Although this is not a new food offering, I've been using wheat berries as an alternative grain. They are very nutty, filling and quite satisfying because they require a lot of chewing.

i started eating Tandoori Chef's Kofta Curry (whole foods frozen dinner section) 2 weeks ago. so yummy! only 200 calories, and the ingredients are actually recognizable as food (chickpea flour, tomatoes, etc)

i toast a piece of sprouted grain bread with it, or I pour it over shiratake noodles. steamed broccoli. very filling. very yummy.

Sheri, thanks for posting on this thread. I was planning on looking for it this weekend .

I no longer buy a lot of frozen dinner type things but mother likes them & I am always on the look-out for things without meat that she might eat. I saw WW Smart Ones had a Brocolli & Roasted Potates with Cheese Sauce and got one to try it. It is just a single serving but she insisted on splitting it with me and to my surprise it was quite good.

I have bought several more since then and usually use it as a "side dish" with my salmon (that way I only have to count half the numbers and mother eats the other half).

We have several other WW Smart Ones (with no meat) in the freezer to try. I will post my opinion of them when we try them.

Oh, and as far as the Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers go, I only like the Sweet & Sour Chicken. Like you said, the meat is almost non-existant but I still like the flavor pretty well. I found a recipe for Sweet & Sour Sauce that I plan to try and make sugar free. If it works I can make my own Sweet & Sour Chicken and use brown rice.

I am not the biggest fan of frozen dinners, but I always keep 1 or 2 in the freezer for times when I need to eat on the fly, don't feel like cooking or am low on groceries.

I tried a new Lean Cuisine entree last night--Pasta Romano with Bacon. I figured this might be a winner for me since I love pasta (esp. bowtie), romano cheese and bacon. It was pretty darned good for a "healthy" frozen dinner. The sauce reminded me a lot of bruschetta topping, but hot. I would buy it again, esp. since I really don't like a lot of frozen dinners. Here are the numbers:

280 calories
7g total fat
2g sat fat, 2g poly, 1.5g mono, 0 trans
10 mg cholesterol
650mg sodium (not great but not the worst either)
880mg potassium (woohoo!)
43g total carbs
4g fiber
8g sugars
12g protein

FYI: I tried the Szechuan Beef variety of the new Healthy Choice meals and was disappointed.

The taste was good--that same generic Asian sweet sauce that a lot of the lowfat frozen dinners use--but the ratio of noodles to veggies was way off kilter, the veggies, even though they (as part of the sauce) were only microwaved for 30 seconds, were so limp and tasteless that, if they weren't colorful, you would never know what they were and the beef in the Szechuan beef was nearly non-existent.

This was a huge disappointment. Not that I expected a non-refrigerated lowfat entree to have wonderful crisp veggies in it, but I expected them to be not QUITE SO limp as the frozen variety that have to be nuked longer.

I bought some Treasure Cave brand low fat bleu cheese.

It only saves 20 calories or so... but it is good.

I buy really GOOD bleu cheese for holidays... but for every day use (like on a buffalo chicken sandwich with lots of hot sauce), the low fat crumbles are good. It also freezes well... which is GREAT, since I don't know how much bleu cheese I've thrown out that has gone bad.

Imagine has a new fire roasted tomato bisque that is really yummy. My dd says it's like drinking pizza : )

It's pretty high in sodium (like all the other pre-made soups) but it's great in a pinch.

FYI: My Safeway was having a special deal on the new Healthy Choice Mixers--2 for $6. Since I already had tried several of the Ziti & Meat Sauce that Amazon sent me to review, I got the Szechuan Beef and the Teriyaki Chicken to try.

Both likely have too much sodium to be a regular part of my routine, but since the Ziti and Meat Sauce was so good, I was very curious to try some of the other flavors.

Sheri, you stole my thunder .

I logged on to search for this thread (because I was sure it was buried) so I could post about a great new product I tried today only to find that it was back on top and you had posted about the very thing I was going to talk about .

The one I tried was the Rotini & Zesty Marinara Sauce. I really like it.

I had been seeing the commercials on TV so when we were buying groceries Wednesday, I asked about it in Publix but they didn't know what I was talking about. Today dd and I stopped at a different Publix and I asked the grocery manager about it after looking over the whole store. He said it sounded familiar and went off looking and came back with it. He said it had just come in today and had not been put on the shelves yet.

We split one serving and used it as a side with our turkey burgers at dinner.

Calories 300
Calories from fat 30 (0.045%)

fat 3.5g
sat fat 1g
chol. 0g
sodium 600mg
potassium 930mg
carbs 56g
fiber 7g
protein 10g

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BrenauMom,

This may not be new to some of you, but my latest find for my children is Sunflower seed butter. Trader Joes has it for a reasonable price. We aren't allowed to bring PB&J to school because both classes have food allergies. My DD's class is peanuts and tree nuts. My DS's is corn, peanuts, egg and tuna fish. Needless to say there was a lot of cheese sandwiches for a while. That was a wonderful find.
Mnm

I was given the opportunity to try and review the new Healthy Choice Ziti and Meat Sauce dinners that you may have seen commercials for on TV.

It is a quite ingenious little container with dry pasta in the bottom and sauce in a separate container on top. You take off the lid, remove the sauce container, add water to the pasta container, microwave 3 1/2 minutes, drain the pasta, microwave the sauce 30 seconds, mix together and eat.

And even better than the clever packaging and how fast it is to make is how GOOD it is! I found it very tasty indeed. Those who don't like or can't have spicy foods may not like it as I found the sauce quite zesty, but then I tend to cook with pepper a lot because I have hypertension and can't use much salt. Of course, as with most ready-to-eat food, the sodium is higher than I'd like it to be, but it hasn't caused my head to spin or anything, so this is a good thing.

Serving Size: 197 grams (1 container)

Calories 340

Fat 6g
Sat Fat 2g
Trans Fat 0

Cholesterol 20 mg
Sodium 600 mg
Potassium 990 mg
Total Carb 56 g
Dietary Fiber 8g
Protein 15g

A new-to-me product is the High-Fiber version of V-8 juice. It has 5g of fiber per 8 fluid ounce serving, rather than the standard 2 grams. As a snack, it should be more filling than the standard version too.

Another way of adding fiber to drinks is to put in some smooth, flavorless, psyllium husk. (e.g. one version of Metamucil) If memory serves Oprah's Dr. has psyllium in his smoothie recipe.

Bump

quote:

Originally posted by BrenauMom:
Has anyone tried the new Kraft Reduced Fat Mayo made with Olive Oil?
I saw it in the store for the first time yesterday but I had just bought Mayo last week so I didn't buy it but it sounds "interesting"

I have some Smart Balance with olive oil and you can't taste the olive oil at all.

Personally, I don't believe the olive oil hype, and don't believe it to be THAT much healthier than canola or soybean oil.

Saturated fats are the "bad" fats in oils and in mayo, too. Polyunsaturated and Monounsaturated fats are both "healthy" fats. From my fridge...

1 TBS:
Full Fat Mayo (made with soybean oil): 1.5 grams sat fat
Canola oil: 1.5 g sat fat
Corn oil: 1.5 g sat fat
sesame oil: 2 g sat fat
olive oil: 2 g sat fat
peanut oil: 3 g sat fat

I'm not sure that Kraft adding olive oil to mayo would change it THAT much (either taste wise or nutritionally)... especially since good olive oil is more expensive than soybean oil... Kraft is probably adding a fairly insignificant amount of olive oil to their mayo. They are adding it MOSTLY for the advertising factor, so they can say, "New!! Mayo with Olive Oil!!!" I'm guessing.

Like ALL oils... olive oil is mostly healthy fats... and it does have some unhealthy fat. And when Paula Dean dumps a cup or two of mayo into a potato salad recipe and says, "We all have to eat our healthy oils!"... technically she is correct and mayo, even full fat mayo, is MOSTLY healthy oil... but because it is so caloric... I'm not sure that any of us should be eating enough mayo or olive oil to reap all of the reported "health benefits" of those healthy oils. I think that a person should choose olive oil if they like the taste. (But, there are times that I don't like the taste of olive oil.)

I've spread a little olive oil on bread for sandwiches... you don't need Kraft to mix it into your mayo if you want the taste of olive oil in your mayo. You can mix it yourself... or just use it straight and use just olive oil and no mayo.

A new-to-me product that has been around for decades; El Yucateco Red Habanero Hot Sauce.

http://www.elyucateco.com

As expected, it is quite hot, but it has a nice pepper flavor, before the heat hits.

According to the manufacturer, the red version is 5,790 Scoville units of heat, and the green version is 9,000 Scoville units.

As seen on "Mexico One Plate At A Time".

Although this is not a new product, I have been drinking peppermint tea and really loving it.
It quiets my appetite when I feel like eating and it is super refreshing.

Has anyone tried the new Kraft Reduced Fat Mayo made with Olive Oil?
I saw it in the store for the first time yesterday but I had just bought Mayo last week so I didn't buy it but it sounds "interesting"

Here's a cool produce concept:

"When it comes to lettuce on the shelf, you can’t get much fresher than this. Within 24 hours of harvest, live leaf lettuce, with dripping roots still attached in plugs of dirt, is being loaded onto trucks and driven to Twin Cities-area grocery stores."

"His advice: Take only as many leaves as they want to eat for each meal, then wash them and pop the bag of lettuce, replete with roots, back in the fridge."

http://www.startribune.com/local/south/17959119.html

http://www.bushelboy.com/lettuce.html

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sheltieguy,

wow, i just had the General Tsao chicken from health choice cafe steamers and it was yummy. i added a bunch of steamed broccoli to raise the veggie portions but it was good. it needed a little salt but i enjoyed it a lot.

i just tried vita muffin (the chocolate ones). they are pretty good. not as sweet as a brownie but i do like them a lot. kind of expensive though.