Hamburger Chop Suey

Hamburger Chop Suey (4 servings) Calorie Count

1 lb lean ground beef 812
1 med onion, diced 40
2 ribs celery, sliced diagonally 14
1/2 lb fresh bean sprouts 80
1/2 lb fresh mushrooms, sliced 62
1 1/2 cup water 0
1 beef boullion cube 6
2 tablespoons cornstarch 58
1/4 cup soya sauce 48
salt and pepper to taste 0
____
Total Calories 1120
Total per serving 280

1. Crumble meat and saute with diced onion and sliced celery
2. Add sprouts, mushrooms, water, boullion cube and simmer for several minutes
3. Mix cornstarch and soya sauce and stir into mixture. Cook until thickened.
4. Divide into four casserole servings, seal and freeze.
5. Before eating, thaw and either place in 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or put in Microwave oven on high for 2 minutes.

My favourite recipe

This one of my favourite recipes. It is very simple for anyone to make. Hope you try it!

Spaghetti DeLuca (6 servings) Calorie counts

Sauce (family secret)
¼ lb lean ground beef 203
1 – 6 oz can tomato paste 140
1 - 6 oz can of water 0
1 - 14 oz can tomato sauce 123
1 – 14 oz can of water 0

Season to taste with:
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Oregano
Bay leaf

Pasta
1 – 500 gm pkg Spaghetti noodles 1404
(count is based on 9 cups cooked noodles)
6 tbsp parmesan cheese 138
salt for boiling water 0

Total Calories 2008
Calories per serving 334 (based on six servings)


1. In saucepan, brown beef until all red colour is gone.
2. Add tomato paste and allow mixture to fry together for 3 minutes (watch you do not burn it)
3. Add tomato sauce and bring to a simmer.
4. Add both cans of water and all your seasoning.
5. Cook for at least 1 hour on simmer.
6. In large pot, bring almost 4 quarts of water to a boil.
7. Add two cupped handfuls of salt (the salt will be rinsed away when the spaghetti is rinsed.
8. Drain and rinse in cold water to stop the cooking process.
9. Measure 1 ½ cups of spaghetti per casserole, cover with equal amounts of sauce.
10.Freeze the portions for later.

How we did it

At the beginning, we worked together. We would plan what we would eat, looking at luscious recipes and traditional dinners, making decisions about what we wanted to cook. We did our shopping and in just over three hours we prepared and cooked calorie counted meals for the whole week making sure that no meal exceeded 400 calories. Most doctor recommended diets suggest you do not consume less that 1000 to 1200 calories a day.

We invested in TV dinner trays, plastic separated freezer containers and small aluminum casserole containers with lids and once we made the dinners we divided each recipe into the number of portions that would make them contain less than 400 calories, cook and freeze them. We had a variety of frozen dinners in the freezer and we (and the others in our family) could help ourselves without the fuss of planning and cooking when we were the most hungry.

As you may guess, the first part of our plan was labour intensive - we had to get calorie counts for every meal we wanted to make. These included our mom's traditional spaghetti recipe, and even comfort food choices.

But now we have hundreds of recipes - all calorie counted with instructions about how many portions they need to be divided into. Some were high calorie, so the portion was quite small. However, sometimes you need to splurge and it is great to have a portioned snack or dinner that never goes over 400 calories.

Okay, I can hear you saying - why not just buy frozen dinners at the grocery store?

Actually, that is what gave us the germ of the plan. can you guess why we didn't just do exactly that?

Success followed

Neither of us have very much will power. We're human. Watching what you eat at every meal requires horrendous amounts of will power. What a way to ensure defeat.

But, this time, with what we started calling the Measured Meals Program, we had very little trouble staying "on" the program. We were eating our own food, prepared the way we like it, we started having fun with it. We both lost weight in a slow but steady way. We could talk about those wonderful foods we loved to eat because we were still eating them. Okay, you are saying by now, what the heck are you talking about? It is not possible to eat the foods you love and still lose weight ... well we did.

A Beginning

My sister and I are experts at gaining weight. We are both good cooks and love to eat what we cook. Every diet we've ever been on - separately or together - has been so restrictive, or expensive or boring that we've always found ourselves "falling off the wagon" and slipping back to our old eating habits very quickly.

During a coffee break, we discussed the things we had tried previously. We made a list of the aspects we liked (and didn't like) about each of the programs we had tried.

What didn't we like?

1. Anything artificial. That included diet pills. slimming milkshakes and candy filler-uppers.

2. We couldn't afford most of the never-ending payments at an expensive weight-loss clinic.

3. We didn't like preparing one meal for the rest of our family and another for ourselves, specially at a time when we were hungry and had low resistance.

4. Salads were lovely as long as we weren't condemned to eat them forever. We hated it that so many delicious foods - basic to our ethnic background and family favourites - were banned forever.

5. We didn't mind feeling hungry but constant starvation wasn't so great.

6. We were okay about some exercising but - hey ... enough is enough!

What did we like? ...

1. A proper weight scale that showed even small losses.

2. Taking responsibility for our own successes or failure rather than needing an expert to tell us.

3. The support of others who were going through the same experiences as we were.


Looking at the two lists we made up our mind to change the negatives. We made a pact to try something new, inexpensive and time freeing.

For want of a better term, we call our idea the "Measured Meals Plan" rather than a diet plan because we don't like to think about being on a diet.

We eat all the things we like - we have only taken the guess work out of our portions. It makes perfect sense to look at the calories we consumed, seeing as we felt our regular eating habits were nutritional, if overdone!

The results were fantastic! Our whole family got involved and learned a lot about calorie counts. And, the best thing of all, we began to lose weight!