On Tuesdays, Casey has his night class, so he doesn’t typically get home until 8pm.  I usually try to have a nice dinner waiting for him when we gets home, since he is also usually starving.  Since this is a crazy school week for me, tonight’s dinner needed to be all about convenience. 

I picked up these tofu filled raviolis on my last trip to Earth Fare.  Tonight seemed like the perfect time to try them!

Along with my favorite marinara sauce from Trader Joe’s…

And some frozen yellow squash.  This bring us back to the portion conversation.  After a long day of classes, both of us were really hungry.  I knew I wanted a substantial dinner, but I didn’t want a heaping bowl of pasta either.  Enter the squash – I filled each of our bowls with half squash, half ravioli, so that we still got big dinners, but only half had the higher calories of pasta.

It doesn’t get more convenient than simply boiling water!

The squash were the perfect thing to sub in with the raviolis, and give this bowl a boost in portion, as well as NUTRITION!

Served with a yummy side salad of spinach, olives, feta crumbles, tomatoes, and slice mushrooms.

And drizzled with a homemade dressing – balsamic vinegar, coarse ground mustard, honey, and a tiny drop of olive oil.

I haven’t made pasta in a while, so this bowl was a nice change of pace from our regular rice and bean dinners.

A sprinkle of parmesan makes everything a little bit better, don’t you think?

The tofu raviolis were delicious too – definitely plan to buy these again!

So many of you guys had such great insight in our conversation around portion control, that I thought I’d take an extra minute to share my own thoughts.  I think it is really great that the FDA is working to re-label foods and present nutrition facts more clearly.  Part of our countries biggest problem is that people just don’t understand what they are eating. 

For us foodies and blog readers, we live for this stuff.  Most of us have a clear understanding that things like juice, chips, crackers, etc. – typically contain multiple servings in a package, but the average American doesn’t know that.  Hard to believe, but it’s true!  It seems like companies have figured out a way to present misleading nutrition facts by increasing the number of servings in a package, so that overall calories and fat seem lower.  By forcing companies to re-label food with realistic portion sizes, consumers will have a better understanding of what they are consuming.  Instead of a 12 ounce bottle of juice saying it is 80 calories (but FOUR servings!), now it will say 320 calories directly on the front of the  label.  I am excited to see what steps the FDA and food labeling administrations take on this in the next few years.

Want to join the conversation about this?  Share your thoughts, and enter to win a food scale!

As much as I could sit and type about portion control all day long – I gotta get to class!

60; Tomorrow is my last day in Stocks, Soups, and Sauces, which means practical exams and a written final – eeeeeeek!