SMORGASBORD: Soup for you ... Easy but pricey ... Healthy calendar

• Progesso Chicken Pot Pie soup

Progresso has added Chicken Pot Pie Style to its light line of soups. (Bill Hogan/Chicago Tribune/MCT)

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Soup for you

A pitfall of comfort foods? The calories.

But Progresso has added two comfort-food standards to its light line of soups: Chicken Pot Pie Style and Creamy Potato With Bacon & Cheese. Each 18.5-ounce can delivers two 100-calorie servings (a serving has a Weight Watchers 2 Points Plus value). The soups are delicate, but the rich classic flavors are there.

Suggested retail price: $2.69 per can. A store locater is at progresso.com.

Easy but pricey

A new Kraft offering is three flavors of its Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese Dinner mixes in single-serve (1¼-cup) microwave tubs. The regular Homestyle offerings, which make four 1-cup servings, involve boiling the dry macaroni and preparing a cooked sauce with butter, milk and the included cheese and seasoning packets. The new single-serve mixes just have you add water and the seasoning packet to the tub, microwave and stir in the prepared cheese sauce.

At one store, where the stovetop mix costs $2.14 and the milk and butter together cost no more than 35 cents, for a total of 62 cents per cup, the 1¼ -cup microwave mix also costs $2.14 — $1.71 a cup, almost three times as much.

Healthy calendar

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach is offering a 2013 Healthy & Homemade calendar.

The calendar supports MyPlate messages from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about balancing calories and avoiding oversized portions, and it also includes preparation and storage tips.

Each month, an illustration shows a complete menu and gives the MyPlate breakdown of portions.

The calendar has other key features, including space for goals, daily activity tracking and appointments, and menu photos. Each menu includes a nutritional analysis that looks just like a package label.

The calendars are available in the ISU Extension and Outreach online store (https://store.extension.iastate.edu/) and cost $2, plus shipping.