Sunday, November 14, 2010

Orange Chicken

I don't know about you, but I love me some Chinese food. When I found the virtual cheat sheet on WW.com about how many points are in chinese foods, I flipped. It was so darn expensive points wise. It almost (but not quite) ruined my love for Chinese.

One of my favorite dishes is orange chicken from Panda Express. Here's the nutritional breakdown:

Serving size 5.4 oz
Calories: 400
Fat g: 20
Fiber: 0

If you were just counting calories, you would say, hey, thats not too bad. 400 calories for almost 5.5 ounces is great....

If you are on weight watchers, you are going to do what I did, and freak the eff out... Ready? It's 10 points. Okay that doesn't look so bad right... 10 points.... *except* that's not including anything else. No rice, no chow mein, no drinks... thats JUST the chicken.
Curse you delicious golden chicken!

If you add in the rice (fried, natch) it turns into 22 points
*rice is 570 cal., 18g fat, and 8g fiber = 12 points

I am sobbing inside right now. I love PE and I love orange chicken. I only get 28 points a day. I am not spending 79% of my dailies on that! This week, I am lucky enough to have the following items in my inventory:

-Orange juice
-Lemon extract
-Chicken
-Brown rice

Liiiight bulb! I will make my OWN orange chicken. I looked up a recipe for a orange chicken glaze and then I built it into WW.com and found out my orange chicken (sauteed chicken chunks with orange glaze) is 4 points a serving! Yay! It's also 3 oz :)
Brown rice .5 cup per person is 2 points.

Take that, you stupid Panda. If your species weren't endangered I'd tell you right where to shove that wok!!
But since you are endangered, dear sweet panda bear, I will just cry and say no thanks whenever I am invited out.

I've done this now a few times. Take a recipe for something I really love and then find a lower-points version of it. That way I can still enjoy what I love without having to drastically alter anything. Yay WW! You rock.

Also, pomegranates? Freaking rock! I bought 3 of them and used one for a marinade for a pork loin (delish) and then juiced the other two so I could add them to my tea and have pom-tea. Delish. I also love eating the seeds, which is weird because most fruits I hate the seeds. But if you look at a pomegranate you will realize it is not most fruits. It's a weird little alien fruit that happens to be a nutritional powerhouse. I would buy cratefuls of pomegranates if I could afford to and also have room to store them.


EAT THIS its good for you...no srsly

2 comments:

  1. TJs Test Kitchen blog has some great recipes. Also look at Skinny Taste--excellent!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You should totally post the recipe you created. I love panda express and hardly go there anymore due to the high points.

    Once I even ate a tiny bit during the day so I could actually get a meal there. So worth it! :)

    ReplyDelete

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