I am always trying to eat low fat when I can. I have some friends who are also trying to eat low fat. But in my house, there is just my wife and I. My friends each have spouses and a couple kids to feed. One of them brought up the fact that cooking low fat can be more expensive. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are more expensive than a pack of legs and thighs. Extra lean ground beef is more expensive than the cheaper 80% ground beef, etc. It’s true. It can be more expensive to prepare low fat foods. And when you are feeding a family of four… And if you are on a budget, things can get worse. I played with the idea of gathering a collection of cheap low-fat recipes, and maybe even publishing a book of them. But what is cheap? And I don’t know how to do all that stuff of listing grams of fat, and calories and stuff. I guess I could find out how many calories and grams of fat are in a chicken breast, but what about after cooking? Whatever.
Anyway, I was researching, and I found a book already exists that is filled with low-fat low-cost recipes. It is titled Prevention’s Low-Fat, Low Cost Cookbook. It has 220 recipe plus twenty $2 dinners. Each of the recipes lists the cost per serving. But since prices change, I don’t expect that they will be enitirely accurate. But the recipes should still be relatively cheap to make, and give you and idea of about how much they cost compared to other recipes in the cookbook.
There is another book titled Prevention’s low-fat, low-cost freezer cookbook that has recipes that you can cook and freeze. I have the first book, but I am going to order the freezer version of the book as well. I love cooking larger batches, and then dividing and freezing them. Actually the part I love is being able to come home, pull something out of the freezer and just heat it up and have ready to eat.
Progressive International Vegetable/French Fry Cutter
SUMMARY: Fast! Works great so far!
I have wanted a french fry cutter for a while. Restaurant quality cutters were way more than I wanted to spend. I looked around and found some for under $10. The the sub $10 french fry cutters seemed cheaply made and got poor reviews. I found some more expensive models, but they also got poor reviews. I gave up looking for a while.
But then I looked again. I found a french fry cutter made by Progressive. It was under $10, and got pretty good reviews. Hmmm. I ordered it. Well the cutter came yesterday. I used the 25 hole blade to beging with. The size of the cutter will not allow for a whole russett potato to be cut into fries. I had to trim a little off the ends of the potato. It took a just little bit of muscle to pull the lever down to force the potato through the blades. But the cutter made the work quick and relatively easy.
Tonight we decided to make low fat french fries again. I decided to use the 49 hole blade. My wife offered to make the fries, but I suggested I better do it. Good thing. Using the cutter with the 49 hole blade took more strength. For me it was still not to difficult. But I doubting it would have been as easy for my wife.
The unit seems strong enough. Time will tell whether the cutter will hold up or not to repeated uses.
Read more…
I don’t normally log everything I eat. I just try to be conscious of it, and eat healthy. But right now I mostly trying to sustain my weight while lowering my body fat. Back when I was actually trying to lose weight, I logged everything.
But a friend of mine is trying to lose weight. So asked her to log the stuff she eats for a couple days. I told her I would keep a diary of my eating as well. Here it is for yesterday:
6:00am: banana & a diet pepsi (12 oz)
7:30am: diet pepsi
8:15am: Lean Cuisine meal (150 cal) & diet pepsi
9:30am: diet pepsi
10:00am: one chocolate chip cookie & mini-cinnamon roll (from a birthday)
10:40am: banana
10:25am: Healthy Choice meal (220 cal) & diet pepsi
11:45am: banana & diet pepsi
1:15pm: Healthy Choice (210 cal) & diet pepsi
1:30pm: two small squares of pizza left over from a meeting
2:00pm: diet pepsi
2:30pm: banana
3:00pm: handfull of m&ms
3:45pm: banana
7:00pm: banana & diet pepsi
9:00pm: banana
9:30pm: low fat oven baked seasoned french fries
9:45pm: 95% lean ground beef hamburger (grilled) with fat free cheese (with ketchup,relish,tomato, lettuce) & diet pepsi
Yeah I drink a lot of diet pepsi! And I have been eating the bananas because they are cheap, I like them, and they count as a cup of fruit each in the Eat Well Live Well Challenge that I am doing at work.
And lest you think I ate all this, and then sat on my butt all day, I also ran 6 miles in the evening.
My wife worked last night, and didn’t get home until about 10pm. I thought omelettes would be good. She agreed. I had used all of the Egg Busters egg substitute this last weekend also making omelettes. So yesterday while I was shopping, I went to pick up some more Egg Busters (Egg Busters is the store brand version of Egg Beaters). But they were out of the larger size carton of Egg Busters that I have been buying. I haven’t tried actual Egg Beaters before. Egg Beaters is more expensive than the Egg Busters. I could have bought a smaller carton of the Egg Busters (store brand), but I decided to try a small carton of actual Egg Beaters to see if there was a taste difference.
What is egg substitute? It is made of 99% real eggs (probably mostly egg whites), but it fat free. It comes as a liquid in a carton. It looks like what real eggs look like is you scrambled them in a blender.
So I sauteed the ham, mushrooms, and green pepper as always, then poured in the Egg Beaters. It pour in the same. I put the lid on the skillet and left it to cook over medium low heat. The Egg Beaters seemed to cook a litte faster than the store brand version. I placed the fat-free cheddar on top the melt, and placed the omelettes on the plates to serve. My wife and I ate our omelettes. There is definately a taste difference. The actual Egg Beaters tasted better than the store brand. So in the future, I will may buy and use both Egg Beaters and the store brand version. I will use the Egg Beaters for things like omelettes, and maybe use Egg Busters for stuff where it is only minor ingredient. Or maybe I will just buy the Egg Beaters. I don’t know.
My wife and I have been making the low fat french fries often. But it is a bit of a pain to cut up the potatoes. I have been looking at buying some sort of a cutter. My wife point out that she saw one at a Harbor Freight. HF is a tool store!?!?! I did some research on the french fry cutter they were selling, and it looked pretty cheap. It was under $10. But the reviews were poor. I continued looking, and found another beefier looking slicer. It sold between $30-$50. But still got poor reviews. I remembered seeing something about a french fry attachment for my KitchenAid food processor. I did a search. One of the complaints about it was that all your fries would be short stubby things due to the limits of the food tube on the top of the food processor.
I kind of a gave up, and continued cutting with my chef’s knife. But the other day I decided to look again. I looked on Amazon, and read more reviews. I found a french fry cutter for under $10, that actually have good reviews. The main compliant was that you couldn’t fit a whole potato through it at once. It’s called the Progressive International Vegetable/French Fry Cutter. Apparently you need to cut the potato down a little to fit into the cutter. I am okay with that. If it works well, we may be eating french fries more often! I’ll be sure to post how well this thing works.