It's Dinner and there's no POINTS to eat!

Alright, we've all been there- it's time for dinner and there are little or no POINTS left to eat! What do you do? Cry and BLT yourself into eating 25 more POINTS than you would have, had you actually fixed a creative POINT-less meal?

So, here is what I did tonight on a very empty stomach and a slim POINT budget of 1.5 POINTS left for dinner. (Now how I got here is another story, for another day). What I did was, take some whole grain thin spaghetti, broke it up into about 1-2" pieces and browned it in a frying pan (no oil). I tossed this in the rice cooker with brown rice (Uncle Ben's) and the proper amount of H2O and bullion. Then I abandon my children, and headed out to the store for all of my favorite veggies; napa cabbage, snow peas, celery, carrots, broccoli, onions, green onions, water chestnuts, mushrooms, etc. I took these bad boys home and cut like a mad woman. I put a little canola and sesame seed oil in the pan and stir fried these guys to tender crisp. I seasoned them with garlic, ginger and soy sauce. I dished myself a half cup of the rice pilaf and then PILED on the veggies. It was so good and the family liked it too. I am EXTREMELY satisfied and very happy to have stuck to my POINTS target for today!

The great thing about this meal is that you can purchase Stir Fry Vegetables in the freezer section of the store to have on hand for a POINTS emergency. The rice can also be made in advance and frozen in smaller amounts for an instant meal. (If you have NO points, you can just eat the veggies :)

The main trick to surviving a "NO or low POINT" dinner is a little creativity and not panicking. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can just "fast" until the next day, you will pick and snack until you have consumed more POINTS than you would have, had you just made something that was low POINTS and filling.

Hang in there! Be sure to send me your favorite ways to survive those POINT-deficient evenings!