I keep a can of Molly McButter in my overhead cabinet at work. I also have a can of it at home. These butter flavor sprinkles are great for puting on potatoes, rice, vegetables, etc. I use it at work to add a little butter flavor to the often bland tasting vergitables that come in the Healthy Choice meals.
I originally learned about Molly McButter from Health & Fitness magazine having read that a lot of body builders used it on their food.
Well my Molly McButter can was empty, and it was time to buy some more. Right next to the Molly McButter on the spice shelf was Butter Buds. A good friend of mine said she used Butter Buds. The price was about the same. Actually the Butter Buds might be a few cents cheaper, the can cost a little more, but the can was 2.5oz as opposed to the 2.0oz can of Molly McButter.
The stuff looks the same, they both have 5 calories per 1 tsp serving. Even the ingredients are similar on the can. I decided to try the Butter Buds.
I brought the can to work today. For lunch I heated up a Healthy Choice meal in the microwave. It included peas and carrots. I opened the can and smelled it. It didn’t smell like butter at all. I sprinkled a little of the Butter Buds (about the smae amount I usually use of the Molly McButter) of the veggies and let it sit while I ate the Chicken Broccoli Alfredo. Then I went to try my vegetables. They were still bland. They didn’t taste like butter at all. I sprinkled some more on. I tried another bite of the veggies. There was a little more taste, but it didn’t taste much like butter.
Out of curiousity I smelled the empty can of Molly McButter, and the can of Butter Buds back to back. They don’t smell alike. The Molly McButter has a slight butter smell. The Butter Buds doesn’t even have that. I am not sure what it smells like.
The Molly McButter beat Butter Buds hands down! If you have a choice between the two, go for the Molly McButter!
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.
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I am trying to sample all of the various Lean Cuisine frozen meals. I have a bunch of the Spa Cuisine Classics.
For today’s late lunch I had the Lean Cuisine Pork Stir Fry (roasted pork, edamame & water chestnuts in an asian style garlic sauce over whole wheat pasta). The total calories are 280 with 45 calories coming from the 5 grams of fat. That works out to 16%. Not bad. It counts as 5 Weight Watchers Points. I microwaved it for about 4 minutes 30 seconds. I didn’t even need to cut the film (I am so used to doing that automatically). The pork was okay. The pasta and vegetables were pretty good. I am not a huge fan of stir-fry, so it didn’t come as a surprise that this didn’t bowl me over. I may try it again though. The fat percentage wasn’t bad.
I am still digging through my freezer trying all the different flavors of Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice frozen meals. I have a few Lean Cuisines that I have tried that I just haven’t had time to write about yet.
This morning for breakfast I ate the Lean Cuisine Sweet & Sour Chicken (chicken tenderloins in a tangy sweet and sour sauce with long grain white rice). It has 300 calories and only 3 grams of fat. The 25 calories from the fat make up about 8% of the total calories. That is pretty low fat! It counts as 6 Weight Watchers Points.
The sweet and sour sauce was a little too sweet for my tastes. And it overwhelmed the taste of anything else. The rices was…well…rice. It was bland. I mixed it with the remaining sweet and sour sauce and that helped. But there wasn’t a lot of sauce left to flavor all the rice. Overall it the Lean Cuisine Sweet & Sour Chicken was okay. I love how low fat it was. But other than that I wasn’t big on it.
When I bought all the sale priced Lean Cuisine meals, I was excited to try the meat loaf and mashed potatoes! I love meat loaf! I love mashed potatoes. But looking at the 7 grams of fat, I was hesitant to get too many. I grabbed a few of them though.
I brought several Lean Cuisine meals with me to work, and I tried the Meatloaf With Gravy & Whipped Potatoes for lunch. It has 250 total calories, with 7 grams of fat which make up 24% of the total calories. That’s king of high. Weight Watchers counts this as 5 Points. It took 6 minutes of microwave time, with no steps during cooking. How was it? I was kind of dissapointed. The meatloaf was kind of bland, and was the mash potatoes. I had eaten most of the mashed potatoes when it struck me that I could have sprinkled some Molly McButter on them. Oh well. If it had tasted really good, I might have put up with the 24% fat calorie percentage. But I doubt I will buy more of this one.