We were at the store buying some fat-free cottage cheese with pineapple, when we saw these Jello Fat Free Pudding Snacks. They came in a 6-pack of small cups, each ringing in at 10 calories. We thought hmmm…. They had a variety of flavors. So we bought several packs each of a different flavor. They come in Chocolate Vanilla Swirl, Chocolate, Devils Food, Tapioca, Vanilla Caramel, and Vanilla/Chocolate. We got the Chocolate Vanilla Swirl, Chocolate, Tapioca, and Vanilla Caramel.
Remember when fat free stuff tasted horrible? Well, I think those days are over. These things are great. I eat them in very limited quantity. Only one per day, usually after dinner. Yes, they are fat free, but they do have 23 grams of carbs, and 1 gram of protein. Just because they are fat free, doesn’t mean you can load up on them.
I am eventually going to try every flavor that Healthy Choice makes. For my early dinner tonight I ate the Healthy Choice Sweet Bourbon Steak. There was also chicken type dinner in there as well, but I decided I wanted beef!
The Healthy Choice Sweet Bourbon Steak (beef in bourbon sauce) includes garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli & carrot medley, and for dessrt peach crisp. The whole meal is 330 calories, and has 7 grams of fat (or 70 calories from fat, with is about 21%). It also has 600mg of sodium.
I microwaved it for 6 minutes, and it came out hot. I needed to let it cool down a little longer than the suggested 2 minutes. The beef was very good, as were the mashed potatoes. I didn’t even realize they were garlic mashed potatoes as I covered them with the bourbon sauce. The vegetables are as bland as ever, but I sprinkled Molly McButter on them, so they were okay. The peach crisp was okay. I am not a big fan of peach though. I liked the apple cranberry crisp I had earlier today in another Healthy Choice meal. Overall I liked the Sweet Bourbon Steak. It is a good thing as I have more of them in the freezer at home. 
I bought a bunch of Healthy Choice Complete Selections last night on sale. By a bunch, I mean 58 of them! They were on sale for $1.69 each, so I filled our freezer with them. I will be eating a lot of them in the coming weeks. For breaktfast, lunch and dinner. But at $1.69, you can’t beat it! I can’t go to McDonalds and eat much for $1.69. And definatly not LOW FAT!
For breakfast today, I had the Healthy Choice Honey Balsamic Chicken (white meat chicken with honey balsamic sauce). It also came with rice pilaf, broccoli florets, and apple cranberry crisp. The meal has 350 calories, 6 grams of fat (60 calories from fat or about 17% of the calories coming from fat), and only 460mg of sodium. Weight Watchers counts this as 7 points.
It took 6 minutes to microwave the meal. The chicken was very good. I liked the sauce. The rice pilaf was pretty bland, or even bad tasting until I mixed it in with the honey balsamic sauce, then it was delicious. The broccoli was bland, so I sprinkled a little Molly McButter over it, then it was okay. The apple cranberry crisp was also very good. I will definatly have then again…especially since I have a bunch of them in the freezer! LOL!
With our brand new Foodsaver, and our plans to buy bulk food, and freeze it, or make larger batches, and freeze those, we obviously need lots of bags. But Foodsaver bags can be expensive. It doesn’t make much sense to buy foods in bulk if the cost of storing the food is nearly as high or even higher than buying smaller amounts fresh. The 11 inch by 18 foot rolls are good, because they can be used for a lot of different things. But they cost around $20 for a couple 18 foot rolls. That works out to over 50 cent per foot of bag material. So if you buy stuff in bulk, and use 4 feet of bags, you better have saved over $2 on your purchase.
eBay is a great source to buy Foodsaver bags. I was our shopping for rolls of bags, looking primarily at auctions with 6-8 rolls. I wanter to buy a larger quantity, otherwise you can get killed on shipping. One auction I came upon was actually selling Black & Decker rolls of bags. They were 11×18 the same as the Foodsaver bags. I ended up getting a great price, and after shipping the cost of the bags was around 25 cents per foot.
Last night, I bought about 21 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast on sale for $1.79 a pound! Much cheaper the the $3.69/lb price of the smaller packages! We started packaging them last night. Soon we finished off the last of the roll of Foodsaver bags that came with our Foodsaver unit. We broke out the first Black & Decker roll. They were a little different. The Foodsver bag is made of two sheets of plastic, one smooth, and one textured. The Black & Decker bag has two smooth sheets of plastic, and a small amount of textured plastic between them running down each side. The smooth plastic of the Black & Decker bag seems to be just touch thinner. The Black & Decker bags also don’t have a printed on place to write like the Foodsaver bags…but then who cares as longs as I can write somewhere on the bag.
So we began sealing the chicken in the Black and Decker bags. There was no noticeble difference between sealing in one brand, versus the other brand. So far so good. We will have to see how they hold up in the freezer. I don’t think that will be an issue. Another thing to keep an eye on is how they do when reheating food in boiling water.
So if you want to save a little bit of money on the bags for your Foodsaver, check eBay, and also keep an eye out for Black & Decker brand bags as an alternative choice.