Dinner: Tuna and Black Bean Cake, Green Beans and Wheat Roll

Here’s another new PFFS dinner:

So it’s a pretty large “cake” that is mostly tuna with a few veggies and a few (whole) black beans, and it’s served with green beans that have artichokes and garlic in them. There’s also a tiny airplane food packet of lemon juice that I forgot to put in the photo AND it’s served with a little wheat roll (the same roll that comes with many other PFFS entrees, pictured here with the ratatouille/chicken dish), but not only did I forget to photograph the roll, I also forgot to eat it! Whoops.

So, the cake part of this is okay, I guess. It definitely needs the lemon juice. I thought it didn’t have much flavor, really. But the green beans were the real problem for me. I think they just have some kind of acidic-tasting vinaigrette on them, but it’s hard to distinguish that taste from the taste of soured, slightly spoiled veggies which are unfortunately common on PFFS. Mr. Peanut ate his, but I couldn’t even finish 3 bites of mine. Soooo I don’t think we’ll be choosing this one again!

Breakfast: Blueberry Muffin, Raspberry Preserves, Yogurt, Orange Juice

Here is breakfast for Monday, Week 1, Diet to Go:

This is after I toasted the blueberry muffin. So you can see it’s a small muffin with some raspberry preserves, a container of yogurt, and some airplane food OJ. The 1600-calorie version comes with all of the above, plus a container of applesauce.

So check this out. I was all set to eat that yogurt when I saw this:

Aspartame?! Eeeeewww!!!! I am NOT a fan of artificial sweeteners. I wish I had noticed that before because I would have totally gotten my own yogurt at the grocery store! So, I scrapped this and had a glass of milk with my muffin instead.

The muffin itself was totally tasty, and I liked the raspberry jam on it. I have to say though, in general, these breakfasts just aren’t cutting it for me. Today I didn’t eat breakfast until almost 11am, and by noon I was STARVING already for lunch. I think it’s mostly a protein issue. But the most common higher-protein breakfast option on DTG’s “traditional” plan is some form of omelet — like this one, which I really didn’t care for. And other than those it’s mostly muffins, etc. And Mr. Peanut is not a fan of these breakfasts either! So!! Today I decided that starting next week (because that’s as soon as we can start it), we will go down to just getting lunch & dinner from Diet to Go and do breakfasts on our own. When I brainstormed some ideas earlier, I realized there were a lot of things we could have that would work and would be good within the calorie limits… oatmeal, a bagel or english muffin with peanut butter, yogurt (without aspartame!), hard-boiled egg, granola, etc. I also read about muffins from Penny’s Low-Fat Desserts on 3 Fat Chicks (unfortunately Penny’s site is down at the moment but hopefully will be back up later today) and I thought those might be a good choice, especially for Mr. Peanut and his love for muffins.

I’ll be sad not to have those blueberry pancakes again, but really, I have to get real about these breakfasts totally not working for me!

Tomorrow’s Menus

Here is our food for tomorrow (Thursday of Week 4 of Diet to Go):

This is my (1200-calorie) menu:

Breakfast: Homemade Cinnamon Power Bar, Orange Juice

Lunch: Broccoli & Cheddar Soup, Soft Pretzel with Mustard

Dinner: Stir Fry Chicken, Oriental Veggies, Brown Rice

And here is Mr. Peanut’s 1600-calorie version:

Menu is mostly the same as mine with just a couple of changes:

Breakfast: Cinnamon Power Bar, Yogurt, Orange Juice

Lunch: Broccoli & Cheddar Soup, Soft Pretzels with Mustard

Dinner: Stir Fry Chicken, Oriental Veggies, Brown Rice

So, the differences are that he gets a yogurt with breakfast (which I am replacing with a lunchbox-sized milk that I hope he will drink!), two pretzels instead of 1 with lunch, and a larger portion of everything at dinner. I just realized the picture of my food actually looks like my entrees are bigger, but that’s just because I was closer to the counter when I took that first one! The 1600-calorie day’s worth of food does look bigger (and it is).

I’m enamored with the tiny airplane food-style orange juice. How adorable!

Snack: Baby Carrots & Ranch Dip

This is a perfectly pleasant little snack of baby carrots and a tiny cup of airplane food ranch dressing. There’s a little bit more dressing than I could actually scoop up with the carrots. I have a funny crazy mental thing that happens to me when I have leftovers on this diet — I almost want to drink the dressing because I’m like I NEED THOSE CALORIES! But I didn’t. Next time, though, it would be good maybe to put on the roast beef wrap.

Breakfast: Berry-Banana Smoothie with Whole Wheat Bagel Half & Peanut Butter

So first I’ve got to talk about this smoothie. It comes in a silver bag like space food! So you pour the smoothie out:

and it looks like that. It’s pretty thin. They say on the package that you can blend it with ice if you prefer a thicker shake, so I did, and then it looked like this:

Then you also get a half bagel with peanut butter, so here’s the full meal:

So! Where to begin?? Well, the smoothie tastes pretty good. I like the flavor of it — a bit tart from the berries, but all in all pretty nice. However, it’s also very seedy. I did like blending it with ice, but next time I’m going to strain out the seeds first. In addition to seeds, there’s some blueberry skins or something in there, which is kind of icky (in fact, I didn’t finish my smoothie because I was getting grossed out by the seeds etc — so strain first, everybody!). But strained and blended with ice I think it will be great. Also, the smoothie is not the most portable thing. I think if you were travelling you’d need to pour it into a travel thermos or coffee cup before leaving the house.

As for the bagel, it was yummy and very satisfying. I continue to be disturbed, though, that I’m being given peanut butter that contains hydrogenated fat. I mean, come on. So I think if we’re going to keep getting meals that involve peanut butter, and I think we are, I’m going to invest in some of these tiny peanut butter packets. They’re organic and all-natural and I feel much better about that than these tiny doses of hydrogenated things. This website that carries the pb packets is awesome — a wonderful world of airplane food!

03/31/08: An Update!! I had this again today and made some changes; check out my new post!

Lunch: Vegetarian Lentil Soup with Whole Wheat Roll and Cheddar Cheese

This sure looks like a nice meal with the vegetarian lentil-barley soup, a chunk of bread, and a piece of cheese. Unfortunately the soup isn’t very flavorful; Deliciously Yours’ other lentil soup (the “hearty” one with chicken & swiss cheese) is way tastier. The cheese has a fun airplane food quality — it’s an individually wrapped slice of Land O’Lakes cheddar — but it’s not the best cheese. So I think if I saw this one pop up on my menu (um… assuming the online menus EVER start working again… more on that later, maybe), I would substitute the hearty lentil soup instead.

Lunch: Penne Pasta with Cheese & Carrots

This is whole wheat penne pasta in a very thick cheese sauce with a bag of airplane food baby carrots on the side. It’s a VERY small portion of pasta — or at least it looks small now; hopefully as I learn reasonable portion sizes by doing DY it will not seem that small. It was very rich and quite satisfying! Not the prettiest dish, but I did enjoy it.

Lunch: Fiesta Beef Chili Tostada with Whole Wheat Crackers

So, I don’t really understand why they call this a tostada. It’s more like just a chili. The container has seasoned ground beef, black beans (not organic this time), and cheese in it along with a tiny cup of (airplane food!) salsa (which I mixed into the beef), and then there’s a package of crackers on the side. Maybe if it had been some baked tortilla chips instead of the crackers, it would have seemed more like a tostada. Anyway, the name isn’t really all that important — the important part, the taste, was really good. It’s very filling. It’s also a bit spicy, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Very good!

Dinner: Tuscan Chicken Fettucine

I was nervous about this one because I read some criticisms of this dish on the eDiets Deliciously Yours forum. It’s a simple dish with noodles, marinara sauce, chicken strips, and a tiny packet of parmesan cheese (airplane food!!). The main complaint on the forum was about the chicken. Rather than being strips of cut chicken breast as you might expect, this is processed chicken… ground up with who knows what and then remolded into strip-like shapes. I have to say, I agree with the critics. IF the chicken were real, it would be quite a good dish. But since the chicken is pretty gross (and there’s a lot of it)… it’s not too good. The marinara sauce is nice, and the noodles are fine. The cheese is fine. The chicken was too icky to eat a bite of just chicken, and there aren’t enough noodles to get some noodle in each bite to compensate.

So all in all, not a nightmare, but I think next time it shows up on my menu, I’m going to substitute something else! Mr. Peanut didn’t have an issue with the processed chicken, though. Chacun a son gout!

Snack: Pumpkin Seeds

What can I say? They’re pumpkin seeds. I’m really only mentioning them at all in the interest of journalistic integrity. It’s a small packet that appeals to my airplane food fetish. And it was a nice little snack. And it’s nice to have some whole foods. I do think it’s funny that they tell me to eat low-fat dairy products and then give me nuts and seeds, but what can you do? I suppose that works out — in a way!