One of the best ethnic foods...ever.

One of my very favorite ethnic foods to eat is Indian food. There is nothing better, in my opinion, than a tasty serving of Chicken Tikka Masala or Chicken Makhani (aka Butter Chicken!), with some fresh naan (even better is garlic naan!) and basmati rice. Man, I'm salivating just thinking about it.

The problem (if there is one) with Indian food is that it is usually impossible for me to go out for Indian food and not have to waddle out of the restaurant. Really, I should just bring a set of wheels so I can roll myself out. In addition to the tasty main course, the side of naan and unlimited basmati rice, the meals often begin with papadum, and then tasty appetizers, often which include samosas and pakora- cheese, chicken and/or shrimp.

Like I said...Indian food is delicious. And filling. And extremely bad for your diet. And bring a set of wheels so you can roll yourself out afterwards.

However, I have found an option for those days when you want Indian food, but not all the calories. Or for those days when going out for Indian food isn't really feasible (aka the days of 1/2 hour lunches!).

Once again, Trader Joe's comes to the rescue (they really should pay me since I promote them all the time!!)!! :) They have a delightful frozen Chicken Tikka Masala. I've had it twice now, and it really does taste pretty good. Not quite the same, but it's a pretty decent option. Also, there are portion controls. :)

Photo originally found here.

There are between 3-6 pieces of chicken. The first time I had it, I had 6 smallish pieces of chicken, the second time there were 3 huge chunks of chicken. So roughly the same amount of chicken, just portioned differently. It also comes with a side of basmati rice. And it can be heated in the microwave in just over 5 minutes!

Photo found here.

For those counting calories: 300 calories per serving, with 110 calories coming from the 12g of fat (5g saturated fat). From a weight watchers perspective, about 7 points. Given that many of the SmartOnes/Lean Cuisine/Healthy Choice frozen entrees are between 5-8 points, this pretty much falls into the same category for frozen entrees. There is also a lot of rice, so it's more filling than it would initially appear to be.

So while it is not nearly on the same level as Indian Food Bliss that can be found at an Indian restaurant, it is much healthier (and portioned!), and cheaper, too. :)

Lauren's Organic Chicken Noodle Soup (+recipe)

A few days ago I attempted to post my chicken noodle soup recipe, but blogger was making me mad and was putting the picture wherever it felt like putting it! So I finally gave up, but then it posted anyway...yeah, it was fun times with blogger! :)

Anyway....so my husband had the flu last week so I decided that I wanted to make chicken noodle soup from (mostly) scratch because there is nothing better than chicken noodle soup when you're sick.

I didn't really use a recipe, aside from the basic concepts of chicken noodle soup: chicken, chicken broth, carrots, celery and salt/pepper.

However, I made two little adjustments and I think that the finished product was even more tasty. Not quite to the level of taco chicken soup I made a few years ago with leftover taco chicken and homemade (yes, you read that right HOMEMADE noodles), but it was still quite tasty.

Adjustment number 1: Use organic!

Adjustment number 2: Curt's Cooking Spice!

And now, Lauren's Organic Chicken Noodle Soup. Apologies in advance as this is the first recipe I've ever written. :)

Five 14oz cans of Swanson's Chicken Broth.

1.5-2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I used Trader Joe's).

2-2.5 cups uncooked Trader Joe's Organic Fusilli Pasta.

3-4 large organic carrots

5-6 large organic celery hearts

sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste (can use just regular salt & pepper too, but it won't taste as good!) :)

Curt's Cookie Spice to taste.

Bring medium sized pot of water to boil and add chicken. Boil chicken for 20 minutes. You may have to boil the chicken half at a time. Remove chicken from water and shred with two forks. General chicken shredding instructions here.

Slice up carrots and celery as desired. Set aside.

Add chicken broth to a large pot and simmer until chicken is fully shredded. After chicken is shredded, add the chicken to the broth and continue to simmer. I also added about 14oz of water to the broth even though it said "do not add water." It gave more broth, but I didn't find it to be any less flavorful.

Bring medium sized pot of water to boil and add noodles. Cook noodles about half-way, drain.

Add noodles and vegetables to chicken and chicken broth, turn up the heat. Add salt, pepper and Curt's to taste.

Once spices are added as desired, cover pot, and turn heat on high for 5-7 minutes.

Turn heat back down to simmer, uncover and eat.

As one can imagine, this soup was not very high in calories or fat (a little high in sodium though).

Chicken broth = 10 calories per half can, 20 calories per can x 5 cans = 100 calories.

Carrots = according to this website, 100g of carrots have 43-48 calories. I had a hard time figuring out how many carrots is 100g...I'm guessing that the 3 carrots I used would be about 150 calories?

Celery = according to this website, 110g of celery has 18 calories. I'll go out on a limb and guess that I had about 60 calories of celery.

Fusilli Pasta = per the bag, 3/4 of a cup has 210 calories. I'm going to guess I used about 2 cups, so that's approx 500 calories or so of pasta.

Chicken breast = I had a hard time finding a definitive calorie count for chicken breasts, and the package is long gone. Generally, 8oz of chicken breast = 250 calories. I used about 32 oz of chicken breast so roughly 1000 calories.

Salt, Pepper and Curt's = 0 calories.

So for the whole, huge pot of chicken noodle soup, we're looking at 1800 calories. This sucker had about 8 servings in it, so per serving we are looking at 225 calories per bowl. Not bad!

There are different ways to add fewer calories. Add more veggies, less chicken. Add less pasta, or take a whole wheat pasta with fewer calories and more fiber. Use egg noodles, they are bigger and take up more space, so you can use less. You could also substitute rice for pasta. The possibilities are endless!

My next quest is to try and reproduce that taco chicken soup- probably won't make the noodles from scratch again though.

Note to Self

When actively trying to maintain target weight, it is a poor idea to walk to CVS, buy two bags of Easter candy and eat a small percentage of about half of majority of both bags over the course of three days. Just sayin'.

On a note of actually sticking to a plan of eating healthy, Trader Joe's (oh, how I ♥ you) has a "light" version of string cheese. It has 60 calories per, um, piece (what is the unit of measurement for string cheese?) and approximately 1 WW point. Since I reside in that great dairy state (happy cows don't come from California that's for damn sure) of Wisconsin, I loves me some CHEESE! And as it seems that all cheese that is good is also full of calories and fat and is generally just not so good for you, the fact that Trader Joe's has a decently relatively VERY tasty lower-fat/lower-calorie (unit of measurement) string cheese...well, that just merits even more love to the Trader Joe's (I am sincerely sorry to those who do not have Trader Joe's near them). It's no Union Star Cheese Factory, but it'll do.