Sweet AND Crunchy

Another snack tip...

I have already professed my love for Quaker Quakes, their flavored mini snack cakes, but now I have found their snack-world "little brother"... Quaker Mini Delights. The "Chocolately Drizzle" flavor is great! These tiny little multigrain cakes, each about the size of a quarter, really are drizzled with chocolate sauce. Like the title of this post says, it really does satisfy both of those snack desires.

These little guys are part of the low-cal snack pack trend, but 100 calories just aren't good enough for Quaker. No, these are 90 calorie packs! So the whole pack is a little 2 point treat, perfect for an after-dinner snack!

A Good Substitute

I love crunchy snacks. Potato chips and I have had a life-long love-hate relationship.... and it's very hard for me to resist the temptation of getting a little bag of chips to go with my lunch. I've become a Baked Lays fan, but sometimes, when my deli doesn't have Baked Lays in stock... I face a real dilemma. I crave a crunchy, satisfying snack, but I should not eat real chips with all their grease, fat, sodium, and cholesterol.

Luckily, this week, I took a risk on something new and found a great alternative to potato chips: Crispy Delites fruit chips! Hooray!

This little bag of goodness contains an entire pound of fat-free fruity goodness - packing lots of fiber and Vitamin C but no added sugar or crazy processed ingredients. I chose the cinnamon apple variety, and these dried fruit chips were tasty, filling, and - most importantly - they had a really satisfying CRUNCH.

Plus, unlike with regular chips, I found I could eat a few and be happy putting the bag down until later, so I actually snacked on these for a whole afternoon. With Utz or Doritos or something, that whole bag would've been polished off in about 3 minutes or less...

I'm so glad I have a new, much healthier weapon in my arsenal in the ongoing battle for healthy but satisfying lunches during the week. Thank you, Crispy Delites!

Believe It Or Not

Honest to goodness, these things taste like Snickers!

Image courtesy of SlimFast.

A Cheap Target Find

Okay, let's not talk about how many fast food combo meals I ate this weekend. Suffice it to say, I said "meals" and not "meal."

Instead, let's talk about this new snack I'm adding to the repertoire... Weight Watchers makes a pretty decent variety of little snack cakes. They've got lemon cake, carrot cake, chocolate cake, plus different muffins, cookies, and the ice cream treats I've posted about before.

While at Target yesterday, I spotted an endcap (yay retail background!) filled with these WW snacks, priced at only $2.99 a box. I've seen these before in the grocery store but never tried them out. At such a bargain, though, I couldn't resist. After much debate (actually only about 30 seconds) I decided on the chocolate snack cakes with chocolate icing.

The little cakes are pretty tasty. They're not as good as a big old double-chocolate Duncan Hines, but you can't expect them to be. The cakes are really little, only about as long as my thumb, but they do serve as a pretty filling bite-size snack. And the best part....? They're only 1 point each!

Smoothie Stats

Fruit smoothies have become my latest summertime addiction, and since I'm now drinking a couple a week I thought it might be a good idea to investigate the nutritional value of smoothie offerings around town. I've noticed a wide variety in the kinds of smoothies you can get - some seem to be very dairy, while others seem a lot more sugary, and others are like the smoothie equivalent of Juicy Juice (ick, not so much).

Cosi - The Cosi web site includes nutritional info on all their beverages in each different size. Good for them for giving so much info! I tend to order the Wildberry Blast smoothie, which is fat-free. The grande size is 248 calories and 58 grams of carbs, which you've gotta figure is a heck of a lot of sugar. (Tall, the smallest size, comes in at 186 and 44.) Well, I like that it's fat-free but I'm thinking it's not so great to get so much sugar. Eeeep. In a comparison of the tall sizes of all of their flavors -- they are all fat free, but four of their flavors are all the same as far as calories go (Mango Mangia, Peach, Strawberry Banana, and Wildberry Blast) but the Strawberry Lemoade has more than 100 more calories. So avoid that one!

Everything Yogurt - This is one of the places in the food court at the Old Post Office Pavilion. Their smoothies seem a little less sugary than Cosi's, and they are smooth without being too thick. But darn, I can't find any nutrition info online. I'll have to ask next time I'm there.

Potbelly's - While the Potbelly's site includes info for their sandwiches, I can't find any on their smoothies and shakes. Their shakes are made with regular ice cream, and I'm assuming that their smoothies are yogurt but can't be sure. I'll have to investigate further the next time I'm there.

Ben & Jerry's - The B&J web site includes nutritional info for all of their pint flavors, including both the low fat and regular frozen yogurt. I don't see any info for smoothies themselves, but I think it's safe to use the fro-yo stats to calcuate the approximate value for the beverage form. I don't actually go to B&J very often, cuz it's WAY too tempting... but it's an option nearby my office, so I imagine I might sample their smoothies at some point.

Olsson's - I also don't have any info on my favorite smoothie, which is offered by the Footnotes Cafe in the Olsson's Penn Quarter. It's very creamy and tastes like there's a lot of dairy in it, but I also know they use a banana, which could make for a thicker consistency too. And it's a pretty big serving of yumminess. I'll try to ask how they make it next time - but I'm a little afraid to find out cuz it's so darn good!

So what have I learned here? Well, mostly that places don't keep nutritional info on beverages... and that I need to do a little more digging to see what exactly it is I'm getting on my afternoon smoothie runs. But I'm still guessing that Cosi has the lowest-point options but they're way too high in sugar, and that Olsson's may have a higher-fat version that is actually better in nutrition. We shall see...

Not Bad in New York

I did pretty well on my New York trip, diet-wise. I would guess that I walked about 2-3 miles each day, and my food choices were pretty decent. I really only had one splurge-y meal, dinner on Wednesday night. The rest of my food choices were pretty much dictated by availability and budget. As I said on my other blog, I stuck to a strict cash-only budget, including on all food options. So that means I couldn't really indulge too much in terms of portion size or richness of food. Not a bad plan!

Wednesday
Breakfast - I ruled out my usual McGriddles combo breakfast at Union Station (so good but a heart attack in a paper sack) and went for a cinnamon bagel with cream cheese and a bottle of water instead. It's not the best diet food ever, but it was bulky enough that it kept me full and I didn't buy any train snacks the whole way up.

Lunch - I was really hungry by the time I finally got lunch at about 1 pm. I ate at the little cafe in the International Center of Photography, which had all kinds of gourmet options. I went for the roast beef and horseradish sandwich on a dark brown bread (pumpernickel?) baguette with a glass of ginger iced tea. I wanted chips, but was watching the budget so I didn't get any. Phew.

Dinner - This was at a little Italian place on Restaurant Row. All of these places had 3-4 course prix fixe dinners for the before-theatre crowd, and I couldn't resist sampling such a good bargain. For $24, I got a 3-course dinner with hot tea. You could choose any of the items off their menu, and I went with fairly decent choices diet-wise - not the best, but not the worst either. I had a basil, tomato and mozzarella salad; a filet of sole sauteed in lemon, butter and white wine with veggies and rice sides; and a delicious piece of tiramisu. Somewhat indulgent, but I'd done a lot of walking that afternoon and felt it was worth it!

Snacks - I did get a little Cheerios cereal bar to eat mid-afternoon, before I walked down to the river for the harbor cruise. That was a sugary/carby fix, but it was actually only 3 points. Better than expected.

Thursday
Breakfast - There wasn't any restaurant or room service option in my hotel for breakfast, and I didn't want to spend too much money on this meal. So I grabbed a Power Bar and another one of those Cheerios bars plus a bottle of water to eat while I was walking around Central Park. By pacing myself, those actually did get me through until about 1 o'clock for lunch.

Lunch - I ate at Penn Station while waiting for my train. I was actually okay with this, cuz I'd been looking forward to this meal ever since I got off the train the day before. Walking around Penn Station, I had been reminded that one of the best sandwiches I've ever had in my whole life came from Zaro's Deli, which I'd gotten when coming back from NYC on a business trip in March. So, woohoo! I was so excited to get that sandwich again! It's a curried chicken salad with cranberries and this great honey-mustard spread on pumpernickel. Mmmmm. I had a Coke Zero and a bag of salt & vinegar chips, and I was so happy. :-)

Snacks - I was really hungry by about 5:30 on the train, and I knew I wouldn't be home for a good, normal, diet dinner until after 7. So I did break down and use some of the very last of my cash on the cheapest snack option in the cafe car. Unfortunately, the cheapest item was a gigantic chocolate chip cookie. Which I ate, but didn't love cuz it was so sugary sweet. I downed a whole bottle of water pretty quickly to try and get rid of that sugar. Ick.

And then by Thursday night I was home for dinner and life is now back to normal.... we'll see if I have any change on the scale this week. I hope so!

These Are Pretty Tasty

Last week, Onyah and I happened to be running an errand together at Safeway and comparing some of our favorite household cleaners, facial scrubs, and diet food items. I forgot how much fun it can be to be in a grocery store with a friend! :-)

Anyway, she tipped me off on one of her favorite dessert treats - the Weight Watchers brand English Toffee Crunch Bars. They are yummy little ice cream bars covered with a hard shell of chocolate and English toffee. It's a bargain at only 2 points per pop, and Onyah was right - you get a ton of them! Would you believe they come 12 to a box? Good deal!

A Better Snack

I believe I have discussed my addition to salty snacks before. I am a sucker for tortilla chips, potato chips and popcorn. These things are pretty much all the devil's work as far as nutritional value -- lots of salt and fat, very little nutrients or other redeeming values. And one of my biggest challenges is that I totally OD on salty snacks. I can and have been known to devour an entire bag of chips or popcorn all in one sitting. And then proceed to pass out in a carb coma. Yeah, great, huh?

I have recently found a new addiction, though, that helps meet that salty snack need with just a little bit more to offer in the way of nutrition. CASHEWS! Cashews rock.

Nuts are fatty and can be high in calories, but it's the good kind of fat - the unsaturated and monounsaturated kind that don't raise your cholesterol. And nuts are full of nutrients, like iron and protein and magnesium and potassium and a whole bunch of others that I have no idea what they do - but they're good for you! I wish I had discovered them a few years back when I was a vegetarian, cuz I was never good about getting protein in those days. The key, though, is to get dry roasted and not oil roasted, if you can - watch for that on the label.

Yes, it's true, I'm still finding it hard to stop at more than just a handful of nuts - what is it about salty snacks that makes you want to keep eating them all until they're gone? - but I'm happy that I've found a vice that's at least a little better for me.

I Heart Caramel

I've already discussed my new-found love for Jello Sugar-Free Caramel pudding cups (divine!), but I have discovered a new reason to love caramel! Quaker Quakes, a mini rice cake snack, may not sound all that exciting.... but their caramel corn flavor is delicious! These little rice cakes taste like a lighter version of Cracker Jack, and they make for a great snack. One serving is only 1 point - and that means the whole bag only has 7 points. So you can actually get a filling snack for only 2-3 points before wrapping up the bag and putting it away for later! :-)

I haven't tried any of the savory flavors, but for now I'm happy as a clam with my deliciously sweet favorites!