Some new ideas

Thanks to my brother Charlie (www.backtothefridge.com) who posted on Megan’s site today (www.megansmunchies.blogspot.com) he made a recipe our Dad made growing up (Pumpkin chocolate chip bread) and used a new tool to figure out the calories that I never used before.  It’s a recipe analysis where you can put all the ingredients used in a recipe and put in the servings and it will make a little nutritional label for you.  I’ve had a lot of fun playing around with it tonight! For example, if I am making my salsa chicken I would add 4 ounces of chicken, 1 cup of salsa and 1/2 cup brown rice, 1 ounce cheese and 1/4 cup black beans.  Here is what it would come up with: 

Did you see on the bottom that my nutrition grade is A-!  Not bad.  This is a great meal for dinner!  You can also tweak a recipe before you make it, to lessen the calories or nutrition.  For example, this is high in sodium, so I could change up the recipe to alter any nutritional value I want.  If I see it has too much saturated fat, I can change it up by lessening an ingredient or just taking it out altogether.  Thanks Charlie, for the information, I will use this site a lot to figure out the calories in the foods I eat!