The MakeMeThinner Support Forum

[GucciGoo]

I think part of the reason I am failing at MF is becuase I eat either chicken with onions and peppers, or fish with cauliflower for dinner at night. BORING.

I have been perusing the Lean Cuisine pages for ideas.

What can I add to my shopping list so I have a wide variety of dinner ideas? Here is what I have so far:

cauliflower
peppers
onions
diet soda
Fat Free 1/2 and 1/2
Diet Iced Tea Mix
Tomatoes
mushrooms
Flounder
Salmon
Chicken
Ground beef
eggs
cottage cheese
ICBINB butter
low fat ranch dressing
no fat walden farms dressing
scallops
da vinci syrup?
Molly McButter/ McCheese
part skim mozzarella cheese
Hidden Valley Ranch" powdered dressing
turnips!
FF Philly Cream Cheese
Kraft lowfat cheeses

Anything else?

[Sarya]

green beans
cabbage (cole slaw. get walden farm's cole slaw dressing or cook up the cabbage with garlic, salt, pepper, chili flakes, and red wine vinegar)
eggplant (use ground beef and lf cheese with eggplant slices, onions, tomatos, etc to make an eggplant "lasagne")

soy sauce, splenda, crushed ginger, crushed garlic, olive oil (sf teriyaki)

grill seasonings: roasted garlic and onion, garlic and herb, montreal steak, montreal chicken, greek

boca burgers?
tofu?
quorn plain cutlets?

walden farms bbq sauce (I've only tried the spicy one thusfar. it's good)

My shopping list is actually simple most of the time:
three bags of frozen broccoli
chicken breasts
steak
lettuce
cucumber
tomato
LF cabot's cheddar or other higher quality cheese. (LF kraft tastes like crap to me so I look in the expensive cheeses case)

Sometimes I have to replace the seasonings I mentioned above.
Sometimes I add other frozen veggies like frozen pepper and onion blend and frozen green beans.
Sometimes I get the other stuff I mentioned. I keep a lot of meats and veggies in the freezer.
I use those wishbone spritzers on my salad.

that's all I can really think of.

[Serendipity]

My list would include:

Frozen cooked/ready to eat shrimp
zucchini (I love love love this grilled)
Tuna (I make tuna salad w/WF ranch dressing and have it on romain hearts)
Very lean ground beef


I'm pretty sure that the part skim mozz. and FF cream cheese are no no's. I think we're supposed to stick to hard cheeses for the low fat such as colby and cheddar. Maybe someone in the know will correct me if I'm wrong.

[Sarya]

mozzarella appears to be allowed, but I'm not sure about the cream cheese.

[GucciGoo]

Hmmm. I just saw that someone else mentioned cream cheese as part of one of their dinners, so I thought it would be ok. I will skip that!

The eggplant lasagna sounds yummy!

[GucciGoo]

Tuna..... you think I'd like it without heaps of mayo> Maybe I'll try it. We can have, say, 3 oz of tuna and 4 oz of cottage cheese for dinner, with 1.5 cups of cooked cauliflower, am I right?

[Sarya]

Yes. I saw someone mention that same lean combination on the other boards.

Other things I use are things like curry paste. I really use a variety of spices. I've always been adventurous in the kitchen.

Hmm.. you could also have roasted veggies with a boca burger and some cheese. I did that the other night.

I also forgot to mention spinach!

Stuff mushrooms with a mixture of spinach, tomato, olive (whatever you like) and top it with some shredded cheese before baking.
My friend makes a similar dish but she uses mushrooms, tomato, and lf feta in the mushroom. lf feta isn't on the program because it's usually high in sodium, but you could maybe try mixing a small amount with some cottage cheese and see how that works.

fish baked with salsa

You can also have rotisserie chicken but the nutritionist recommended taking off the skin (I admit I don't, but my fat intake is always low)

you could also make a balsamic glaze (get balsamic without added sugar. it's about 10cal for a tablespoon) with some garlic, balsamic, oil, maybe splenda if you want it sweeter. reduce it down and drizzle it on your chicken and roasted veggies.

[supermom]

Tilapia

We make grilled cabbage a lot

Jalapeno peppers

I make "boats" out of zuchini

go to danandbucks dot com and check out their seasonings. I bought the variety pack. Nancy said it all looked okay to her. We use a LOT of the Tequila Lime on fish and chicken, and the jalapeno steak butter is really good too

Cream Cheese is a no no

I posted some recipes a while back for a marinara sauce, some pickled squash (much better than it sounds), some grean beans with fresh herbs, stuffed mushrooms

We use tuna steaks some, not just canned tuna all the time

I use TONS of onion powder and a seasoning called "Uncle Chris' Gourmet Steak Seasoning" the brand is Fiesta, the bottle is clear with a white label that has red, blue and green stripes on it.

Did you mention asparagus?? Get some and grill it. Try grilling your veggies instead of boiling or nuking them. Steaming is good, but grilling, IMHO, is better tasting

[Mike]

FF Philly Cream Cheese

As I noted before, I found out that this is a MF no-no.

Di says extra firm tofu makes a great stir fryish type thing with veggies like Asian egg plant, italian cut string beans, etc.

Zucchini and other summer squashes (crookneck)

Stuffable mushrooms (portabellos and portabellinis)

Peppers (bell and other)

Tuna and crab for that yummy fishcake recipe.

[Sarya]

Extra firm tofu is the only kind I'd ever buy. Pre MF I ate this a lot (with rice and veggies). What I would do on some occasions is pull the whole block out of the box, make a little pile of paper towels on a plate, put the block on the paper towels, put more paper towels on top, then put a pile a plates on top of that. It presses more water out of the tofu which is useful if you want to bake your tofu or cook it in a stirfry without having an excess of liquid. It also helps make the tofu an even firmer consistency. Another nice trick is to put the tofu in the freezer. It changes the consistency as well.

[DogMa]

FYI, even if you take the skin off, rotisserie chicken is pretty high in fat. If you do eat this, I'd measure it like beef instead of chicken. As it cooks, the fat from the skin melts into the meat, so chicken breast cooked with the skin on has more fat even once the skin is removed (and I won't even talk about the other parts of the chicken; things like thighs have more fat than the leaner cuts of beef).

I use a lot of different seasonings and marinades, too. My current favorite is Maple Grove Farms' lemon-rosemary marinade with chicken. Usually with a little extra garlic thrown in. Then I grill the chicken and have it either with green beans or tossed in a salad.

And I use the low-fat feta all the time, for a Greek salad (usually half a serving of the feta and half a serving of chicken). Most cheese is high in sodium, so I don't know that the feta's any worse. And I don't add salt to anything else I eat, so it's just that and whatever sodium the Medi-foods have.