meal philosophy

So this series has had me thinking about how to construct new dishes to fit around 600 calories. 

Typically, I start with a meat both because I like it a lot and it's filling. So chicken or lean beef is a good starting point.

I'm going to want some sort of sauce/flavoring. But this is where you can try to go low-calorie to save room for other items. Like instead of full-calorie ranch dressing or a honey brown sugar sauce, there's tons of ways to get flavor for less: hot sauce and vinegars, lemon and lime juice, light sour cream, soy sauce, etc. 

If you have low-calorie flavoring, then you have room for something like rice or a bun. Burgers are better on buns, a burrito bowl without rice is kinda sad. 

But say you want a different premium ingredient like cheese or bacon. A good way to do it is to go meat + low-cal flavoring + no bun or rice. In other words for the same calories you can either have a hamburger on a bun or a cheeseburger on a plate. Instead of serving a sloppy joe on a bun, I could serve it on a plate with grated cheddar. Yesterday, I had chicken + cheese but no rice or bun. 

I saw someone serve sloppy joe mix on tater tots and covered with cheese. If I wanted tater tots and cheese, I could do it, just would need to replace the meat. It's like those sports roster memes where you only have $15 to build the perfect team. You can't take 5 players all worth $5. You have to make trade-offs to get what you want under the constraints.