Here is yet another Healthy Choice meal review.
I had the Healthy Choice Grilled Chicken Marinara meal for today’s lunch. It took 4 1/2 minutes of microwave time. The meal has 250 calories, 4 grams of fat for 40 calories making fat calories 16 % of total calories. There are 5 Weight Watchers points. The meal didn’t include a dessert but did have broccoli florets for the vegetable. The grilled chicken marinara was good, but seemed to be lacking in marinara sauce. There was some, but not a lot. Nowhere near what is in the picture on the front of the box. Not sure if it was production goof and it was just this meal, or if they are all like that.
The broccoli was bland like it always is in the Healthy Choice products. I sprinkled my Molly McButter on them for a bit of flavor.
Overall, it was good, but not great. With the fat calorie percentage being only 16%, I will probably eat more of these. I hope the others have more marinara sauce though!
I was up at the grocery store last night, and for some reason started craving a chili dog. I make a good low fat chili, and have some in the freezer. So I went to check out the hot dogs. We normally buy Zweigle’s hot dogs which are made locally and are some of the best hotdogs I have had. They are awesome! But hotdogs are notoriusly high in fat! I looked up the numbers: 160 calories, with 130 calories coming from fat (14 grams). That’s 81% of the calories coming from fat! Ouch? What’s in those things? lard?
So I decided to look to see if they had low fat versions. Well they did. They had lite franks. They were a little bit better: 80 calories, with 50 calories (or 62%) coming from fat (6 grams). That’s still not very good.
They also had a national brand (I can’t remember which one) of hotdogs, that had a lite version with turkey in them. The numbers weren’t even as good as Zweigle’s lite hotdogs.
Those were the only options I saw at that grocery store. Maybe I missed something. I was looking around online, and saw mention of Fat-Free hotdogs. I will have to see if I can find some of those. I wonder what they taste like? I normally cover my hot dogs with a little of everything (ketchup, mustard, relish). Make a garbage dog out of it. But then if I am making a chili dog, the chili will add a lot of taste. I’ll check back at that store, and also a couple other grocery stores too.
I was over at the library like I am on most days. I usually scan the used book sale for any low fat cook books. Nothing new today. On my way out of the library I checked magazine exchange bin. This bin is for people to bring in their old magazines, and leave them for other people who might want to read them. The are free! I will scan the the bin for magazines that I might want…martial arts, running, cycling, etc. I often find Gourmet magazines in the bin. Sometimes I will grab them, but most times I don’t. They have great recipes sometimes, but not nessesarily low fat. But today I found a stack of 10 or 12 Cooking Light magazines. I grabbed them and took them with me. I have never read the magazine before, but I have seen it on the grocery store shelves. I dohave one or two of their cookbooks. When I get home tonight, I might scan through them for any low fat recipes that look intriguing. I glanced in the magazine, and it looked like that had a lot of stuff in there besides recipes and cooking. Probably not stuff I would be interested in. But who knows. Maybe I will find some low fat cooking tips of something. And they were FREE! If I find good recipes, I will maybe cut them out, or photcopy them, and take the magazines back to the library.
When I bought all the Healthy Choice meals, I tried to get a variety. So bought the Chicken Broccoli Alfredo even though I didn’t have high hopes for it. I love a good Fettuccini Alfredo with broccoli. But the problem is that it is hard to make a good low fat alfredo sauce. The main ingredients of alfredo sauce are heavy cream and parmesan cheese. My favorite Chicken Alfredo is from Marie Callender’s. The Marie Callenders One-Dish Classics Fettuccini Alfredo With Garlic Bread has 55 grams of fat!!!! OUCH!!!! But it is really good and better than most restaurants serve!
But this morning I had the Healthy Choice Chicken Broccoli Alfredo (with Fettuccini Pasta) for breakfast. It comes with vegetable medley (peas and carrots), and cherry dessert with vanilla crisp. It has 300 calories, with 5 grams of fat (fat calories are 15% of total calories). Weight Watchers counts this as 6 points.
The futtuccini alfredo was okay. Not great, but I have had worse. But it doesn’t come near the Marie Callender’s. The Alfredo sauce was at least sort of creamy. Make sure you follow the directions and stir at the proper times. It was missing something. Maybe I’ll try adding a little salt and or pepper next time. The vegetables were okay. Most of the Healthy Choice vegetable sides are kind of bland. The peas are good though. I still sprinkled them with Molly McButter. The cherry dessert was good. Not my favorite Healthy Choice dessert though. But it was good anyway.
I have a handfull of these in my freezer. Not sure if I will buy more. The fat calorie percentage is good. So I might be able to get used to them.