Hibachi House Chicken with Broccoli

July 31, 2007 | Reviewer: Jess

SRP: $5.00
Serving: 1 cup, 5.3oz.
Calories: 250
Fat: 6%, 4g
Cholesterol: 10%, 30mg
Sodium: 23%, 550mg
Protein: 20g
Carbs: 10%, 32g
Fiber: 6%, 1g

Hibachi House says: Tender pieces of chicken breast meat are fire grilled to juicy perfection and paired with broccoli florets, steamed rice and our Hibachi Grill Sauce.

Jess says: I am now well into my second (and final) lunch from the box of Hibachi’s “multiserve” Chicken and Broccoli. As with the (non) Hibachi House Mandarin Orange Chicken, which I have also tried) their recommended 4.5 servings translated to two filling lunches for me. Perhaps I’m just a healthy eater?

After eating this two days in a row, I have to say the meal is good. Broccoli is really a damn fine specimen of a vegetable if you ask me. Both crisp and chewy! A healthy shade of green! Little leaves that snatch on to sauces and rice. Yee-ha! Also these chicken chunks are mighty! In fact they require a knife to eat them any place outside of a Renaissance festival. The need of an extra utensil annoyed me, but I cannot deny that the quality is beyond what you normally find in microwavable entrees. You can see the chicken meat flake and pull apart. Lean Cuisine’s chicken looks condensed and ~~manhandled~~ processed. I did find a good bit of fatty chunks which grossed me out but maybe I’m just a big wimp. I watched some Planet Earth this weekend and did get all squirmy when the fox ate the baby geese. The sauce is really just soy and corn syrup but not to a fault. It is salty, sweet and satisfactory. I only used half of the packet and it was more than sufficient.

But in a Nancy Drew like fashion, I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that something is amiss with this meal. I just can’t get passionate about it. The problem may be that this meal is a complete pain in the ass to prepare at the office. Allow me to detail the steps:

Step 1: Heat water to defrost sauce packet. This isn’t so bad if you’ve got the hot water function on your water cooler. Otherwise this sucks.

Step 2: Throw bag o’ food into microwave. Don’t forget to slit the top. But not too much! Broccoli floret droppings suck to clean up. Heat it for 5 minutes and wait 2 minutes to touch it like the box told you to.

Step 3: “Borrow” a coworker’s bowl to dump the contents in. Try to hide the bowl from coworkers. You don’t want someone to get upset that you have their bowl. But hey, angry coworker, if you love it so much why did you abandon it? The bowl is too small. You stuff the food in there to make do (no use dirtying two bowls). After bowl quest the meal is now cold. Damn it. You dump some sauce on. That is still cold too. Damn it squared.

Step 4: You reheat again for 1 minute. Not enough. 45 seconds more. Yay. It’s hot!

Step 5: Eat. Talk to everyone about how broccoli is so kick ass. Start listing all the things that are made better with broccoli. Their eyes roll. Whatever. They are sooo jealous.

Step 6: Use a binder clip to seal up the rest of the sauce. You may want that later (tomorrow). Try to find something to seal up the bowl. Damn it. Where is the packing tape roll? Why would someone possibly steal it? And will that ruin the bowl? Is it worth it? Oh, look tin foil. I hope your office has tin foil like mine does.

Step 7: You have to eat this again tomorrow too. Man, a panini would be awesome. No, suck it up. Eat the Chicken and Broccoli. It will be gross to wait another day. Who knows how long reheated chicken lasts? Oh sweet relief from hunger, it still tastes good!

Step 8: Conclude that this meal is a good distraction from the norm once in a while, but too salty and calorieriffic to eat often. Perhaps its easier and better to make at home? And where do they sell this stuff anyway?

Filed Under Chicken, Four Stars, Hibachi House Reviews | 5 Comments

Betty Crocker Bowl Appetit Garlic Parmesan Pasta

July 30, 2007 | Reviewer: Abi

Healthy Choice Chicken Broccoli Alfredo

Price: $1.00 (sale at CVS)
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

Betty Crocker says: Penne pasta simmered in a robust garlic-parmesan sauce. Easy 5 minute prep. Just add water & microwave. Great for lunch. No artificial flavors.

Abi says: These aren’t very good, but I like them more than just about any microwaveable pasta in white sauce that I’ve consumed over the course of writing for HeatEatReview.com. In fact, I’ve turned to this CVS (a local drugstore) staple on multiple occasions over the past year.

Perhaps my affinity for these bowls stems from their intensely strong parmesan-garlic flavor. If you had me do a taste test on the bowls, I couldn’t identify the flavor specifically as garlicky or parmesany. Just blatantly odoriferous. Another plus (yes, smelliness seems to have become a plus), they don’t need to be frozen. This means that a) they don’t take up room in my freezer, and b) I can cook the pasta to my preferred state of doneness: just beyond toothy.

So really, the lesson from this review is that blandness is the devil and I prefer al dente pasta. Also, only buy these on sale, because they aren’t worth more than $1.25.

Dumb but true: these are not for vegetarians because they contain chicken fat. Dried powdered chicken fat. Way to reduce your market, Betty Crocker.

Filed Under 6 WW Points, Betty Crocker Reviews, Pasta, Three Stars | 5 Comments

Trader Joe’s Chicken Tandoori with Spinach

July 23, 2007 | Reviewer: Adina

Trader Joe’s Chicken Tandoori with Spinach Price: $2.49
Serving: 1 meal, 12 oz.
Calories: 360
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 14%, 45mg
Sodium: 20%, 520mg
Protein: 22g
Carbs: 17%, 51g
Fiber: 21%, 5g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Trader Joe’s says: Boneless white chicken simmered in spinach & exotic spices. Served with seasoned rice.

Adina says: Let me just start off my saying that I am not a huge fan of Indian food. I will occasionally take in an Indian buffet for some saag and naan and gulab jamuns, but generally I avoid all things curried. I blame the summer of ’93. I was 11 years old and my mother was making an Indian curry dish for dinner while I was watching Sweeney Todd on public television. I remember eating that meal – the first time I ate Indian, mind you – and wondering if my mom had slit our neighbors’ throats and ground them into patties and served me their bodies for dinner. And from that fateful moment on, I have always associated Indian food with baked carcass meat pies.

And on that lovely note - this is a really good meal. At first it seemed like it was less “Chicken Tandoori with Spinach” and more “Spinach and Rice with…is that Chicken?…it’s so tiny I can barely see it…”, but I ended up getting a medium sized chunk of chicken with every bite. Plus, the flavor was just the right amount of spiciness – kicky but not overwhelmingly spiced. I just hate those meals (cough Healthy Choice cough) where they black pepper the heck out of the meal and then call it “spiced to perfection”.

Surprisingly enough, the chicken is tender, the way tandoori chicken should be but not the way most microwave meal chicken is. And the peas added lovely texture to what would have been an otherwise mushy meal. What I enjoyed best about this meal is the flavor – microwave lunches tend to blur one into the other, and I appreciated the rich and exciting flavors this dish had to offer.

In summary, eat this meal. Even though you’re probably not hungry anymore after my Sweeney Todd story. Sorry.

[This meal was also reviewed by Abi, who also gave the meal 4 stars. So now that this meal has received 4 stars twice in a row that pretty much cements it at 4 stars. -Ed.]

Filed Under 7 WW Points, Chicken, Four Stars, Trader Joe's Reviews | 4 Comments

Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers Grilled White Meat Chicken & Roasted Red Pepper Alfredo Sauce

July 20, 2007 | Reviewer: Abi

Simply Enjoy Pad Thai with Chicken

Price: $2.50 (on sale)
Serving: 1 package, 10.3 oz.
Calories: 240
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 25%, 600mg
Protein: 22g
Carbs: 8%, 23g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 1g
Weight Watchers Points: 4 Points

Healthy Choice says: Grilled white meat chicken and roasted red pepper alfredo sauce with linguini pasta and broccoli florets

Abi says: I had a really strange Instant Message conversation with Nicole yesterday. She was writing to inform me that there were a couple of Lean Cuisine Panini in the freezer with HER written on them in black Sharpie. I wasn’t sure why she’d buy these because we’ve already reviewed the Lean Cuisine panini and really she doesn’t have to buy food for the other HER reviewers, that’s my job.

It turns out that the folks at Stouffer’s, Lean Cuisine’s parent company, had shipped us a freaking enormous box containing two panini boxes. Not that I mind getting panini in the mail, but we’d really appreciate some advance warning. Why? Because it is important to dispose of dry ice in a safe manner. That’s why.

This shipment, combined with Colleen’s comment about the lack of Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers reviews on HeatEatReview, got me wondering about why Healthy Choice has never sent us a single frozen meal. And it isn’t just Healthy Choice, it is the entire ConAgra line.

Then it hit me, we at HeatEatReview.com do not have a good history with Healthy Choice meals. As of July 20, 2007, the average Healthy Choice meal on HeatEatReview.com has a rating of just 2.32 stars. Ouch. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about my relationship with Healthy Choice.

The morning after I consumed the Cafe Steamers version of Grilled White Meat Chicken and Roasted Red Pepper Alfredo Sauce I came to a stunning realization about Healthy Choice products: they produce the worst microwave meal chicken I have ever had the misfortune to consume.

That’s all it is: the worst chicken ever.

Yet ConAgra is the same company that produces Marie Callender meals, a frozen food line that is graced with fantastic chicken. I’m seriously confused. Does being on a diet or trying to eat healthy food mean that you’re subject to the purgatory that is ground and formed and fake-grilled chicken? Healthy Choice says yes, but Kashi and Lean Cuisine say ‘No, you don’t have to eat that weird ground-up-chicken junk.’

If you don’t mind chicken that features a foamy texture and little to no flavor, then you’d probably like the main ingredient in Healthy Choice’s grilled white meat chicken and roasted red pepper alfredo. If you don’t enjoy Healthy Choice’s unusual take on chicken, then you’ll need to deal with the strangely bland roasted red pepper sauce (top ingredients: sweet red pepper, high maltose corn syrup solids, and salt).

Too bad the primary ingredients in this meal are so lackluster; the broccoli and linguini benefit tremendously from the new cooking style, emerging from the microwave perfectly steamed.

[Tanya at Iateapie.net has a great description of how the steamers work and she gave the Roasted Chicken Chardonnay 3.5 kisses. -Ed.]

Filed Under 4 WW Points, Healthy Choice Reviews, Two Stars | 16 Comments