On today's menu...

Kettle Cuisine Organic Mushroom and Potato Soup

Their site for this soup: here.

Their description: Savory mushrooms sautéed in butter, garlic and thyme are good. When combined with freshly peeled potatoes and finished with herbs and light cream, they become undeniably delicious.

Nutrition Facts
1 container has...
140 calories
8g of total fat
3.5g of sat fat
670mg of sodium
14g carbohydrates
4g dietary fiber
4g protein

First ingredient
Water

Ups
- It's a very nice-sized bowl of soup for only 140 calories.
- Very creamy texture. With lots of mushroom pieces.
- You get 10 percent of your daily calcium. And 8 percent of your iron!
- I can pronounce everything on the Ingredients list.
- It's gluten free (and vegetarian), which isn't important for me, but for some of you, it will be.

Downs
- It has 670mg of sodium. That's 28% of your daily value. But it's perfectly salted, so I didn't feel like I needed to add any for good flavor.
- I did feel like I needed something else simply because 140 calories isn't a lot in my diet plan. But a nice salad would have been perfect with this.
- 3.5g sat fat? Can't figure out where that's coming in. All the different oils, maybe? But 0g trans fat--that's good!

Taste
Excellent. Very hearty, earthy taste. Which is exactly what I want from a mushroom and potato soup.

Verdict
Try. Hands-down try! This is such a good soup!

Weigh-In Day

Last weigh-in: 271.0
This week's weight: 268.4
Change since last week: -2.6
Total pounds lost: 24.6

I totally did a little dance when I got off the scale. My goal is to be to 265 by March.

I can do it!!!

Try. Don't try.

Lean Cuisine Macaroni & Cheese

Check out their site here.

Their description: Tender macaroni in a creamy cheddar cheese sauce.

Nutrition Facts
1 package has...
290 calories
7g of total fat
4g of sat fat
630mg of sodium
41g carbohydrates
15g protein

First ingredient
Water

Ups
- For 290 calories, it's a lot of food - I couldn't finish it all.
- Very creamy texture.
- 15 grams of protein! Woohoo!
- I can pronounce just about everything on the Ingredients list. Except... phosphoric acid and disodium phosphate. And what's carrageenan?

Phosphoric acid - (info from wiki) Food-grade phosphoric acid is used to acidify foods and beverages such as various colas, but not without controversy regarding its health effects. It provides a tangy or sour taste and, being a mass-produced chemical, is available cheaply and in large quantities. The low cost and bulk availability is unlike more expensive seasonings that give comparable flavors, such as citric acid which is obtainable from lemons and limes. (However most citric acid in the food industry is not extracted from citrus fruit, but fermented by Aspergillus niger mold from scrap molasses, waste starch hydrolysates and phosphoric acid.)

Disodium phosphate - (info from wiki) Apparently it speeds up cook time???

Carrageenan - (info from wiki) Gelatinous extracts of the Chondrus crispus seaweed have been used as food additives for hundreds of years, though analysis of carrageenan safety as an additive continues. Since Carrageenans are extracted from plant matter, foods containing this additive are considered suitable for vegans. Also: Studies at the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America, suggest that carrageenans might function as a topical microbicide.

Downs
- It has 560mg of sodium. That's 26% of your daily value, which... as I'm learning from research ...is an awful lot from one meal.
- One of the ingredients is being studied for its use as a sexual lubricant and microbicide. Really?

- Half of its fat content is from saturated fat.

Taste
It's a little underwhelming on the salt side, considering it has 630mg of sodium. But it has, overall, a good flavor. It's not a very sharp cheddar taste, but is instead a smooth cheesy flavor.

Verdict
Try.

If you like mac & cheese and want it fast or as a lunch option, why not? It's not terrible. Just... don't search wiki for the ingredients.

Try. Don't try.

In today's edition - Healthy Choice's All-Natural Entrees - Lobster Cheese Ravioli



Nutrition Facts
(for 1 meal)
250 calories
6g total fat
2.5g sat fat
0g trans fat
580mg sodium
37g total carbohydrate
4g dietary fiber
8g sugar
10g protein

First Ingredient
Semolina Wheat Flour

Ups
only 250 calories - a great lunch!
easy to cook, good instructions
for a packaged meal, the sodium isn't too high (580mg)

Downs
the vodka sauce was incredibly watered down
there weren't a lot of pieces of green and yellow zucchini

Taste
I know it says the ravioli is lobster, but it's more of a generic seafood taste, and not really a good one at that. The seafood taste is coming from lobster puree (lobster claw meat, corn starch, canola oil), lobster base {lobster meat, salt, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract, dried potato, corn oil, flavoring and space (paprika) extractive}, natural lobster flavor {yeast extract, maltodextrin, lobster meat, shrimp powder, pollock powder, whey powder, cream powder (cream, non fat milk, soy lecithin), salt, tapioca maltodextrin, potato maltodextrin, natural flavoring}.

What's pollock?
What's maltodextrin?

If not for the lobster part of this whole thing, it might actually be okay. But alas...

The verdict
Don't try.

It really wasn't satisfying, and I threw it away before I was finished. Nice try, Healthy Choice. I'm sure I'll find something I enjoy from you guys soon enough.

Weigh-In Day

Last weigh-in: 273.0
This week's weight: 271.0
Change since last week: -2.0
Total pounds lost: 22

Yay! We're headed in the right direction again!

No thanks to the cupcakes and cake I made this weekend (of which I've had a total of two cupcakes in three days and I'm bringing the others to the office so other people suffer). :)

Dear colleagues, you're welcome. Love, TFF.

Also - New rule for February - Mountain Dew is a weekend-only thing in an effort to get to NO MOUNTAIN DEW!!!!!

I can do this, right?