Posts filed under '5 POINTS'
(with tomatoes, onions, garlic & basil)
There’s a reason this, a part of the “One Dish Favorites” collection, is the last frozen meal left in my freezer this workweek. Microwaved pasta is just horrible. Mushier than mush. The gravy (that’s what I call spaghetti sauce) is flavorless and watery. And there are no chunks of meat to count.
Also, this is NOT angel hair pasta. It is regular spaghetti.
But there are no red pepper chunks, so I should stop being angry that this 240 cal meal didn’t fill me and left my mouth sad, right?
4g fat, 260 cal, 5 POINTS
May 16th, 2008
(lightly breaded chicken breast with rib meat in lemon glaze with brown rice risotto)
(the brown rice risotto has…RED PEPPER CHUNKS!)
Directions: Cook on HIGH for 4:30 - 5:30. Let stand in microwave for 1-2 minutes.
Can you tell Lean Cuisine has been on sale?
This dish is part of the Spa Cuisine collection, and at 300 calories, its quite a lunch. It was the highest calorie lunch I had in the freezer, and since I’m going out to eat tomorrow night, I figured I’d save the lower cal meal for tomorrow. If it doesn’t fill me, I’ll nosh on 25 calories worth of grape tomatoes.
There are two VERY LIGHTLY breaded chicken cutlets in this meal. Each one is a little more than 1/2 cm thin and the size of the palm of my hand. I suppose if you smashed them together, you’d have one serving of chicken. There is a faint sweet lemony taste to the sauce, which was goopy and sweet enough that I may have been tempted to lick it out of the corners of the tray.
I cooked this meal for 4:30 and it’s HOT even after standing in the microwave. Thank goodness for the diet-iced-tea-in-beer glass. The rice (which the box brags is 100% whole grain) is more of a beige than brown but it - and the broccoli - still has a good bite. The red pepper chunks, as always, bring color but no flavor. Some of the broccoli was more yellow/brown than green.
After the entire meal (and I did lick every grain of rice and every ounce of sauce out of the tray when you weren’t looking) and the entire glass of iced tea, I’m at the point where I’m not hungry, but I’m not completely full. I guess the word is “satisfied.”
I’ll bring the tomatoes back to work with me for an afternoon snack.
Not sure if I’d get this again, as it didn’t WOW me enough to justify a 300 calorie expenditure.
9g fat 300 cal, 5 POINTS
May 14th, 2008
(barbecue sauce & beef rib tips with oven-roasted potatoes)
(oh, the potatoes feature corn, onion, and RED PEPPER CHUNKS!)
Directions: Cook on HIGH for 4-5 minutes. Let sit in microwave for 1-2 minutes.
There is a group of ladies at work who order out for lunch every single day. They eat at their desks then take their hour lunch to do other things. Sweet deal, huh? Anyway, today someone ordered a barbecue sandwich, and my tummy started grumbling. Luckily I knew I had this dish - part of the “Comfort Classics” collection - at home, so after a nice 4.5 minute wait in front of the microwave, I have my own BBQ lunch!
There are seven chunks of moist and delicious beef in this dish, each about the size of my thumb. The potatoes held up well through the nuking process, but the corn/onion/pepper mixture fell away from the potatoes to the bottom of the tray, where they soaked up the BBQ sauce. I think this tray should have had 2 compartments to it to combat that unholy commingling.
The sauce…is okay. It tastes like your typical Kraft BBQ sauce without any of the fluff. And while it’s a far cry from that BBQ place I went to in Memphis a lifetime ago (Rendezvous?) or even my favorite chain BBQ place, it’s passable for a quick lunch. On second thought, there’s almost too much sauce, even after liberally dipping the seven chunks.
This meal along with the accompanying diet iced green tea beverage in a beer pint glass filled me up! So the hearty garden salad I made up will come to work with me this afternoon as a snack.
More importantly, it knocked out the mild craving I had for BBQ.
5g fat, 250 cal, 5 POINTS
May 13th, 2008
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