Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

1111 is pretty good (their “blt” of brioche-lobster-thyme is great). I like Franco, in soulard. For locally sourced food (not all outstanding, but the best burgers for sure) you might hit up Riddles. The best ‘fine dining’ I have had in stl is Sidney Street Café. Niche gets lots of talk, and I like but don’t love for the most part.

Eat-Rite diner?

i love that you all put velveeta! that was the first thing i thought of. i'm not a big fan of cheese in general but i grew up with velveeta haha- it was a huge deal for my mom to cut off slices for my sisters and I when she was making macaroni.
so artificial and soooo good :)

also push up pops, with the flintstones on them,
and those animal crackers with the icing that have become impossible to find!

When it comes to bread, you don't need butter in it. For most of my breads, I use olive oil, but there are certainly bread recipes that use no fat at all. But there really isn't a lot of fat in a standard loaf of bread. Divide that by the number of slices, and it's pretty insignificant.

And since sugar has been brought up, sugar isn't essential in bread, but unless you're talking about a sweet bread, there's not much sugar in most bread recipes, anyway. If it's a moral objection to white sugar, you can use brown sugar, palm sugar, honey (usually, but not always), agave, maple sugar, or any other sugar. Calorie-wise a carb is a carb, and there are the same number of calories in any carb, so while molasses or agave may have trace elements of thing that are absent in white sugar, it's still a carb. If you leave the sugar out entirely, the bread won't brown as nicely, but to my taste leaving sugar out is not nearly as bad as leaving the salt out.

What you can do to make yeast bread more healthy (again, depending on your definition) is to add things that fit your definition of healthy. You can add fiber by using whole grains or seeds, or you can add protein by using some garbanzo bean flour. You can add cooked, pureed squash or any number of other things that will add protein and fiber and thus reduce the carb load per portion. Of course, eating moderate portions is a good idea, too.

As others have said before me, butter is most definitely your friend. Just keep in mind that all butters are not created equal:
http://www.izzyeats.com/2007/05/why-butter-is-so-much-better-than-you.html

Try Earth Balance. They make a tasty vegan butter substitute that works for baking, and they also do a 50/50 blend with butter. They also make a stick shortening without the bad stuff: http://www.earthbalancenatural.com/#/products/shortening/

I've tried a pastry crust from Sally Schneider that was intended to have less fat, and it turned out very well. It only has 4 tbs. butter. If you eat baked goods often, it's good to have up your sleeve:
http://www.kiwimagonline.com/recipes/recipepage.php?re_id=50&kw=Foolproof%20Flaky%20Butter%20Pastry-Sally%20Schneider-Holiday%20Baking-flour-sour%20cream-&category_id=6

@michichan ...i love it when you talk dirty on here....

@canadianFoodieGirl - CBC's my main man! Thanks for the link :)

@ grumpy - yes i've heard about the stevia too; if it's natural it can't be too freightening right? Health Canada won't alow stevia in foods yet though--they have to be regulated within Natural Health Product standards only because there aren't enough long-term studies and conclusions based on its affects. haha fyi

Sorry, but margarine is poison. Here are a couple articles:

http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/articles/p122.htm

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fats_and_cancer.html

Some salient points:

-elaborate statistical analysis of the incidence of heart disease and the consumption of hydrogenated fats in England has shown a dramatic and detailed correlation between the two.

-Hydrogenated fats produce a deficiency of essential fatty acids (EFA) by destroying them, or producing abnormal toxic fatty acids. Deficiency of EFA is a contributory cause in neurological diseases, heart disease, arteriosclerosis, skin disease, various degenerative conditions such as cataract and arthritis, and cancer.

-The conversion of oils to the hydrogenated form actually prevents the proper formation of bile in the liver from cholesterol, and therefore can elevate blood cholesterol and have adverse effects both directly and indirectly. Margarine can raise cholesterol.

-the first process in the manufacture of margarine is the extraction of the oils from the seeds, and this is usually done using petroleum-based solvents, such as benzene, a carcinogen. Although these are then boiled off, this stage of the process still leaves about ten parts per million of the solvents in the product.

-Polyunsaturated fats (PUFs) are greatly immunosuppressive, and anything that suppresses the immune system is likely to cause cancer. The first person to suggest that polyunsaturated fats cause cancer was Dr R A Newsholme of Oxford University, England.

Read the whole articles for more.

I always make my pie crusts with half butter and half Crisco. Also, if you have the baking bug and don't want to use butter or eat lots of sweets all the time, take up bread baking. Most breads are just flour, water, salt, and yeast. Some breads like sandwich loafs will use milk instead of water but no butter in sight. Also, my english muffin recipe uses a small amount of shortening and just water, salt, yeast, and flour.

I'm a die-hard Sabra fan. It's creamy and well-seasoned and is the closest to what I've had in Israel. The other kinds have been tried and rejected. Just this weekend I had lemon, hummus with techina, with toasted pine nuts, and greek olive. Soooooo good. And if you can find it Sabra makes this fantastic eggplant tomato dip.