It Applies to Real Life!

Today for lunch, I had my typical frozen "diet" meal. I go back and forth between Smart Ones and Healthy Choice (usually depending on which one has the best sale). Healthy Choice typically comes with a meat, a side dish, and some sort of dessert.

On the menu today was lemon pepper fish, broccoli and some caramel apple dessert.

Lemon pepper = yummy.
Rice = yummy.
Caramel apple dessert thing = interesting.

On a normal day, I would've tossed it after eating the fish and rice because I wouldn't have liked the broccoli. Today, however, is a new day. I applied what I have been learning about veggie recipes and added a sprinkle of brown sugar and Parmesan cheese to the top of the broccoli as soon as it came out of the microwave.

*Gasp*

I ate ALL my broccoli! I never knew it could be so easy to get me to eat veggies!

Asparagus Take 2

Last night was a repeat of Tuesday night, except I fixed the asparagus instead of Brad. It was still really good! Two fixes and it still gets an A+ in my book. My only concern is that blasted whipping cream. I checked the nutritional information on it today and it said for every tablespoon, it's 50 calories and 50 calories from fat. That's a little more than I like to see, but I guess the rest of the recipe is pretty healthy. I found this recipe for "substitute" whipping cream, but at 98 calories, it's still a little too fattening to justify a vegetable dish:

Substitute Whipping Cream
Ingredients

• 1 quart skim milk
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Place milk in freezer for 1 hour. Remove and pour into a tall cylindrical container. Using an immersion blender, start at the bottom and slowly draw the blender up at a tilt. Gradually add confectioners' sugar while continuing to move blender up and down to build volume. When milk begins to form soft peaks, mix in vanilla extract. Serve immediately.

I also read that 1/3 cup butter plus 3/4 cup of milk can be substituted for 1 cup of cream. That sounds like the healthiest option so far. I'm not sure how much he used, but it was enough for asparagus for two nights (4-6 stalks per day) and two good sized pieces of salmon...and we still have quite a bit left over. So it might not be as bad as I think. Maybe it's just because it tastes so good I assume it can't be good for me :)