meals and holiday party dining and ideas for traveling foods and office snacks.

You'll find a sprinkling of her "Top Ate" (eight-item lists) covering topics such as shockingly high-cal alcoholic drinks, ways to dazzle with guilt-free blended beverages and toppings for frozen yogurt, sorbet and light ice cream. Plus, there are other food facts liberally scattered throughout the pages.

Lillien, who says she tries to follow the Weight Watchers point system, worked with the company to determine point values for the recipes; those are available on her site.

"Hungry Girl" is a far from fancy food, but it does offer unusual and unique solutions from a woman who's not a dietitian but a real person.

Try this recipe: Did the aforementioned fudge sound tempting? Here it is.

Dreamy Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

1 box (18.3-ounces) Betty Crocker Fudge Brownies Traditional Chewy Brownie Mix

2 cups canned pure pumpkin

2 tablespoons reduced-fat peanut butter, at room temperature

Place oven rack in center position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-by-9-inch square baking pan with nonstick spray.

Combine pumpkin with brownie mix in a large bowl and stir until smooth; batter may be very thick, but don't add anything else!

Pour batter into prepared pan. Spoon peanut butter on top and use a knife to swirl it around the top of the batter. Bake 35 minutes. (The batter will remain very thick and fudgy, and it should look undercooked.) Allow to cool.

Cover pan with foil and place pan in fridge for at least 2 hours. Cut into 36 squares.

Serves 36.

Nutrition values per serving: 65 calories (13.8 percent from fat), 1 g fat, 14 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 1 g protein, 0 cholesterol, 57 mg sodium.

"Hungry Girl" by Lisa Lillien (2008 St. Martin's Griffin, $17.95)