Makeover Monday: Skinny Corn Dip

 With football season in full swing, I find myself spending an ever increasing amount of time on the couch.  And watching football.  And eating.  And, perhaps, enjoying an ice cold Bud Light.  Life is good.  Somehow a football game is made exponentially better with the addition of junk food and beer.  I can't explain it.  It's just a law of nature.  And I would never argue with science.

But after a few full weekends of football, I sometimes find that my jeans are feeling inexplicably tight.  Could it be the sitting on my butt and stuffing my face?  Perhaps.  So every now and then I have to swap the junk food for something lighter.  But I still want the pleasure of my traditional football watching food.  Enter this delicious, satisfying, and made-over skinny corn dip.

I made this to take to a friend's house to watch a K-State football game a few weeks ago.  In case you're wondering, the 'Cats won.  It was a bit of a last minute get-together so I didn't have all week to obsess over what I was going to bring.  I knew I was going to make a dip, but I have about 1,000 dip recipes.  My sister makes a totally sinful corn dip and I had that on my brain, but (fortunately) I didn't have that recipe.

I did a quick internet search of corn dip, and found about 1,000 more corn dip recipes.  So I did what I usually do and I took something from a few recipes and made my own.  One of the common denominators in most of the recipes I saw was a cream cheese base.  When I realized that, I knew that I had a great opportunity to cut some serious calories in this recipe.

This makeover was a no-brainer.  I have found that non-fat plain yogurt and Greek yogurt make great subs for cream cheese in recipes like this.  So I gave it a shot with corn dip!  I also added some spices to this recipe and some diced jalapeno.  I like some heat!

So I took my made-over corn dip to our party.  While there, I did what I like to do with a deceptively healthy recipe.  I just sat back and grinned while football-watching, beer-drinking, grown men happily stuffed their faces with my corn dip.  When they told me how good it was, I said, "I'm glad you like it.  I used fat free yogurt instead of cream cheese."  They didn't care.  They just thought it was good.

I am so happy to find another great party food that I can enjoy without the guilt!  I served mine with Fritos Scoops corn chips.  But when I was at the store the other day I saw that Tostitos has a baked tortilla chip that I hadn't tried before.  Those did have about 20 fewer calories per serving, so that's another way that you can save some calories!  Every calorie counts!  

So next time you are having some friends over for the big game, whip up a batch of this delicious skinny corn dip and watch it quickly disappear!

Skinny Corn Dip
Ingredients:
2 cans sweet corn, drained
2 cans Rotel, drained
2 cups non-fat plain yogurt
2 jalapenos, diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground oregano
1/2 tsp ground pepper
Directions:
Combine all ingredients in medium mixing bowl.  Stir until well blended.  Chill at least 2 hours, or overnight.  Serve with corn chips or tortilla chips.

Recipe adapted from food.com