My wife couldn’t decide what she wanted for dinner. So I suggested fish. She said we hadn’t had fish in a while and that could be good. Great! So I took dinner plans into my own hands.
First I stopped at the warehouse store, and bought a large chunk of farm raised salmon. Great price at $5.49/pound. I planned on cooking using half of the salmon for dinner, and vacuum seal the other half with the FoodSaver, and freeze. I also bought a 4 pound carton of grapes. The grapes aren’t for dinner, just for snacking.
My next stop was the grocery store. I bought some fresh Broccoli, and some sliced mushrooms. I also wanted to try some sprays for low fat cooking. I bought some extra virgin olive oil spray, and some Olivio Buttery Spray. I also bought a loaf of italian bread.
When I got home, I turned on the oven to preheat to 400 degrees. I pulled out a glass baking pan. I cut off half the salmon, and put it into the dish. I did a couple sprays of the Olivio Buttery Spray, and then drizzled some lemon juice over it. The Olivio Buttery Spray is going to be a lot lower fat than drizzling melted butter over the salmon. I put the salmon into the oven to bake for 30 minutes.
I cut off half of the loaf of italian bread. I sliced it in half. Again I used the Olivio Buttery Spray. I sprayed a little on the inside of each half, and sprinkled some Johnny’s Great Caesar Garlic Spread & Seasoning on to the bread. I wrapped the bread in foil, and set it aside.
I put a little water into a pan with a vegetable steamer.
When the salmon had about 10 minutes left to cook, I put the bread into the oven with the salmon. I cut some of the broccoli off the crowns into the steamer, and turned that burner onto high. I put a skillet on another burner, and sprayed a little bit of the extra virgin olive oil in the bottom. I filled the pan with the sliced mushrooms, and sauteed them.
When the timer went off for the salmon, dinner was done. It was delicious! The Olivio Buttery Spray worked great on both the salmon and the Garlic bread. The sprayed olive oil worked great for sauteeing the mushrooms. And using the sprayed versions allowed me to use much less. Low fat does not need to be low taste!! Dinner was great!
I had yet another Healthy Choice entree for breakfast today. I am out of the french bread pizzas, though I do have a raincheck for more. So this morning I debated which if the Healthy Choice entrees in the freezer to have. I had never had the Turkey before, so I decided to try it.
The Healthy Choice Slow Roasted Turkey Breast with gravy, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables has 200 calories, 4 grams of fat, and 570mg of sodium (blows my theory about them all have exactly 600 mg of sodium). It counts as 4 Weight Watchers points. 40 calories come from fat, or 20% of the 200 calories in the entree.
It took 4 minutes of microwave time, and I didn’t even need to stir it of anything. There were about 8 small chunks of roasted turkey lying on top of the mashed potatoes and covered in gravy. Not a whole lot. But then what do you expect for only 200 calories. They tasted okay. The mashed potatoes were also okay. The gravy could have been a little better, but then I am not a big gravy fan. I usually prefer butter on my mashed potatoes, but then maybe that is why I got up to 230 pounds? LOL! The mixed vegetables consisted of peas, corn and carrots. I sprinkled a little Molly McButter over these and they were okay. This entree was okay, but I think I would have liked a little more. I think it will hold me to lunch, but barely. I am actually starting to get hungry now.
I want six pack abs! And I am working on getting there! The muscles are under there from my various excercising: karate, aikido, and running. I can feel the six pack in there, under the layer of body fat. But that layer of fat is slowly getting thinner! I even took in my belt a notch today. I am contining to eat healthy, or mostly healthy. I am keep my fat intake down. And it is working. I actually have a four pack going. I will just keep running, staying in the aerobic zone, eating low fat, and I will get there. And with all the crunches and other ab exercies that I do at karate, the muscles will be there.
Here’s a picture that I took a couple weeks ago. I actually have more definition now, than I did when this picture was taken. Not bad for a 43 year old.
We have been considering buy one of these FoodSaver sealers for a few years now. But we just kept putting it off. They are not cheap. We finally bought one. We bought a FoodSaver V2440 Advanced Design. We paid over $100 for ours at the local warehouse store. But ours was packaged with a bunch of accessories, and had some extra features. And the bags are are not cheap. Fortunatly our cames with a couple rolls of FoodSaver sealer bag stuff. We have already gone through one of the rolls.
But I think in the long run it is going to save us money, and even allow us to eat healthier. So far we have used it to seal a few different things. I made a 4x batch of low fat chili. It was almost as easy to make a 4x batch as a normal sized batch. And since I could buy the ground beef in a bulk pack, it brings the per serving cost down. Anyway, I mad the huge bath of chili. We ate what we wanted for dinner. I originally thought that I could just pour the chili into the bags, vacuum seal them, and freeze them. Well after watching the instruction DVD that came witht he FoodSaver, we learned this was not the right way. So I pour the chili into plastic containers, and froze those. Then the next day, we popped the frozen chili out of the plastic containers, into the sealer bags, and then vacuum sealed those. It the plastic containers we always have to worry about freezer burn. But not in the FoodSaver bags!
Another night I made meatloaf. Actually, I multiplied the recipe by four, and made four meatloaves. We ate one meatlaof for dinner, and froze the other four. After they were frozen, we removed them from the metal pans, placed the into FoodSaver bags, and vacuum sealed them. Now we have three meatloafs in the freezer ready to be reheated.
And I used it again last night when I bought a 3 pack of steaks at the warehouse store. We ate one steak for dinner, and I vacuum packed the other two, and froze them.
Our FoodSaver until even came with a couple vacuum canisters. I used the larger one to store brown sugar. Hopefully this will keep it from drying out.
The unit works great, and is easy to use.
Now on to the cost of the bags. For about $30 at the warehouse store, I can buy a box of 4 rolls of FoodSaver bags. That’s three rolls of the 11 inch, and one roll of the 8 inch. But this morning on eBay, I bought 6 rolls of the 11 inch bags for about $30 with shipping). They are not FoodSaver brand, but are Black & Decker. They say they will work in leading brand food sealers (aka FoodSaver). And at $30 for 6 rolls, it brings the cost down to about 27 cents per foot of bag material.
I have also ordered some FoodSaver universal lids. Many times I have made spaghetti, only to use a partial jar of sauce. The jar goes into the refridgerator, only to be thrown out later, because it has started to turn into a science project. With the universal lids, I can seal these jars, and keep the spaghetti sauce fresh for longer.
I think we will get a lot of use out of the FoodSaver! We will be able to make larger batches of the low-fat healthy foods we like, and freeze them. That will make them cheaper, and more convenient!