The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

A couple of weeks ago, I figured my 2-day weight gain must have been related to the Chicken Parmigiana I ate for lunch one day. I’m a curious person by nature, and becoming much more interested in knowing the nutrition information for the foods I eat, so I decided to investigate the caloric value for my meal.

I started my search on Olive Garden’s website. Sadly, after drilling through the site map and searching for nutrition information, it appears Olive Garden’s site lists only menu items and descriptions, but no nutrition information. I recalled Consumerist had posted a huge table of restaurants’ nutrition information and checked it to make sure I wasn’t missing it - turns out they came up empty-handed too.

Recalling that Starbucks prints a pamphlet available at stores, I decided to visit my local Olive Garden. I received this one-page, front-and-back pamphlet titled “Garden Fare” that listed only “low fat” menu items:

Surely, a restaurant chain as large as Olive Garden would have more nutrition information available than this paltry disclosure! I called the Guest Relations number listed on the pamphlet (1-800-331-2729) and asked the person who answered the phone if they have more nutrition information available than what’s listed on this pamphlet - no, the Guest Relations person replied. I asked if she had nutrition information available for the Chicken Parmigiana I previously ate - no, she replied, the pamphlet listed all the nutrition information she had available. I wonder what kinds of questions these people are supposed to be able to answer?

Olive Garden breadsticks

So, this pamphlet is all I’ve got to work with. There are some interesting things to glean from it - for instance, the breadsticks that are automatically left at every table is not listed. A glance at calorie-count.com lists the breadsticks with 140 calories per breadstick. Holy crap! Remember that Subway’s 6″ Italian bread loaf has 200 calories, and there’s gotta be at least 3x, if not 4x, the amount of bread in a 6″ loaf. Breadsticks are one of those uncounted calories - they appear, you munch while talking and waiting for the real food. At 140 calories per breadstick, you can’t afford not to count these. Wonder what ingredients are lurking in Olive Garden breadsticks…

Here’s something else that’s interesting - they list Italian dressing, but not the nutrition information. Serving size is listed as 2 fluid ounces, which equals 4 tablespoons. Again turning to calorie-count, I see Olive Garden’s regular dressing is 90 calories per 2 tblsp, or 180 calories per serving. CalorieKing lists Olive Garden’s light dressing at 37 calories per “serving” (I’m assuming this is 2 tblsp), or 74 per serving. Compare this to something like Kraft’s Zesty Italian at 109 calories per 2 tblsp, and Olive Garden’s isn’t that bad. They do define their serving size as twice a normal serving size, but the salads are big enough to share anyway. That is, assuming their serving size of salad is one bowl…

And that Chicken Parmigiana? No nutrition information. The closest I can find is CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, which lists a serving at 793 calories. 1 oz of eggplant is 10 calories; 1 oz of chicken is 47 calories. The chicken pieces were definitely larger than my palm, so I’d guess they were roughly 8 oz each - 80 calories of eggplant versus 376 calories of chicken. Substitute chicken for eggplant in CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, and you’ve got a meal with 1089 calories - and that may not even include the pasta! Even eating half of my meal, I consumed 220 calories plus the pasta - no wonder I gained weight two days in a row. And to think I used to eat at least two breadsticks, half of a salad, an appetizer and an entire meal - easily 1800 calories in one sitting.

Definitely not conducive to my new healthy lifestyle.

Update - it appears Olive Garden lists the Garden Fare pamphlet on their site at
http://www.olivegarden.com/menus/garden_fare/. How about giving us all your nutritional information, Olive Garden? What do you have to hide?

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I mentioned previously my wife and I were cooking dinner together for Valentine’s.  The dinner was a success, so I thought I’d share my recipes.  The dinner consisted of a salad and a mojo-style fondue.

Salad: wilted spinach & raspberry (thanks Dave for help on this one)
Ingredients
One bunch fresh spinach
Large-leaf green lettuce
Crumbled Gargonzola or Bleu cheese
Nuts (I used maple-crusted pecans, but walnuts have worked fine too)
Fresh raspberries
Tomato (I prefer vine-ripened)
Avocado
Balsamic vinaigrette
Raspberry vinaigrette

Assembly
Wilt the spinach - I clipped the spinach and put in a saucepan, added one tablespoon each of balsamic and raspberry vinaigrette, covered the pan and put it on low heat for a few minutes.  Unfortunately, I didn’t keep track of how long (I was adding raspberry-jam hearts to her plate), but it shouldn’t take longer than 3-5 minutes or so.  The longer it stays in the saucepan, the more it resembles canned spinach.  I plated it by making a bowl out of one large leaf of lettuce, started with the spinach and added ingredients.  The sweetness of the raspberries, tomato and nuts went nicely with the saltiness of the cheese.  This salad was an absolute success, probably my favorite part of the meal.

Fondue: Mojo-style
Ingredients (I adapted this recipe.)
1 head garlic
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
Cayenne pepper
Lemon pepper
1/2 cup crushed pineapple
2 cups orange juice
1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 cup minced onion
2 teaspoons oregano
1/4 cup virgin olive oil

Assembly
Peel and press garlic, then mash with salt and pepper.  Stir in juice, onion and pineapple and put on low heat for at least 30 minutes.  Add oregano, lemon pepper and cayenne pepper to taste.   About ten minutes before transferring to the fondue pot, whisk in oil.

I bought a large chicken breast, some beef (it was some sort of blade cut, but I prefer tenderloin), mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes and raviolis.  I have made potstickers from scratch in the past, but dinner preparation was running long as it was and we were hungry.  When cooking the items, keep in mind to use separate fondue forks for meat (so the raw meat doesn’t touch the utensils and plates you eat with), leave the meat in long enough to thoroughly cook (I think it took between 3-5 minutes on 300), and be careful with raviolis and potstickers lest they burts and ooze cheese into the broth (I didn’t mind, but you might).

For sauces, we used a sweet sesame sauce, a BBQ sauce and a green goddess dip I made from scratch:

Dipping sauce: Green Goddess
Ingredients (I adapted these recipes here and here.)
3/4 cup fesh terragon
3/4 cup fresh chives
3/4 cup Italian parsley
3/4 cup green onion
3 tblsp lemon juice
3/4 cup light sour cream
3/4 cup white wine vinegar
salt, garlic, pepper to taste

Assembly
Throw it all in a blender and turn it on.  It didn’t quite taste right, so I added 2tblsp of yogurt; I wish I had added mayonnaise instead - I think that would have been perfect.  As it was, the vinegar and terragon really made this sauce.  After blending it all up, put it in a dish and stick it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes to let it thicken.

How about you - have a favorite Valentine or special meal to share?