Many people find a simple glass of milk refreshing and never tire of drinking it. However, cooked and prepared foods offer other ways to get calcium into meals.

For breakfast:

• Use milk instead of water when you cook hot cereals.
• For waffles and pancakes, add 2 tablespoons of non-fat dry milk into each cup of flour.
• How about buttermilk pancakes instead of plain pancakes!

For lunch or dinner:

• Add shredded cheese to:
  • Frozen pizza before baking
  • Salads before tossing
  • Spaghetti sauce
  • Casseroles just before taking out of oven
• Dried figs make a fun between-meal snack or simple dessert.
• Substitute plain yogurt for sour cream on baked potatoes; it decreases calories and increases calcium!
• Try using marinated raw broccoli as a vegetable; kids love it!
• Curried yogurt is a delicious dip for raw vegetables – good for an evening snack!
• Hazelnuts have 55mg of calcium per ounce. Here are a couple ways of using them:
  • Add to salads, casseroles and meat loaf
  • Snack on fresh hazelnuts while they are in season

You can increase the calcium value in many foods that contain fluid milk by adding non-fat dry milk (1 tablespoon of non-fat dry milk contains 95 mg of calcium). Try this when preparing soups, mashed potatoes, cereals and other cooked foods. If you add 4 tablespoons of non-fat dry milk to each cup of fluid milk you will get twice as much calcium and riboflavin as you would when fluid milk alone is used. Dry milk may also be sifted with dry ingredients. The following table may serve as a guide for adding more calcium to recipes with the use of non-fat dry milk.