South Beach Living Pudding Cups

Cross-posted from Pennies & Pounds.

I received some free samples of Kraft South Beach Living pudding cups from a PR rep for the company. As I have an interest in low-cal products that I share here on this site, I’ll share my take on this new product.

The packaging makes a boatload of claims: 60 calories! Sugar free! Good source of fiber!

Fiber? In pudding?

Both puddings I tried came infused with inulin, a fiber plentiful in plants such as chicory and jicama. Wikipedia says it’s a soluble fiber that may lower cholesterol, but recent reports suggest the isolated fibers added to processed foods may not carry the same benefits as those in whole foods. However, inulin, being indigestible, doesn’t add to the calorie count, and the only possible problem that might stem from its consumption (in large amounts) is a little indigestion.

Speaking of indigestion, these treats manage to achieve sugar-free status through the use of the sugar alcohols xylitol and maltitol, in addition to sucralose (Splenda) and acesulfame potassium (Ace K). Taking in too many grams of sugar alcohols also can lead to digestive upset, so take care not to binge should you indulge in sugar-free products. On the upside, xylitol helps prevent tooth decay.

Fiber, fake sugar, and plenty of water explain each cup’s svelte 60 calories. Starch, rather than fat, provides the thickness and silkiness; the Dark Chocolate Vanilla Marble has 1.5 grams of fat, and the Milk Chocolate Truffle has 1 gram. The fat is saturated, likely because of the cream listed in the ingredients.

That cream, along with the Dutch-processed cocoa and salt, are the only ingredients in this pudding that you could buy yourself at the supermarket. If you’re looking for all-natural foods . . . well, by now you’ve probably already looked elsewhere.

Taste? These cups taste much like other pudding cups I’ve tasted from the grocery store. They’re creamy and rich-tasting, despite the lack of sugar and fat. The size and texture make for a satisfying dessert for me, though my husband, Scott, opted for two. The cups come four to a package.

Scott’s favorite was the Dark Chocolate Vanilla Marble, which he enjoyed for the contrast in flavor between the chocolate layers and the center vanilla layer. I found the vanilla layer unassertive; it mostly tasted of milk, not vanilla, and the dark chocolate dominated this subtle flavor. It provided some relief from the chocolate, but don’t choose this looking for a vanilla hit. It tastes a lot like chocolate chips.

I preferred the Milk Chocolate Truffle. I guess I’m just a sucker for that buttery, chocolaty flavor I associate with those creamy Lindt truffles. There’s no contrasting flavor or subtlety here, just straight-up richness. I moaned a little.

Should you buy these cups? If you don’t mind all the additives and fake sugars, sure. They’re tasty and, at 60 calories, a perfectly reasonable dessert. If you balk at the idea of ingredients you can’t pronounce, go with my longtime favorite prepared pudding, Kozy Shack, in moderation. Nothing beats some tasty tapioca.

More on South Beach Living:
South Beach Living Packaged Meals

Photo: Colleen Fischer

Favorite Frozen Meals: Gardenburger

It’s not just a veggie patty anymore.

The Gardenburger brand has expanded its line significantly beyond the original burger substitute. Not only can you now get a wide variety of patty choices in the freezer case, but now you can also find pretend riblets, wraps, and “chicken” products.

Naturally, some of these make a tasty, convenient lunch.

Gardenburger

Black Bean Chipotle Wrap

The picture of the box here is not the best, admittedly. Neither is the picture of the food on the box. I almost didn’t buy this product, which would have been a shame, as it is delicious. It’s Gardenburger’s yummy black bean patty coated in a spicy and savory sauce, sprinkled with rich cheese, and stuffed into a plenty good whole-wheat tortilla. You get two individually wrapped 240-calorie wraps per box, and they’re tastier and more filling (six grams of fiber!) than Lean Pockets.

Favorite Frozen Meals: Michelina’s Lean Gourmet

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this Michelina’s Lean Gourmet article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Michelina’s may be at the low end of the frozen-food market, but you have to give them credit. That cardboard packaging may sometimes impart a little papery flavor to the food it holds, but it’s a highly efficient design, more likely to biodegrade than all those plastic trays and cellophane wrappers we toss out after our lunch breaks.

My mom used to stock the freezer with several of these (among others) for us kids to heat up on days we didn’t feel like a sandwich for lunch or had to fend for ourselves for dinner. Actually, these really were more likely lunch fare — for dinner, it was usually the stocks of Marie Callendar’s chicken pot pie and frozen entrées that would get tapped.

Marie Callendar’s frozen food takes way too much prep time for lunch (or, frankly, dinner) most of the time, in my opinion. Plus, some have nutritional stats that make you wonder why you’re not just picking up a to-go meal from Olive Garden.

Anyway, onward to the review.

Michelina’s Lean Gourmet

Macaroni & Cheese

I realize the convenience factor is small here, as it’s not so difficult to whip up a box of mac and cheese and stuff it in Tupperware. However, when I was a kid and less familiar with the stove, this was definitely a freezer favorite. I don’t find any of the more expensive frozen mac and cheese dinners to be at all superior to my taste buds, so if I felt a desire to pack myself a plate for lunch, I bought this. The serving is definitely way small, but it’s only 270 calories.

I don’t remember most of the other meals listed on the Lean Gourmet home page — Albertson’s fails me again. Some look promising, such as this Vegetable Rice Pilaf that looks chock-full of colorful veggies, if the picture is to be believed.

The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion

Note: This review was originally published on an old blog on June 8, 2005. It certainly betrays my affinity for baking; I am perhaps one of the few brides who actively lobbied for the bread maker. Coming up in December — Advent starts Dec. 2 — expect a ton of cookie recipes!

There was a time when I didn’t care much for baking. I had ruined enough cakes to feel like I just didn’t have that magic touch. But as The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion makes clear, delicious baked goods don’t require a mini-miracle; like writing, baking is something everyone can learn to do well.

This “all-purpose baking cookbook” provides extensive information on the hows and whys of baking. Each section, from pancakes to pâte feuilletée rapide, begins with a primer on what to expect, when to make it, what the basic process entails or other useful information. Chapters also are sprinkled with articles that walk you through a basic preparation technique or provide troubleshooting assistance for when your cookies resemble pancakes and your pancakes resemble bricks.

Another reason this book belongs in every aspiring bakers’ kitchen is its extensive appendices. The editors devote more than 100 pages to ingredients definitions, useful tools for the kitchen and conversion tables. Even without the recipes, it earns its spot on the bookshelf.

As for the recipes, they cover all the basics you’d expect in an all-purpose cookbook. It’s careful to cover all the steps you’ll need to take so you’ll be assured of success; out of all the recipes I’ve tried, the only one that failed me was for pie crust (but I blame my ineptness in judging the state of pastry more than the cookbook for that). Notes appended to many of them suggesting several variations on the core recipe are a nice touch. However, if you are particularly interested in cookies or cakes, you’ll probably find the selection a bit wanting.

The editors press gently for you to switch to weight-based measurements in your baking, but they’re not so arrogant as to neglect to provide the volume-based measurements that most people still use. Also, while the particular flour behind this cookbook is mentioned sporadically, brand names make no intrusion into the recipes and special ingredients or equipment from the company’s catalog are always optional.

The overall tone of this book is encouraging to the aspiring baker, and the voice of the book puts you in a state of mind to appreciate the meditative nature of kneading bread or forming cookies.

Upshot: The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion is an essential introduction to the art of baking and a useful reference for more experienced bakers. The recipes are well-tested and have an excellent potential for success.

Score: 5 out of 5

Note: I’ve made these rolls once, having never made a yeast dinner roll before, and they turned out absolutely perfectly. However, I did use one variation — instead of 3 cups of white flour, I used 2 cups white and 1 cup whole wheat. They had a slightly browner, more mottled appearance than I would have had with all white flour, but with so much white flour, there was no distinctive whole wheat taste (and thus, they passed muster with the brothers). These rolls are ethereally soft and light, and they’ll impress anyone with your baking prowess.

Soft Rolls
Source: The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion
Yield: 16 dinner rolls

• 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 4 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 1/4 cup Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk
• 1/4 cup potato flour OR 1/2 cup potato flakes
• 1 1/8 to 1 1/3 cups lukewarm water*

*Use the lesser amount in summer, the greater amount in winter, and something in between the rest of the time.

Combine all of the ingredients, and mix and knead them together — by hand, mixer or bread machine — till you’ve made a soft, smooth dough. Adjust the dough’s consistency with additional flour or water as needed; but remember, the more flour you add while you’re kneading, the heavier and drier your final loaf will be. Allow the dough to rise, covered, for 1 hour, or until it’s puffy (though not necessarily doubled in bulk).

Choose the shapes you want to create, and divide the dough into 16 pieces, or roll as required. (Note: The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion provides several options for shaping the rolls. To make cloverleaf rolls like I did, divide each of the 16 pieces into three small balls, then place each set of three side-by-side into a well of a greased muffin tin to form a cloverleaf shape.)

After shaping, let the rolls rise until puffy and almost double in size. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until golden brown with an internal temperature of 190 degrees Fahrenheit.

Finished rolls can be brushed with butter for a delicious soft crust; a double coating of butter for a soft, satiny crust; or lightly dusted with flour, if you prefer.

Download Soft Rolls into MacGourmet.

Kraft Healthy Living Meal Planner

I’ve mentioned in my reviews of CalorieKing’s food diary program that they offer a meal planning service on their web site as well for an additional cost. You pay them a small fee each month, and they lay out exactly what you should eat each day to stay within your calorie budget.

 

CalorieKing is, of course, not the only web site to offer this service. In fact, eDiets is probably the most famous online meal planning and tracking site, although Weight Watchers, more well-known for its offline diet support, also offers such a service through its web site.

 

If you’re leery of the time commitment involved in tracking your calorie intake on your own and interested in testing the diet-guidance site waters, I’d recommend giving Kraft’s Healthy Living Meal Planner a try first.

 

To start, you fill out a pretty simple questionnaire that asks you for your age, weight, and height, among other things, to calculate how many calories you should eat each day to lose weight at a safe, slow pace.

 

You can opt to customize a fitness plan to go along with your meal plan. You can select one cardiovascular exercise you doing (options include swimming, housework, and even dancing), and you can also specify which days you want to be instructed to complete the cardio and strength training.

 

Your diet plan specifies what to eat for five meals a day (that’s including one snack and one dessert). While all of the recipes and many of the standalone foods include Kraft products (think South Beach Diet foods, Kraft salad dressings, and Philadelphia cream cheese), some snacks or desserts are as simple as a pear or a banana.

 

You track your calories through the Interactive Nutrition Diary. Here, you can tell the web site which of the meals you have eaten and add or change anything based on what you ended up eating that day. The page includes a small box for journaling about your diet experience each day.

 

As for your exercise activities, those are recorded on the main meal plan page. When you’ve completed the day’s assigned activities, you simply click “I did it” and the box at the top of the page will update to show how many calories you’ve burned so far that week.

 

Finally, just like on the big-shot sites, you have access to a message board for support in your quest to lose weight. Often, people find having others to lean on through this ordeal makes it a lot easier.

 

But it ain’t all peaches and cream, kids.

 

For one thing, I take issue with the seemingly arbitrary limits on your food preferences. For example, you can only mark two items as excluded in the meat/poultry/seafood category. As I’m particularly picky when it comes to meat, I’d really like to be able to knock fish, shellfish, and pork out of the running. Instead, I can only eliminate two and thus must manually switch out any pork chops recipes on the meal plan page.

 

I know Kraft probably just wants to make sure it can offer up a good variety of recipes from its database, but maybe the better solution would be to give the user five to 10 possible eliminations from that entire page of food items rather than limiting by category. I didn’t choose any fruits, nuts, or spices to ban from my meals, so why not let me avoid pork?

 

You can choose to have a meal plan that’s lacto-ovo vegetarian or that eliminates all red meat, true, but I don’t have anything against beef, so that doesn’t help me. Also, note that if you’re vegan or lactose-intolerant, there doesn’t seem to be any way to eliminate either eggs or all that Kraft cheese from the diet plan.

 

And that illustrates one particular drawback of this approach. Obviously, the meal plan here is free because it’s designed to sell you Kraft products. That means a lot of the recipes have cheese or salad dressing worked in somehow, and many snacks are packaged cookies or meal-replacement bars.

 

On the other hand, if a recipe calls for Kraft House Italian there’s nothing stopping you from subbing in the store brand. And eDiets, which you have to contract with and pay for, is always trying to upsell you to their fitness plans, meal deliveries, etc.

 

Overall, I find the trade-offs to be inconsequential compared to what you’re getting. Generally, I like the homey recipes Kraft comes up with anyway; I already had saved a bunch before I even discovered they’re tracker years ago. I did use eDiets for a while, and although it offers more diet plans and tracking tools, Kraft’s site has the basics covered at a much better price.

 

It can be tough to get out of some of the pay sites out there if you decide after a couple of months that they’re not for you; eDiets is not going to give up your monthly dues to Weight Watchers that easily.

 

If you’re not sure if you’ll be able to stick with a prescribed diet plan like those on eDiets or CalorieKing, test drive the system with this free site for a few months and see how it goes. If it’s working for you, then maybe start shopping around to see if another site might be more to your tastes.

CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager, Day 7

 

 

Today I tried setting the program up for multiple users.

 

When you select “Create User” from the “Users” menu, the initial user registration window pops up again. Enter the user’s name, birth date, weight, and other vitals, and you’re in business. No problems.

 

After you create a new user, his or her name appears along with your own in the “Users” menu. To change from your food diary to theirs, simply select the other name from that menu.

 

As I remember from the documentation, CalorieKing supports up to five users. Personally, I find this an arbitrary limit. Considering this program costs almost $50, I don’t see why I should be facing any limits in the number of users I track.

 

As you are limited to recording on one computer by the fact that this is a standalone rather than web-based program, it seems illogical that anyone would use the software for any group not based within the same household. No diet support group is going to track all its members with one copy, for example, because the scattered members wouldn’t be able to type their daily intake into the remote computer.

 

However, there are households with more than five people out there — I grew up in a family of eight myself. If Mom or Dad is concerned with family nutrition, she or he would have to make a second copy of the program on another computer to enter the last three kids, in violation of the license agreement.

 

Why create criminals? Remove the limit!

CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager, Day 6

 

 

Decision time should be coming soon — I believe this is only a seven-day demo. I’ll have to start coming up with some overall conclusions.

 

Today’s featured feature for review is Saved Meals. This program gives you the option to save a group of foods together as “the usual,” so to speak. Say you often have a cup of Cheerios with half a cup of milk for breakfast. Enter the foods into your breakfast box in CalorieKing as normal, then click over to the “Saved Meals” tab. Choose “New,” then select which meal you want to save (breakfast, in this case). Name it (“Cheerios with milk”), and it’s yours forever.

 

Tomorrow when you eat that same breakfast, you can save a few milliseconds by dragging over the meal in one shot rather than searching for and portioning the Cheerios and milk over again.

 

Every little bit counts, whether it be time or calories.

CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager, Day 5

Today was the first time I actually put some exercise in the appropriate box in CalorieKing (I know, I’m a slug). It’s highly convenient to be able to simply search for the exercise in the program’s long list of activities and then enter the number of minutes you engaged in it.

 

Did I mention that CalorieKing uses live searching? It automatically narrows the list as you type, so you generally don’t have to bother typing the whole word before what you’re looking for pops up.

 

On the topic of searching, here’s a tip: The database used by the program generally follows an increasing-specificity format. For example, skim milk would be “Milk: Cow, Fat-free, skim.” As opposed to, perhaps, “Milk: Goat’s milk, whole.” You can narrow in on what you’re looking for oftentimes by typing in that format, although sometimes it’s inconsistent and the punctuation can be a gotcha.

 

Anyway, back to exercise. I assume that the exercise calculation is taking into account your basal metabolic rate, something the start-up interview asked for info to use in calculating. Still, that’s not clear from the interface, and the program never tells you outright how many calories it thinks you’re burning each day just from existing.

 

What I’m wondering is, is that 100 calories the program said I burned by walking for 30 minutes 100 above and beyond what I’d normally burn just sitting around or standing at the kitchen counter, or not? Would it be a value of 100 calories for someone with a different metabolic rate?

 

The program knocks the amount of calories you’ve exercised off your total consumed for the day. Convenient if you want to stay under the total yet still have that banana split.

CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager, Day 4

So I investigated the “Publish Diary” option, and it’s something you only have access to if you subscribe to the CalorieKing Club, just like the meal plans. And that’s just fine with me — I’d rather the world didn’t know if I’ve had a croissant instead of oatmeal for breakfast (but I make it up later, I swear!)

 

On the other hand, signing up for the club might guilt one into making even healthier choices. But then, seeing the calorie and nutrition counts for my food intake is already doing a pretty good job of encouraging me to eat better, slowly but surely.

 

For example, I’ve noticed I tend to hit or exceed the max fat in my plan most days, whereas I fall short in protein and fiber. Thus, I’m taking it upon myself to seek out foods higher in protein and fiber, such as beans and fresh fruit.

CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager, Day 3

I continue to have an agreeable experience with the program, although I wonder if it will ever pop up a tip besides “check in once a week.”

 

I find myself increasingly checking the program for nutrition information on foods I read about or consider making for myself. It’s convenient to be able to search for how much popcorn I can eat for around 100 calories, for example.

 

I noticed today that there’s a button to publish your diary. As I’m not sure I want others to be peaking at my daily food intake, I haven’t tested this yet . . . but maybe I’ll see what I can learn tomorrow.

 

Also, there’s another button on the toolbar that connects you to meal plans provided by your CalorieKing Club account, should you happen to be a member. I’m not, but the cost isn’t so steep ($7 a month or $55 a year), so if set meal plans and online support forums help keep you on track, it might be worthwhile. It’s less expensive than Weight Watchers’ online service.

 

Maybe I need some help to stay on track — I’m within my calorie count for the day, but I did choose to eat a handful of cookies over something more nutritious for a snack. Oops.