Price: $1.99 (on sale)
Serving: 1 sandwich, 6 oz.
Calories: 350 per serving
Fat: 14%, 9g
Cholesterol: 11%, 35mg
Sodium: 35%, 830 mg
Protein: 24g
Carbohydrates: 14%, 44g
Fiber: 24%, 6g
Sugar: 6g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 POINTS

Lean Cuisine says: Grilled white meat chicken strips with crumbled bacon, tomatoes, cheese and ranch sauce on sourdough bread

Liz says: This frozen meal is not a one-way street. If you think that you can just pop it in the microwave, walk away, eat it and not extend anything on your part, you would be wrong. This Panini Chicken Club requires two things: patience and imagination.

Why patience? First of all, this is not one of those meals that you can’t just rip open carefully. You’ve got to make a little platform for the “revolutionary” grilling disc (patent pending.) If you’re like me, you didn’t read these instructions and then had to stand at the microwave and reconfigure this set-up while a co-worker stares at you and smirks.

You’ll also need patience in the amount of times it takes to chew this item. Since everyone knows that bread was not meant to be microwaved, the bread is less on the toasty side and more on the really, really chewy side. I’m not saying that’s totally bad, it’s just not very bread-like. The chicken is also a bit on the chewy side, so you’re really exercising your jaw quite a bit. Way to make us burn a few extra calories, Lean Cuisine!

Imagination is required to make the meal just a bit better than it is. There are about 3 or 4 bites of this panini that really taste like a yummy sandwich you’d order at your favorite coffee shop. If you hang on that feeling and use your imagination, you can kind of convince yourself that the rest of the sandwich tastes like that too. Bacon bits are good, tomatoes are super flavorful, cheese is always a plus, and the ranch-style sauce is weird but gives it an extra little flavor.

Overall, it’s not as good as the real thing, but it’s okay in the way that a cheapo French bread frozen pizza will fulfill your pizza craving in a pinch.

Price: $2.99
Serving: 1 oz.
Calories: 330 per serving
Fat: 14%, 9g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 29%, 690mg
Protein: 12g
Carbohydrates: 17%, 50g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 10g
Weight Watchers Points: 7

Lean Cuisine says: Five Cheese Rigatoni. Rigatoni pasta in a sweet tomato sauce topped with a five cheese blend.

Samantha says: Pasta, for me, is a comfort food. After a rough morning at work I was looking for some comfort and lunch. Too bad Lean Cuisine’s Five Cheese Rigatoni did not bring me “warm fuzzies”. Instead, it left me in the cold looking for a chocolate chip cookie and some milk.

Cooking was typical of Lean Cuisine-3 minute on high, stir, 1 min 30 sec on high. When I took the meal out to stir it, I was impressed, I could make out some cheese on top of the pasta and the sauce smelled good. I put it back in, microwaved further, and what came out was not as appealing. It looked like leftover pasta that had been in the microwave a few too many times. I persevered (in the interest of science!), held my head up high and said “This is pasta, how bad can it be?”

In general the sauce is barely on the tangy side of bland, the pasta mushy (maybe Lean cuisine should talk to Kashi, they seem to have the perfectly cooked noodle down to a science) and the five cheese is more like two. This was a basic Lean Cuisine. Cheese, Sauce and Pasta. Is it amazing? No. Is it horrible? No. Was it worth the 7 Weight Watchers points I gave up for it? Hell no! For those of you that have done Weight Watchers you know that those points are precious and we agonize over every single one. I want my points (and my lunch time) back!

Note from the Editrix: The ingredients actually list eight cheese types:

1. Part-skim Mozzarella
2. Monterey Jack
3. Parmesan
4. Romano
5. Parmesan Cheese Paste
6. Asiago
7. Enzyme Modified Parmesan Cheese
8. Enzyme Modified Cheese

Price: Free from Lean Cuisine
Serving: 1 Container, 9 oz.
Calories: 320
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 22%, 520mg
Protein: 15g
Carbohydrates: 18%, 54g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 18g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Lean Cuisine says: Sweet & spicy Asian style sauce, pasta, beef and vegetables.

Matt says: One of the nice things about the Stouffer’s line, Lean Cuisine and otherwise, is that the lack of descriptive words on the box. No boasts of “delicious” or “easy,” the tagline is simply the ingredients. Three minutes in the microwave followed by a steamy stir, and another minute of cooking; Lean Cuisine could easily brag that this meal is delicious and easy.

The box claims the sauce is sweet and spicy. It was definitely sweet but not spicy at all. That said, the ingredients include pineapple juice concentrate, brown sugar, soy sauce, and garlic and ginger puree. The ingredients do not lie – it tasted really good. And that normal-ingredient-containing sauce set the tone for the meal.

The plentiful meat tasted like some form of beef. My only complaint is that it resembled a thicker version of the shaved meat on an Arby’s sandwich. This prompted me to look at the ingredients. The meat is identified as “seasoned cooked meat product.” That definitely sounds like Arby’s.

Isn’t it awful how the Simpsons is ingrained in one’s memory? Once I thought of Arby’s I thought of the twins at Bart’s school, Sherri and Terri, one of which spoke the immortal words, “I’m so hungry I could eat at Arby’s.”

Each thick ribbon of pasta was surprisingly firm for a frozen meal ingredient. As far as texture goes I came in with low expectations. I was surprised at not only the dense texture of the pasta, but also the way it succeeded with the sauce. It was quite impressive to say the least. The “meat product” easily became an accompaniment rather than the meal’s focus.

The final element in the meal were all vegetables. The snap peas tasted like good frozen vegetables, with a literal snap with each bite. The red peppers were soft, and gave mild flavor at best. This is not a criticism, because can frozen peppers truly freeze and microwave well? The serious criticism regards the presence of large water chestnuts as pictured on the box. I counted three water chestnut thirds in the dish. If I were a water chestnut junkie I’d be protest this misappropriation. Well, if I were a water chestnut junkie I would have other issues than frozen food to worry about. On a positive note, the noodles, snap peas and sauce were so good that the scarcity of water chestnuts was a minor flaw.

Lean Cuisine’s Beef Chow Fun tastes far better than the “lean” 320 calories involved. Typical of Lean Cuisine products the meal is small and I think that if it were a Claim Jumper or Marie Callender portion the calories would be far from “lean.” This is not a lunch for the breakfast starved; nevertheless, Beef Chow Fun is a solid meal that I recommend for its ingredient ratios and flavor.

Price: $2.25 (on sale)
Serving: 1 meal, 9.5 oz.
Calories: 260
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 23%, 560mg
Protein: 18g
Carbs: 12%, 35g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Lean Cuisine says: Roasted and seasoned meatballs in a chunky tomato sauce accented with basil and mushrooms. Served with a side of spaghetti.

Adina says: First off, I’d like everyone to take a very close look at the box. And count the meatballs. And then count the meatballs that were on my plate. And then read my letter to Lean Cuisine, which I believe to be a really nice letter considering I was cheated out of a meatball, those bastards.

Dear Lean Cuisine,

Please do not ever ever EVER false advertise how many meatballs there are in a meal to dieters. We pore over those pictures, counting every single mushroom and thread of noodle and dash of basil before committing ourselves to yet another disappointing and unfulfilling lunch. And do not think we won’t notice once we start eating because WE DO. I always do a visual comparison before eating your meals in three fell swoops. This is your first warning – do it again and be prepared to suffer (like being force fed your shrimp & angel hair pasta or something equally as maniacal.)

Love,
Adina

My second complaint is when I went on the Lean Cuisine website to copy the description of the meal, I read this “review”: This spaghetti is almost as good as mine! (SMILE). I love everything about this…SHANNON R. ARDMORE, PA.

Dear Shannon,

Your spaghetti must really suck.

Love,
Adina

Seriously, who says that? People don’t buy Lean Cuisines because they are GOOD. They buy them because they are small and encourage you to count every single calorie you put into your body so that when you gorge on ice cream later that night you don’t feel as guilty. Nobody thinks Lean Cuisine pasta tastes as good as authentic homemade pasta. That is crazy. I am 100% convinced that Shannon from Ardmore, PA is the brain child of one of the LC web developers named Howard. I hate you Howard for underestimating me.

All this aside (and I realize it is a lot of “all”), the meal itself was not bad. The meatballs were meatbally – not as tasty as their swedish meatballs) half cousins, but no one can beat those damn Swedes. The pasta was a little overcooked but I actually think that was my fault. I wouldn’t necessarily call the sauce “chunky” but it was flavorful and red so what more can you ask for.

The problem with this meal is that I definitely have expectations for any meal called “Spaghetti and Meatballs”. And that expectation is that it is going to be a heaping pile of steaming hot spaghetti and giant delicious meatballs covered in a blanket of parmesan cheese. I think any food loving person would agree – Spaghetti and Meatballs is not the kind of meal you eat only one serving of. It is the kind of meal you eat until you want to slip into a food coma and die. And so even though this was a tasty enough meal and in all honesty I’ll probably buy it again despite the false advertising the Shannon, it made me feel depressed that I wasn’t sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, gorging myself on homemade food.

So I gave it a three. Because it made me sad.