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Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili. ~the dying words of Kit Carson

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Healthy Choice Chicken Broccoli Alfredo

February 21, 2007 | Reviewer: Nicole

Price: $2.00 (free from boyfriend’s freezer)
Serving: 1 meal, 10.3 oz.
Calories: 300
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 18%, 430mg
Protein: 17g
Carbs: 15%, 46g
Fiber: 32%, 8g
WW Points: 6 Points

Healthy Choice says: Tender white meat chicken smothered in creamy Alfredo sauce, made with a small amount of strongly flavored Parmesan cheese to create the distinctive Italian-style flavor for fettuccini cooked al dente. The broccoli, peas and carrots complement this filling meal, and the cherries with vanilla crisp dessert finishes this complete meal on a sweet note.

Nicole says: Well, there is certainly a healthy portion of veggies here - you get broccoli with your Chicken Alfredo as well as a side of peas and carrots. The peas and carrots cooked up pretty firm, the broccoli cooked in the sauce so it was limp and mushy. I can’t think of anything that I enjoy limp and mushy.

Healthy Choice’s Alfredo sauce is both flavorless and watery. These things are probably related. The noodle helping is in good proportion to the chicken, but the noodles cook up a bit soft, just like the broccoli. There are three or four larger pieces of chicken (larger than a mini post-it pad) and a couple small pieces - the chicken can boast good texture and appearance, but not much flavor. There was nothing “crisp” about the cherry dessert, but it was not overly sweet, which I liked. This was equivalent to a cup of mid-grade canned pie filling with some white flavored bits on top - I could taste the vanilla, which is saying something considering the blandness of the rest of the meal.

I had to eat this meal with a spoon because we are experiencing a fork shortage at my office. If someone IS hoarding forks, go fork yourself. Eating pasta with a spoon and no fork is no walk in the park.

The dessert was the highlight here, the Alfredo cheese sauce was a big disappointment and I don’t much like peas. I will not buy again. (Well, actually, I didn’t buy this time - I stole it from my boyfriend’s freezer.) If you are shooting for a vegetable-and-fruit-heavy diet, this might be for you, assuming you don’t like cheese.

Amy’s Kitchen Tofu Rancheros Breakfast

February 20, 2007 | Reviewer: Abi

Price: $4.09
Serving: 1 box, 9 oz.
Calories: 380
Fat: 26%, 17g
Cholesterol: 6%, 15mg
Sodium: 24%, 580mg
Protein: 21g
Carbs: 12%, 37g
Fiber: 27%, 7g

Amy’s Kitchen says: Our Tofu Rancheros Breakfast will satisfy the heartiest of eaters. Organic tofu scrambled with vegetables and topped with a mildly spiced ranchero sauce and grated Monterey Jack cheese covers an organic corn tortilla along with sides of black beans and roasted potatoes. This dish is nourishing and delicious, and since it’s fully cooked, only takes a few minutes to prepare. If you prefer a bit more spice, top it with one of Amy’s great tasting bottle salsa. Good for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Abi says: I planned on eating this meal for breakfast. Unfortunately, I forgot to retrieve it from the microwave before my professor started lecturing and I ended up eating this meal reheated an hour later.

Though the miniature corn tortilla didn’t fare so well (very hard) and the eggs (um, tofu) became rubbery, this meal was so darn tasty and had such variety that I could help but be excited about eating a fresh one in the future.

Forgetting meals in the microwave is a hard lesson in cold tofu-egg edibleness.

4 weeks later Abi manages to eat the meal in a timely manner…

Yes! Amy’s Tofu Rancheros meal is a hearty, filling, and savory breakfast. It will enamour even those of you who do not relish the thought of tofu for breakfast (or any other meal). If it weren’t for the fact that this meal is significantly more expensive than just making a breakfast of eggs, beans, potato, a mini tortilla, and salsa, I would probably eat it more often.

Now that I think about it, you could feed a family of four Huevos Rancheros for the cost of this meal. That is pretty crazy. I suddenly feel like an evil yuppy. It doesn’t help that I’m typing this at a Starbucks while sipping a tall soy chai.

Consumer guilt aside, if I were to reconfigure this meal, I would do away with the mini corn tortilla and instead introduce mini corn tortilla pieces (they do not require a knife). I would also give the consumer more salsa. Seriously, salsa is the ingredient that takes this meal from ‘a bunch of bland healthy things’ to ‘a fiesta in your mouth’.

Yes, the blurb on the box says that I can add more salsa. If I am eating a microwaveable breakfast meal, I probably don’t just have some salsa sitting around. Why not include a little salsa packet for all of us salsa lovers?

Amy’s Kitchen Cheese Lasagna

February 16, 2007 | Reviewer: Jess

Price: $3.89
Serving: 1 tray, 10.3 oz.
Calories: 380
Fat: 22%, 14g
Cholesterol: 15%, 45mg
Sodium: 28%, 680mg
Protein: 20g
Carbs: 15%, 44g
Fiber: 16%, 4g

Amy’s Kitchen says: Amy’s vegetable lasagnas are extremely popular. However, we do get requests from customers (especially kids) for a traditional cheese lasagna without vegetables. So we asked our chef, Fred, to create one that would appeal to both children and adults. Amy’s Cheese Lasagna is made with tender organic pasta, a simple tasty marinara sauce and five cheeses carefully chosen for flavor and creaminess.

Jess says: Guess what? Abi bought me a cheese lasagna! I think she felt pretty bad about buying me that Gardenburger Margherita Wrap, which was so bad I had to show it around the office and mock it before I ate it. Also she knows I was bummed to find out that Amy’s Veggie Lasagna is lactose-free… you know for the weak-boweled vegans.

I would like to please Abi and rave about this lasagna, but alas, I cannot. Still, like my 10th grade creative writing teacher said, let’s start with the positives. Amy’s Cheese Lasagna IS cheesy and there is even real ricotta in there (I actually didn’t read the ingredients but it tasted like real ricotta). Also it is tasty. It tastes like lasagna and lasagna is a friend of mine.

Here’s the trouble. This took 9+ minutes in the micry. In fact, I had to keep taking it out and poking the ever cold center and then giving it another 40 seconds on 50%. Then I decided that I hate the half power method, covered it with a plate and did it full blast. Sure, I heard it splatter something terrible, but it needed to be done. Luckily I had been all absorbed in my work all afternoon (kids in the hall videos are on youtube!) and forgot to eat until 2pm so it wasn’t such a big deal. But if this food preparation had happened at 12, I can guarantee that someone would have gotten passive aggressively sighish behind me. There may have even been some collective sarcasm jabs from the ever growing line of hungry coworkers behind me, as they plotted to oust my lasagna the moment I got bored with watching it spin!

Back to the lasagna, the marinara is thin and splatterriffic. I just got a new laptop after sort of dropping and causing some blue screen action to my old one. So the splatter effect was not appreciated. What I would have appreciated was a chunky organic tomato thickness. But really, the main issue with this lasagna is its averageness. There is nothing too much going on here that you can’t get somewhere else, probably cheaper, though not necessarily organic. I want to make a parallel here to prostitutes versus girlfriends, but that is probably offensive.

I had that great Seeds of Change spinach lasagna a week ago. That had class and creativity. It would be great if Amy could just do a version of their veggie lasagna with REAL cheese. Now that I would gladly wait the nine minutes for, co-workers be damned (except Abi, obviously, since she buys me things).

Michelina’s Budget Gourmet Stir Fry Rice

February 15, 2007 | Reviewer: Abi

Price: $1.00
Serving: 1 meal, 8 oz.
Calories: 450
Fat: 31%, 20g
Cholesterol: 3%, 10mg
Sodium: 29%, 700mg
Protein: 7g
Carbs: 15%, 45g
Fiber: 8%, 2g

Budget Gourmet says: Nothing. I can’t find a promotional blurb for this meal anywhere.

Abi says: First, the bad news. This meal (side dish?) contains chicken fat (ingredient #6), margarine (ingredient #7) and beef extract (ingredient #12). Yes, it actually contains chicken fat and beef extract twice.

The good news: this was some deliciously schmaltzy stir fry rice. Dang, if I just needed to add chicken fat, margarine, and beef extract to stuff to get it to taste so buttery and fatty, then I would have been doing that a long time ago.

The bad news: it is twenty minutes later and I have been hit with an extraordinarily serious and uncomfortable case of heartburn.

Oh my God. It is burning my insides.

This rice is not good for people who are vegetarians (it is trick rice!), those taking Orlistat (immense amounts of fat), or those with acid reflux disease.

Oh, my insides…