Starting Over, Take 1,847

DRESSING:

3/4 - 1 cup mayonnaise (I like Hellman’s, especially the canola mayo, which only has 45 calories per tablespoon.  The olive oil one has 50 calories, but the flavor is a little stronger) 

3 tablespoons. Splenda

2 tablespoons, blueberry pomegranate vinegar (any mild or fruit flavored vinegar works well.  The vinegar doesn’t have to “match” the fruit you’ve chosen.

Combine salad ingredients together in large mixing bowl, set aside. Combine dressing ingredients together thoroughly. Pour dressing over salad ingredients; stir to blend. Serve (or refrigerate to serve later)

One caution:  Some deeply colored vinegars (such as balsamic, and some fruit and wine vinegars) can give an unappealing brown or gray tinge to the salad dressing. You have a couple options 

Avoid using dark vinegars (but they’re so yummy)

Tell yourself, and your family or guests “It tastes better than it looks”

Add a drop or two of food coloring to the salad dressing (you’ve got to have some artistic talent, or you could make it worse) 

Add chopped or sliced canned beets for example can turn a pinkish-gray salad into a bright pink salad.

Add your vinegar to your mayonaise and sugar mixture very slowly.  If it starts to take on a hue you don’t like, add a little more mayo to get it back to a color you like and if it needs more vinegar, use a clear vinegar for the remainder of the vinegar.

I bought a few frozen dinners last week.   I don’t eat frozen meals very often, because they’re so often disappointing in taste and texture the portions are ridiculously tiny, there’s hardly a vegetable to be found - and they’re outrageously expensive for what you get.  Even the 99 cent ones have less than 10 cents worth of ingredients if you were to make it at home, but….

They’re convenient, especially for sick days or other situations in which anything more challenging than rinsing an apple is too much work.

So when our grocery store had a special on Healthy Choice dinners, I bought several.

I didn’t expect to be impressed, but I was. 

Don’t get me wrong, these are not great food, either in taste or healthfulness.  Anything you make yourself is going to be healthier and probably tastier, but for frozen dinners they were surprisingly good (so far I’ve tried the Honey Balsamic Chicken, the Sesame Glazed Chicken, and

The Honey Balsamic Chicken per the label, contains “chicken tenderloins with red potatoes, asparagus, cherry tomatoes in honey-herb balsamic glaze.”
 
Also according to the label

Calories       220
Fat                  3.5 g
Carbs             34g
Fiber               5g
Sugar              3g
Proten          13g
Sodium          540 mg
WW points       4
Exchanges:      2 starch, 1 vegetable, 1 lean meat {protein}

I follow an exchange plan (and usually track calories too).  I can translate any nutrition label into exchanges, using the math I learned in the book “Exchanges for All Occasions.”  It’s not complicated math, and only takes a few minutes, but Healthy Choice gets “points” from me for having this information on the box, and it’s easy to find - underneath the standard Nutrition label is a green box for Weight Watchers Points, and under that, the diet exchanges.
The chicken pieces are typical frozen dinner chicken pieces.  Brined with salt and other preservatives so they have a deli-meat/ham texture (I don’t know how else to describe it - you probably know what I’m talking about, the chicken “breasts” you can buy that have the fake “grill markes” molded into the tops).  

The asparagus wasn’t mushy (big plus), and there was a fair amount of it.   I didn’t have to pick around the cherry tomatoes - I’m not a big fan of large pieces of cooked tomato.  It’s a texture thing.  If you love them, you’ll probably be disappointed, there were only three halves in the entire dish. 

The sauce is tasty, but a little too sweet (though not as cloying as many frozen dinners).  And unlike many, the entree isn’t swimming in the sauce.

My main criticism is the low protein level and the high carb count (proportionally).  Only 1 protein exchange is a bit skimpy, especially as it’s outnumbered by starch exchanges.

Also, the calorie count is too low to consider a real full meal for most (especially dinner).  Though the portion is decent considering how low the calories.  To make a frozen dinner more filling, I serve them on top of or along side raw or cooked vegetables.  A bed of lettuce, cooked or raw spinach, french style green beans, roasted eggplant…

Several years ago, I found a recipe strawberry daiquiris, in one of Joanna Lund’s Healthy Exchanges books (I’ll include my modifications after the basic recipe).

 Joanna Lund’s Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri

2 cups frozen strawberries no sugar added (do not thaw)
2 cups Diet Mountain Dew
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 package JELL-O sugar-free strawberry gelatin 4 serving

PreparationIn a blender container, combine strawberries, Diet Mountain Dew, lemon juice, lime juice, and dry gelatin. Process on HIGH 15 seconds. Continue processing on HIGH until mixture is smooth. Pour into 4 glasses

As written, the recipe is good, but I found that the diet jello isn’t necessary (but if you do use it, unless you’re a gambler by nature, only use Jello-brand.  Some store-brands work fine, others are horrible).

Instead of Mountain Dew, I often use Diet Sprite or Crystal Light (actually Walmart’s version - pink lemonade and cherry lime are my favorite), or flavored sparkling water (Walmart, Target, and Aldi all carry their own brands and flavors - I’ve used pomegranate, raspberry, lime, wild cherry).

I’ve also used other frozen fruits.  Pineapple, blackberries, raspberries (just remember the fruit has to be at least partially frozen).

I also love making strawberry or other berry sorbet.  Just by cutting back the liquids (start with a small splash, you can always add more until it’s the consistency you want).

Process until it’s the texture you want (I like it very smooth). Pour into a bowl or glass - and then sweeten to taste (if the berries or your processing liquid are very sweet, you may not need any sweetener).

I prefer to sweeten in the glass, because everyone can sweeten to their taste.  

If you don’t have a blender, the food processor works fine.  For sorbet, I think the food processor works best. To make beverages, it can be a bit messy - so before I had a blender, I would make sorbet, spoon it into the glass, and then add more liquid and stir in the glass (or if you don’t stir, it make a pretty “float”).

There really are endless variations, so experiment with ingredients and proportions. 

I recently added a new (old) book to my collection of exchange-based diet and cookbooks.  The 1988 Weight Watchers’ Quick SUccess Program Cookbook by Jean Nidetch (the founder of WW).

The plan is unnecessarily complicated in my opinion,  Rather than allowing you the full list of exchanges - you begin with a limited list for each exchanges, and the food lists are expanded each week until week 5. Week 5 is the full plan, and no changes are made afterward.  It seems logical to me, to just start with week 5).   Because the carb and calorie contents are still quite similar within all choices within each exchange group, there’s no logical reason (in my opinion) to limit the lists (except as a marketing ploy by WW to keep you coming back, at least for the first five weeks until you have the whole plan.  They still do this today with the point system). 

One thing I love about the 1988 and subsequent WW exchange plans is the floating exchanges and optional calories.  It’s a nice way to ”count” combination exchanges and foods that really don’t fit well into any of the exchanges (I was never comfortable counting table sugar as some plans do).    The floating exchange was an optional exchange (after week 5) that you could spend on a fruit, protein, bread, or milk exchange.  Joann Lund in her Healthy Exchanges series of books uses a similar system, though I believe she calls her flexible-choice exchanges ”flexible exchanges” rather than floating exchanges. 

Since I have no interest in changing the format of my exchange plan, I didn’t buy this book for the program (though for anyone who is curious, I’ll describe the basic plan from the book at the end of my book review), but rather for the recipes.

It’s an “old-school” cookbook in that most recipes do not come with photos, and none of the photos are paired with the recipes (instead they’re grouped together in clusters of several glossy pages, distributed throughout the book).  The recipes themselves are written on matte paper, and the nutritional information is at the bottom of each recipe.  This is a vast improvement over some older Weight Watcher’s cookbooks in which the nutritional information was not listed with the recipes, but rather was listed in an appendix at the end of the book.  So you had to look up the information every time you made the recipe (or write it in the margins of each recipe.

As far as the recipes go, they’re fairly standard for the time.  A nice variety, but nothing too far from the ordinary.  A nice basic, “white bread american-style” cookbook, with the occasional americanized asian or latin inspired dish.  A nice addition to my collection, but not a must-have (not that I’ll be givng it away any time soon).

The Plan as described in the book:

The first number is the number of exchanges for women,  Exchanges for men and youths are in parenthesis - except for the milk exchanges in which case only the youth’s servings are in paranthesis.  Adult men get the same number of exchanges as women.
Week 1

Fruit 2-3 (3-4)
Veg 3, at least
Fat 3 (3)
Protein 5-6 (7-8)
Bread 2 (4)
Milk 2 (3)

Optional:
Floating 0 (0)
Optional calories 150

Week 2

Fruit 2-3 (3-4)
Veg 3, at least
Fat 3 (3)
Protein 5-6 (7-8)
Bread 2-3 (4-5)
Milk 2 (3)

Optional:
Floating 0 (0)
Optional calories 200

Week 3

Fruit 2-3 (3-5)
Veg 3, at least
Fat 3 (3)
Protein 5-6 (7-8)
Bread 2-3 (4-5)
Milk 2 (3-4)

Optional:
Floating 0 (0)
Optional calories 300

Week 4

Fruit 2-3 (3-5)
Veg 3, at least
Fat 3 (3)
Protein 5-6 (7-8)
Bread 3 (5)
Milk 2 (3-4)

Optional:
Floating 0 (0)
Optional calories 400

Week 5 and onward

Fruit 2-3 (3-5)
Veg 3, at least
Fat 3 (3)
Protein 5-6 (7-8)
Bread 3 (5)
Milk 2 (3-4)

Optional:
Floating 1 (1)
Optional calories 500

Guidelines:

No more than 3 eggs
No more than 4 oz of hard or semisoft cheese (”slicing” cheese. Cottage cheese would be ok any time)
No more than 12 ounces of limited meats (red meats such as lamb, beef, and pork).
Between 9 and 15 ounces of fish or shellfish

I’ve bought jicama in the grocery store, and was disappointed.  They were expensive, awkward to peel, and they didn’t have much flavor (which can be an asset in some dishes).  I thought the the wet crunchiness was nice, but just not worth the price and pain of peeling.

Then I discovered tiny jicama at our farmers’ market a few days ago.  I didn’t even know jicama could grow in northcentral Wisconsin. 

They’re not as round as those in the grocery store, they’re more knobby with a turnip-like root.  The skin is thin, and they’re the size of a small to medium sized apple.  Much easier to peel, and the texture is awesome.  They don’t have any more flavor, but that’s really what you get with jicama.  They’re sort of like crunchy water - very wet and bland - but perfect for adding crunch to salads, sandwiches, and stir-fries or to eat with a bit of seasoned salt or veggie dip (bet they’d be a good hummus dipper).

And the best part, the vendor sells them in bunches of 2 to 4 jicama (depending on size) for a dollar.