Sweet Potatoes!

Having an infant has reminded me of one important, sometimes-forgotten food: sweet potatoes.  My baby (and as I understand from other moms, *many* babies) love sweet potatoes.  I have to admit that I’ve been thoroughly enjoying sweet potatoes with him over the course of the past several months.  We recently graduated from the mashed/pureed variety to baked sweet potato fries in our house, and I’m quite happy about that too.  Sweet potatoes seem to be the one vegetable I know he will consistently eat and that I will enjoy with him.  If you haven’t had a sweet potato in awhile, I highly recommend it.

So when I picked up the Healthy Choice Rosemary Chicken & Sweet Potatoes, it was with a sigh of baby love.  I do love sweet potatoes.  However, this meal didn’t provide the tastiest example.  I believe this is probably due somewhat to the whole processing and heating of frozen meals, which generally has an impact on the texture and flavor of red potatoes too.  I’m just not sure there can be a foolproof way to capture the true tastiness of sweet potatoes in a frozen meal, though I have to hand it to Healthy Choice for trying.

Regarding the other flavors in this meal:  the other vegetables are yellow carrots and pearl onions.  So it’s like a trifecta of vegetables one rarely eats!  I can’t say that I could really taste the rosemary in this meal, which is somewhat surprising and disappointing; I generally love rosemary in pretty much anything.

Overall, I am really liking the “steaming entrees” from Healthy Choice.  This one was only 180 calories, and while I did supplement my lunch with yogurt and fruit, the meal did leave me feeling sufficiently full.  Don’t get me wrong; it was not a meal with super-duper flavor, but a very healthy meal that contained, according to the packaging, 50% of my daily vegetable requirement.  Not only that, but the meal contained a full 100% of my daily Vitamin A requirement.  That’s pretty impressive, and it is thanks to both the carrots and that newly rediscovered favorite, SWEET POTATOES!!!

Details

Calories:  180
Fat:  2.5 g
Sodium:  500 mg
Notable good nutritional content:  100% Vitamin A
Notes on cooking:  one 4-4 ½ minute single shotNotes on packaging:  clear plastic tray, recyclable 

Baby Food for Thought

You’ll have to trust me on this one, but in order for me to write about today’s meal, I need to tell you a little bit about baby food, the other major category of food in my life. 

I’m pleased to report that I make most of my baby’s food, thanks to an incredible little baby food processor on loan to me by my incredible friend Mary Kate.  I should mention that this appliance can both steam and process the food, making cleanup a breeze. 

I get an incredible satisfaction out of making baby food because it makes me feel like I am making conscious, healthy choices about what is going into his body.  Additionally, I can begin to introduce him to flavors that he is going to eat during the coming years when I make his big boy meals for him.  And as an additional benefit for myself, making baby food has forced me to learn a little bit about the nutritional value of the food I presently consume (and make into baby food...). 

I am not a hater of pre-made baby food.  I have a stash in my cupboard for when I run out of homemade baby food (which, coincidentally, is almost never because of the amazing little phenomenon of freezing ice cube-sized portions of homemade baby food and then thawing them out as needed…but I digress).  But two things do bug me about pre-made baby food:  1) the texture is sort of unreal, not representing any likeness to the texture of the grown-up version of the same food, and 2) in most varieties, the flavor of the pre-made baby food is much blander than the real thing. 

So why all the jabber about baby food?

Smart Ones Lemon Herb Chicken Piccata

Today’s meal is the Smart Ones® Lemon Herb Chicken Piccata. The front of the box describes it as “grilled white meat chicken in a tangy lemon sauce with rice & spring vegetables.”  Really?  Well, the sauce was definitely not tangy and only marginally lemony.  And do green beans really count as spring vegetables?

I think I am just about done with Smart Ones® frozen meals.  Why?  Well, I think I could pop one into the baby food processor and turn them into the equivalent of pre-made baby food with ease.  Texture?  Blah.  Taste?  Double blah. 

The one redeeming quality of this meal is that it has a remarkably low number of calories and fat grams.  But with no notable positive nutritional content to speak of, and a long list of other frozen meal options out there, I believe I’m going to pass on these Smart Ones® from now on. 

Details

Calories:  230
Fat:  1.5 g
Sodium:  540 mg
Notable good nutritional content:   :(
Notes on cooking:   2 ½ minutes, stir, 1 minute
Notes on packaging:  black tray, recyclable 

Move Over, Lean Cuisine Paninis!

I stated in an earlier post that I’m not a giant fan of the Lean Cuisine Panini line. The bread just doesn’t cook particularly well in the microwave and I never feel like I’ve consumed enough of a meal.  But when it comes to taste, I think I’ve found an awesome alternative.


I recently enjoyed Stouffer’s Corner Bistro® Chicken Quesadilla Flatbread Melt.  And I should emphasize that I *really* enjoyed it.  The seasoned flatbread was excellent, and unlike the bread of the Lean Cuisine paninis, it was able to achieve the desired texture, moisture, and flavor in the cooking process.  While the ingredients are very similar to the Lean Cuisine ingredients – chicken, roasted red peppers, Poblano peppers and onions – I think there must be *more* here because I felt like I had consumed much more of a complete meal.


However, a glance at the nutritional content begins to explain my enjoyment:

• 370 calories here in contrast to 310 calories in Lean Cuisine
• 15 g of fat here in contrast to 9 g of fat in Lean Cuisine

But truthfully, I think the taste of this one is worth the 60 extra calories and the 15 g of fat (only 6 g saturated fat, by the way).  If you haven’t tried this product, or any of the Stouffer’s flatbread items, I highly recommend you give them a try. 

Details

Calories:  370
Fat:  15 g
Sodium:  640 mg
Notable good nutritional content:   Vitamin C 25% / Calcium 35%
Notes on cooking:   Single 2 ½ minute shot
Notes on packaging:  cardboard box and silver crisping tray; nothing recyclable

Actual Nutrition? Who Knew!?!?

I launched into Healthy Choice’s Chicken Teriyaki without much thought.  It was a busy day and I was trying to get a lot done while I ate through lunch.  It was fine.  I can’t say it really left me with a strong negative or positive impression when it came to taste.  The side of vegetables – which included carrots, red peppers, shelled edamame – lacked salt, as is customary with these compartmentalized tray meals.  The gingersnap peach crisp was an interesting change.  Given that most of these compartmentalized trays boast an apple crisp, it was good to have a different dessert.  Admittedly, though, I think I prefer the apple crisp; Healthy Choice has perfected that option a little better than this one.

Near the end of my meal, I grabbed the box to make my notes for this blog and noticed that when compared to other meals I’ve reviewed, this one claims quite a bit of nutritional content.  In the details at the end of each blog entry, under “notable good nutritional content,” I generally note any vitamin/mineral when 20% of the daily value is contained in the product.  For a few meal reviews, I’ve had only one or two items to list.  Having *seven* might be a record for this blog. I, for one, take pride in the times when I make a truly healthy choice for a lunchtime meal, and this is one I can really feel good about.

Details

Calories:  350
Fat:  6 g
Sodium:  500 mg
Notable good nutritional content:   Vitamin A 35% / Vitamin C 50% / Vitamin E 20% / Manganese 50% / Folic Acid 30% / Selenium 30% / Niacin 20%
Notes on cooking:   Single 5 ½ - 6 ½ minute shot
Notes on packaging:  black compartmentalized tray, recyclable

Confessions of a Dieter

Here’s a confession:  I went on an actual, follow-the-instructions diet a few weeks ago.  I’d never done this before because – frankly – I never had to.  Not so anymore.  The physical toll of pregnancy added to the fact that I’m not in my twenties anymore elevated the need for a diet – at least, if I wanted to fit into those pre-pregnancy t-shirts.  Also adding to my need for a diet was the fact that I was – and am – still only learning how to buy and prepare food for just one person. 

The diet I followed was the much-publicized, post-holiday Yoplait Two-Week Tune-Up.  The plan is centered - of course - on Yoplait yogurt, which I already eat quite a bit of.  The gist of the plan is to eat a yogurt cup, a serving of fruit, and a grain for both breakfast and lunch; two servings of vegetables as snacks throughout the day; and a sensible, lean-protein dinner, adding additional dairy servings as necessary to achieve the recommended daily allowance. 

I am well aware that dieting only works when it is part of a lifestyle change that also includes exercise.  I think I’m doing pretty well with that.  Never one to refuse fruits and vegetables, I have now made a deliberate choice to always eat these *first* in my food day.  And the exercise has been helped tremendously by my discovery of a couple of well-scheduled group exercise classes at my gym and some work colleagues who have been doing some group P90X workouts midday (thank our work at a university, which affords us some empty classrooms with projectors very near our offices). 

The result?  Well, in five weeks, I’ve lost half of the pounds I’d like to lose to get to that pre-pregnancy weight.  That seems like a good start to me.  More to come…

So all that said, I’ve had little opportunity to enjoy frozen meals, due to all the fresh fruits and veggies.  But I did have the opportunity recently to enjoy Marie Callender’s Penne Chicken Piccata.  As a Marie Callender steamer, it automatically starts with a gold star and after eating it, I’m comfortable leaving the gold star.  This one contained capers, which is a fun, welcomed flavor.  But there weren’t nearly enough of these flavorful gems.  I would have loved more.

This meal is in a white wine lemon butter sauce.  Call me crazy, but I swear that I could actually *feel* the alcohol a little bit.  Maybe the relaxation of a Friday evening caused me to feel this, but I just can’t be sure.  I do know that it was pleasantly flavorful.  The parmesan cheese also added positively to the flavor. 

Overall, I would have preferred more vegetables, but the flavor truly could not be beat. 

Details

Calories:  370
Fat:  14 g
Sodium:  860 mg
Notable good nutritional content:  15% Iron / 10% Calcium / Folic Acid 35%
Notes on cooking:   single shot, 3 ½ - 4 minutes
Notes on packaging:  clear plastic bowl and colander, reusable/recyclable 

My Call to the Lean Cuisine Corporation

A couple months ago, an interesting thing happened to me; I might even daresay that – given that I write this blog – it was an ironic thing.  I opened a box of Lean Cuisine’s Spinach, Artichoke, & Chicken Panini only to discover that the panini was missing both its plastic wrapping and its silver REVOLUTIONARY GRILLING® tray.  That's right - the two halves of the sandwich were just sitting there in the cardboard box, sort of embarrassed by their nudity.  As the writer of this blog, I had to take a photo of the naked panini and also seize the opportunity to CALL THE LEAN CUISINE CORPORATION to see what recourse I had.

The customer service representative with whom I spoke apologized for the manufacturing flaw and took all kinds of product details from me.  She also asked for some demographic data so that I could be mailed a coupon for a free future Lean Cuisine meal of choice.   The best part, though, was that she said “We do recommend that you not eat the product” about six times before the conversation was done.  Time after time, her bland tone indicated to me that she was reading the sentence from a computer screen. 

A couple weeks later, my coupon arrived.  I was surprised, actually, to only receive a voucher for one free meal.  That only replaced the meal that Lean Cuisine “recommended that I not eat” and required me to go to the grocery store to replace it.  I was hoping for a whole windfall of Lean Cuisine coupons, much like the flood of formula coupons I received after the Similac baby formula recall in the fall. 

Humorous incident aside, I am surprised to find that in at least this particular panini, there is a surprising amount of nutrition:  30% of Vitamin A, 30% of calcium and 20% of iron.  As evidenced by earlier posts, frozen meals just really don’t reflect the epitome of nutrition, so it’s always pleasing to me when a meal boasts a significant percentage of more than one nutrient.

I don’t particularly care for the idea of a frozen sandwich as a meal, but I think I’m pretty alone in this opinion.  Many readers and friends have made verbal and posted comments to me about how much they love these Lean Cuisine paninis.  While each of them generally includes at least a couple of vegetables in the ingredients, they just don’t feel like a complete meal to me (of course, no one ever said you couldn’t add other items to create a fuller meal).  But additionally, REVOLUTIONARY GRILLING® tray or not, a microwaved sandwich just lacks a little luster for me. 

Details

Calories:  310
Fat:  9 g
Sodium:  660 mg
Notable good nutritional content:   Vitamin A 30% / Calcium 30% / Iron 20%
Notes on cooking:   2 minutes and 45 seconds
Notes on packaging:  cardboard and plastic wrap, grilling tray not recyclable

The Comfort that is Lean Cuisine

Today’s meal is the Lean Cuisine Roasted Honey Chicken (of the “Spa Cuisine” line).  I used to buy these Lean Cuisine meals religiously, but ever since I started this blog and expanded my frozen food palate, it feels so odd to me when I do go back to Lean Cuisine for a meal.  Mostly what I mean by that is that most of the Lean Cuisine chicken meals taste very similar to me, whether their flavor is garlic-, sesame-, or lemon-based.  I’m not saying that this is bad, only that they are similar, which might be really familiar/comfortable for many people.  Also, the chunks of chicken in these meals are completely predictable.  Again, not to say that this is bad; they are consistently good-textured chunks of chicken, but I am fairly certain that none of them have been pre-seasoned in any way. 

So today’s meal is honey-based, and honestly, if it weren’t for writing this blog, I’m not sure I could have told you that it was honey-based two minutes after finishing eating it.  The vegetables in this meal are snap peas and yellow beans, with occasional carrots and red onion.  Yellow beans are particularly unusual for a frozen meal, and I appreciate having something different.  The snap peas, however, I found to be particularly stringy, and I had to pull at least a couple long strings out of my mouth because they were unchewable – blegh!  I do have a bizarre homey-like fondness for the whole wheat pilaf that Lean Cuisine produces, so the meal has that in its favor. 

As with most Lean Cuisine meals, I’ll probably buy this again.  And again.  And forget what it tasted like two minutes after eating it. 

Details

Calories:  280
Fat:  4 g
Sodium:  600 mg
Notable good nutritional content:  20% Vitamin A
Notes on cooking:  one 5 minute single shot
Notes on packaging:  black bowl, recyclable

Stock up now in Springfield!

Happy New Year, faithful readers!

I went to a Springfield Shop ‘n Save earlier in the week and discovered a fantastic sale on some great frozen meals.  Even several of the high-end meals were available for only $2 apiece.  Stop by and stock up!

Today’s meal is the Healthy Choice Roasted Chicken Verde.  This is a new kind of steamer for me.  It’s a bit smaller than the usual steamer package. It doesn’t have the two separate tray pieces for steaming; instead, vegetables, rice, and sauce steam inside a single tray.  It seems like a rather small portion size for a lunch meal, but I can’t say I was particularly hungry afterwards (plus, the packaging does say “Ideal for Lunch!”)

More so than with other meals I have eaten, I truly felt like I was eating a plateful of vegetables, and what better way to start off a new year of healthful resolutions?  This meal contains red and poblano peppers and the poblanos actually packed a little bit of natural heat.  In fact, the flavor and heat of the peppers overpowered the cilantro-lime sauce, and that’s just fine with me.  I was truly impressed with the quality ingredients of this meal, also including whole grain rice and sweet corn. 

Details

Calories:  240
Fat:  3.5 g
Sodium:  500 mg
Notable good nutritional content:  15% Vitamin A / 20% Vitamin C
Notes on cooking:  one 3 ½ - 4 minute single shot
Notes on packaging:  clear, uniquely-shaped (let’s call it a wavy square) tray, reusable/recyclable

Could it be? A steamer product she doesn't like??

It might seem as though I’m a sucker committed entirely to any “steamer” meal Healthy Choice or Marie Callendar can offer me.  Well, I’ve found one that is not a favorite, proving that I may not be as much of a sucker as you think I am!

The meal of which I am speaking is Healthy Choice Café Steamers Chicken Pad Thai.  Now, I love pad thai, as a general rule.  But this meal doesn’t taste like what I expect pad thai to taste like; it tastes of more ginger, basil, and curry and no peanut flavor.  This experience caused me to second-guess my expectations of pad thai, which led to my search for pad thai recipes online.  What I learned was: a) pad thai does include peanuts and b) I am happy to just let the frozen food companies and Thai restaurants make pad thai for me – don’t think I’ll be cooking it anytime soon!  So many specialty items that could only be found in an Asian grocery store! 

In addition to the flavor, another unexpected, unwelcome element to this chicken pad thai is the type of pasta.  On the ingredient listing on the package, the pasta is identified as linguini, and this pasta definitely does have a thick, linguini texture to it.  It seemed to me like pad thai noodles are usually thinner and perhaps even glassy.  A quick glance through some of the online pad thai recipes indicated that the pasta generally used in pad thai is identified as “rice stick noodles” or “Thai rice noodles.”  I would certainly frefer the Asian noodles over the linguini. 

So there you have it.  My first not-so-favorable review of a steamer product. 

Details

Calories:  270
Fat:  3.5 g
Sodium:  540 mg
Notable good nutritional content:  40% Vitamin A / 35% Folic Acid
Notes on cooking:  one 3 ½ - 4 ½ minute single shot
Notes on packaging:  clear bowl and colander, reusable/recyclable

A fruit meal that doesn't measure up

Those who have become faithful readers of this blog will be able to immediately guess why the Smart Ones Fruit Inspirations’ Orange Sesame Chicken might get high marks from me.  I’ll give you a few seconds to think about it…Can you guess?...If you answered “because there’s fruit in it,” you are correct!  I’m a big fan of fruit in my frozen meals.  Fruit seems to raise the nutritional value and usually help counteract the saltiness of the meal.

However, the fruit in this meal is not a dominant enough flavor.  Though mandarin oranges are listed as the third ingredient (after rice and chicken), their flavor doesn’t seem to press through strongly enough.  Also, this meal includes one of my *least favorite* frozen meal elements: breaded chicken.  For the most part, breaded chicken just never seems to withstand microwaving and remain respectable, and the chicken in this meal proved to be no exception. 

This meal was so salty that I HAD to take a bite of chocolate immediately afterwards.  It won’t be on my “buy again” list anytime soon.    

This being the first Smart Ones meal that I have reviewed, I was surprised to find the packaging woefully lacking information.  Sure, the required nutrition facts were present, and a text box about Weight Watchers offered some details on the program’s point system, but compared to the helpful http://mypyramid.gov information generally contained on a Healthy Choice package, this Smart Ones packaging was disappointing. 

Details
Calories:  320
Fat:  8 g
Sodium:  680 mg
Notable good nutritional content:  45% Vitamin C
Notes on cooking:  3 minutes, stir, 1 additional minute
Notes on packaging:  black tray, recyclable

Worth it for the dessert

Today’s meal is the Healthy Choice Chicken Parmigiana.  It is in another one of those Old School compartmentalized trays.  Additionally, my meal had another endearing element to it; one broccoli floweret (the side dish) had made its way into the dessert compartment and since it was frozen, could not be removed until the cooking was completed.  As a child, this kind of contamination of one food by another was frustrating, but as an adult, I find it rather endearing to remember how it used to be so incredibly disappointing.

I find that I must start by mentioning the dessert in this meal.  The dessert is identified as “caramel apple multigrain crisp” and it is awesome.  I would be willing to buy this meal again solely for the few bites of dessert. I am smiling now as I reminisce about it…

Moving to the side dish, I found that the broccoli cooked remarkably well, but as it was only vegetables, without any sauce or seasoning, it was woefully in need of salt.  Of course, frozen meals already contain a large amount of sodium, so there is always a question about whether or not one should add additional salt. I found the meal much more enjoyable with the addition of the salt.

Finally, let’s take a look at the main course.  I have lamented about breaded chicken in past posts (breaded chicken seems particularly incompetent at withstanding the rigors of the microwave), but I think the particular breading and non-fried expectation of chicken parmigiana makes for an exception.  It was really pretty good chicken, and the accompanying pasta and tomato sauce complimented it nicely.  The burning question for me was how I was supposed to stir the pasta in the middle of the cooking cycle since it was underneath the slab of chicken???  Not to be overly dramatic about it, but with instructions like that, there is always the possibility of accidently slinging a portion of an already-small meal outside of its tray.  Wouldn’t that be particularly disappointing and frustrating?   

Details

Calories:  350

Fat:  10 g

Sodium:  580 mg

Notable good nutritional content:  50% Vitamin C / 25% Manganese (what the heck is that?)

Notes on cooking:  3 minutes, stir pasta and rotate chicken, 2 ½ - 3 ½ more minutes

Notes on packaging:  black compartmentalized tray, recyclable

A note on the pricing of frozen meals

I am finding that the pricing of these meals is all relative.  Each time I walk into the grocery, some brand of frozen meals is on sale.  Watch those sales.  In order to maximize your spending, don’t have your heart set on a particular brand during a store visit, but know which meals you like from a variety of product lines and then buy whichever brands are cheapest during a particular trip to the store. 

So far, I have not spent more than $2.50 on any meal reviewed in this blog.  A few have been significantly cheaper than this, but $2.50 has been my top price, and most have seemed to land on or just under the $2.50 mark.  Judging from the price tags seen during my last few store visits, I should be able to maintain this top price and still have *plenty* of meals to review in the months to come.

Best chicken meat consumed so far

Today’s meal is the Healthy Choice Café Steamers Sweet Sesame Chicken.  This is a steamer in the same packaging style as my favorite Marie Callendar’s line; it cooks in a single shot, not even requiring the puncturing of the top film, and the bowl and colander are reusable or recyclable.  What was immediately notable about this meal was that instead of small chunks or strips of chicken (frequently the delivery method for chicken in a frozen meal), this meal contained just three fairly sizable pieces of chicken.  I believe it was the steaming cooking technology that gets credit for heating these sizable pieces sufficiently and for keeping the chicken moist and tender.  It really didn’t taste like chicken from a frozen meal!  I will have to eat more of this line to determine if the hefty-sized chunks of chicken are the norm or if it was just a fluke of this particular package.

I was less impressed, though not entirely disappointed, by the vegetables and the flavor of the meal overall.  The snow pea pods seem as though they’ve been intentionally flattened by an iron and they definitely have a “wet noodle” quality to them.  The carrots were fine.  The mushrooms were quite flavorful, though they were tiny, tiny button mushrooms (not sure I’d ever seen mushrooms that small before).  And in terms of flavor, the photo on the box clearly shows the meal swimming in sesame seeds, but I couldn’t identify any sesame seeds in my meal and the flavor of the sauce was not particularly distinctive, though not unpleasant. 

All in all, this was a good meal and I would buy it again just to enjoy the chicken again.  I noticed on the box that it represents 30% of the RDA of vegetables, so that even without too much in terms of vitamin content, it is still a pretty “healthy choice”. 

Details

Calories:  340

Fat:  6 g / 0 g trans fat

Sodium:  330 mg

Notable good nutritional content:  40% Vitamin A / 25% Vitamin E / 20% each Niacin, Folic Acid, and Phosphorus

Notes on cooking:  4-5 minutes, single shot

Notes on packaging:  clear bowl and colander, reusable or recyclable

Frozen meals' nutritional report card

I have to tell you that I am woefully disappointed in the nutritional content of most frozen meals.  I am discovering more and more that “lean” does not necessarily equal “nutritional”.  Most meals can boast only mentionable percentages of one or two key vitamins.  That said, here are some important things to keep in mind:

1. Take a multivitamin.  I don’t know that I need to say anything additional about this.  You know it’s a good idea.
2. Consider thoughtfully how you will supplement your frozen meal.  Especially for those of us who consume our frozen meals for lunch at work, it is fairly unrealistic to think that we won’t need to eat anything else the remaining hours we work.  While the frozen meal may be good for giving us some calories, protein, and carbs, but may not suffice when it comes to nutrition, why not consider a piece of fruit?  What about some yogurt (again, preferably with fruit)?  Or my favorite from the past few days – some celery with peanut butter?  Yum, yum!  In addition to well-planned supplements providing you with additional needed nutrition, they might also prevent a 3 p.m. trip to the vending machine.
3. You really should opt for the frozen meals that boast healthfulness.  I cannot even imagine the contents of those that do not claim at least “lean” or “healthy” and you likely won’t find me blogging about them.  Of course, these are marketing claims only; I will try to cut through the fat and call them like the contents read here on the blog.
4. Consider your breakfast.  I know it doesn’t really have anything to do with this blog, but please eat breakfast.  You’ve been told by a million sources just how important it is.  In the past year or so I picked up a couple tidbits about breakfast that have stuck with me.  Unfortunately I don’t recollect the source of these tidbits, so take them with a grain of salt and/or look them up if you want to:  one tidbit was that sumo wrestlers do not eat breakfast because this helps them pour on the pounds later in the day.  The other was that if you ate a breakfast that contained *eggs*, you’d likely consume about 300 calories less over the course of the day than if you didn’t.  By consuming early in the day, you avoid some later-day mistakes! 

Have I mentioned fruit?

Yes, I believe I mentioned it in my last entry.  Fruit, I believe, is the nutritional saving grace of frozen meals.  Today's meal, the Healthy Choice Pineapple Chicken, contains 50% of the U.S. RDA of Vitamin A and 25% of Vitamin C.  I attribute it primarily to the pineapple, but it could also be the yummy addition of carrots and red peppers.  Additionally, this is a brown rice meal – kudos to the whole grain power of brown rice!  And there are only 190 mg of sodium, which seems amazingly low compared to what I’ve noted in other meals (560 mg in my most recent entry). 

Where this meal stumbles is in the chicken.  The chicken is defined in the ingredient list as “fried tempura fritter chicken breast chunks.”  Ew.  I’m just not sure that any kind of frozen and reheated tempura could ever be good, at least not when cooked in a microwave when it is already mixed with cooked vegetables, rice, and sauce.  Not a fan.  A few bites of it were tough and difficult to chew.  I believe there are better textured, better tasting meals of a similar recipe available and I intend to uncover them in the coming weeks.

Details

Calories:  380

Fat:  7 g / 0 g trans fat

Sodium:  190 mg

Notable good nutritional content:  50% Vitamin A / 25% Vitamin C

Notes on cooking:  3 – 3 ½ minutes, single shot

Notes on packaging:  black tray, recyclable

First Compartmentalized Tray

Today’s meal is the Healthy Choice Roasted Monterey Chicken.  This is part of the “Complete Meals” line from Healthy Choice, and it is easy to understand why.  More than any other meal I’ve reviewed thus far, this reminded me of the TV dinners of my youth.  What I mean by that is that the entrée, side dish, and dessert were each compartmentalized in the (recyclable) tray and I got the distinct feeling that I was indeed consuming an *entire meal* and not just an entrée that would likely need supplementing in order to fill me up (note: the package weighs in at 11 oz.).  But also, I believe it reminded me of the TV dinners of twenty-five years ago because even though it was named “Chicken Monterey,” implying a flavorful, distinctive dish, I found the flavor of chicken, mushrooms, and rice pilaf in a cheese sauce to be rather unmemorable, leading me to feel like it could have been named “Baked Chicken,” as it probably would have been named twenty-five years ago. 

The vegetable side was a dry concoction of corn, black beans, poblano pepper, and cilantro, although you could have fooled me on the cilantro because it had absolutely no flavor.  One would have to actually add some salt to bring out some flavor in this side, and I think we’ll save the discussion about sodium and these frozen meals for another day. 

The peach dessert, which contained whole grain rolled oats, caught my attention.  I do love both peaches and rolled oats, so this made it a winner in my book.  It cooked well too.  Additionally, I am starting to suspect that the addition of fruit is what makes the difference between a frozen meal having absolutely no nutritional value and starting to be worthwhile.  This meal has 35% of the RDA of Vitamin C, and 15% of Vitamin B12.  So, that’s something…?

Details

Calories:  320

Fat:  8 g / 0 g trans fat

Sodium:  560 mg

Notable good nutritional content:  35% Vitamin C / 40% Folic Acid / 15% Vitamin B12

Notes on cooking:  4 minutes, stir, 1-2 minutes more

Notes on packaging:  Old School compartmentalized tray, recyclable

Introducing the addition of labels

As a result of a reader suggestion, I’m adding some labeling tags that will make these blog entries sortable in a way useful to all readers.  By selecting any of the labels listed to the right, you can pull up all reviews that have been labeled in a particular way; I've gone back and labeled previous entries.  As you have suggestions about improvement of this labeling, or additional labels that should be added, please let me know.  

Another Marie Callendar Steamer…yum!  

I think I’m in love with Marie Callendar’s Fresh Flavor Steamers.  So far, I think that if I could only have one line of frozen meals for the rest of my life, this would be the line I’d choose.  Of course, I base this gut reaction solely on flavor and overall experience with the meal.  In the final analysis, issues of nutrition and calories must be incorporated into the assessment of the product, and that’s when I get somewhat bummed about these meals.

I recently enjoyed the Fettuccini Chicken Balsamic for the first time. As with the previously reviewed Pasta al Dente Garlic Chicken, the cooking technology is impressive with satisfying, tasty results.  The balsamic taste is wonderful and offhand, I cannot think of another frozen product that boasts balsamic.  However, this product is somewhat lacking in vegetables, causing me to pay close attention to its nutritional labeling, suspecting that it might be lacking anything substantial in terms of vitamin and nutrient content.  Indeed, that proved to be correct.  The vegetables in this product are spinach and mushroom – a tasty combo, but not of enough volume to generate much nutritional content.  Fifteen percent of the RDA of iron and 10% of Vitamin E are the only nutritious elements it boasts.  

Despite my sadness at the lack of nutritional mentionables, there are other positives to this line of products, including this particular meal.  I love that the cooking takes place in one single 3 ½ - 4 ½ minute shot, not even requiring the puncture of the plastic wrap for venting, and the bowl and steaming colander are reusable and recyclable.  

Details

Calories:  440

Fat:  18 g / 0 g trans fat

Sodium:  990 mg

Notable good nutritional content:  15% Iron, 10% Vitamin E

Notes on cooking:  One 3 ½ - 4 ½ minute shot

Notes on packaging:  the bowl and steaming colander are reusable and recyclable

A poor meal in poor packaging

Today’s meal is the Michelina’s Lean Gormet Sweet & Sour Chicken with Rice.  Unfortunately, this meal lived up to the Chinese white rice meal stereotype; I was hungry again almost immediately upon completion of the meal.  The chicken is cut in tiny, tiny cubes, which might make it a good option for your grade school-aged child, but the small bites were not particularly appealing to this adult.  The vegetables were not particularly memorable, but as is often the case for me, the bites of pineapple added a welcomed dimension of flavor, though not as memorable in this meal as in others I have eaten. 

I realize it is a choice to be made, but I am somewhat puzzled by the use of white rice in this lean meal.  Health-conscious choices in the 21^st century nearly always opt for brown rice, so much so that I’ve grown unaccustomed to eating white rice.  I never particularly cared for white rice even before today’s whole grain craze, and it certainly doesn’t appeal to me now that it’s almost non-existent in my diet.

What I really want to write about, though, is the packaging of this meal.  It frustrates me in more ways than one.  It is one of those cardboard boxes that the meal is right inside; you actually cook the cardboard box in the microwave.  Now, for those of you who are too busy or lazy to do any cleaning and recycling of your frozen meal packaging, this is probably *less* of a waste than most of the other products out there.  But for those of us who generally clean and recycle any plastic trays and accompanying cardboard boxes, this packaging is a real disappointment because this box cannot be cleaned and therefore cannot be recycled! 

Additionally – and here’s my real frustration – the meal instructions are on the bottom of the box.  Which goes into the microwave.  And then comes out of the microwave because I'm having a busy day and forget the instructions as soon as I stick it in.  So I look at the instructions again and try to commit them to memory.  But there are two rounds of cooking involved and I can’t retain the information that long.  So after the first few minutes of cooking, I have to pull the meal out and hold it up high so that I can look at the instructions again to know what needs to happen for the second round of cooking.  I simply don’t have time for this and I look ridiculous with the meal up higher than my eye level reading from an already-open box.  Sigh!  I know these may seem like ridiculous complaints, but there are a lot of meals out there, and I simply don’t have to put up with less-than-ideal circumstances, especially for a meal that is not particularly memorable.      

Details

Calories:  330

Fat:  3 g / 0 g trans fat

Sodium:  640 mg

Notable good nutritional content:  30% Vitamin A, 20% Vitamin C

Notes on cooking:  I can’t even give you these since I had to throw the uncleanable box away, but I know it involved two rounds of cooking.

Notes on packaging:  Boo, boo, boo!!  See above!!

Fond Memories of TV Dinners

My mom cut this article out of PARADE magazine for me a couple weeks ago.  While it is about the TV dinners of old (heat in the oven in just 25 minutes – so simple and quick!) and the author’s childhood fondness of the TV dinner culture, one imagines that the sentiment could hold true for today’s frozen dinners, right?

Well, after I read the article and took a few moments to reflect fondly on my own childhood experiences with TV dinners, I considered the connection.  And there is definitely something lost in translation between the oven-cooked foil-packaged frozen TV dinners that became popular in the 1960s and the frozen meals of today.  In trying to put my finger on it, here’s what I’ve come up with:  it is generally not expected that you eat frozen meals *with* anyone.  Why is that?  Well, it seems as though oven-heated TV dinners could be cooked several at a time in the oven.  By contrast, most microwaves will only accommodate one frozen meal at a time and in the urgent, time-pressed world of 2010, most people simply don’t have time to cook two or more meals back-to-back in the microwave and wait for the second meal to finish cooking in order to enjoy the eating experience together.  Indeed, even when individuals at my office decide to eat lunch together, the experience that transpires is a constant rotation of microwave use and a standing and chatting while one person eats, generally finishing entirely before the other person’s meal has finished cooking. 

Is the missing collective enjoyment of frozen meals an indicator of greater ills in our society?  I certainly hope not, but only time will tell…if any of us have time to wait, that is. 

Do you have fond memories of TV dinners?  Please share them in your comments!

An old favorite of mine

I’ve been so busy trying new meals that I haven’t yet gone back to a favorite to write its review.  Today, though, my meal is an old favorite, Lean Cuisine’s Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto Chicken.  Oh, how I love thee!  After pondering it for today’s writing, I believe I like it so much because of the following:

1)   Black olives.  Sure, there may not be many, but you can’t beat the magic of a bite of black olive.

2)   Tomato pesto sauce.  Frozen meals seem to do red sauce the best, but an endless parade of spaghetti-style tomato sauces is a bore.  This one has just enough of the sun-dried tomato flavor to make it interesting.

3)   Cavatappi pasta. There is something about this curly, hollow pasta that makes it a good size and shape for inclusion in a frozen meal – hearty, and never rubbery, in my experience.

4)   Just the right size. This is a lean meal that doesn’t leave me hungry an hour later. 

I have bought this meal again and again, and will continue to do so.  Here are some other details that might help you decide about whether it would be good for you:

Calories: 270

Fat: 9 grams

Notable good nutritional content:  Iron 15%, Vitamin C & A 10%

Notable bad nutritional content:  570 mg sodium

Notes about packaging: black tray, recyclable

Notes on cooking:  4 ½ minutes cooking with one stir after 3 minutes