Price: $1.00 (on sale)
Serving: 1 box, 8 oz.
Calories: 400 per serving
Fat: 17%, 11g
Cholesterol: 18%, 55mg
Sodium: 41% (ouch!), 980mg
Protein: 11g
Carbohydrates: 22%, 65g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 9 Points

Michelina’s says: At $1 a box, we don’t really “do” product blurbs. Look at the picture on the box. Read the product name. Buy.

Mel says: I have faith in Michelina’s products, I really do. Being that they are on sale for $1 almost 365 days of the year at one of the 3 prominent grocery chains in my area makes me feel that the world is an OK place and my stomach will always be in an OK place as well. I also have a penchant for frozen Asian-inspired dishes, as they often live up to, and sometimes exceed, my expectations. I think rice is just an all-over better cooked-to-frozen-to-cooked carb than pasta. Also, rice-heavy frozen dishes made by reputable companies such as Trader Joe’s and Amy’s have previously been successfully enjoyed by my stomach so all-in-all, I had high hopes. Plus, if I could get yummy fried rice goodness in 3 minutes for less than a 20oz vending machine soda, WHY NOT? Unfortunately, this dish did not live up to my expectations, though I would say that it lived up to the expectations of George Washington’s smirk as he left my wallet and paid for this bland, yet edible item.

Michelina’s Shrimp Fried Rice claims it’s 8 oz, although its sordid contents tell another tale. I find it hard pressed to believe it’s over 7 oz and although I am used to frozen contents shrinking slightly in size when nuked, this one seemed to decrease two-fold. The picture on the front of the box clearly shows 5.5 pieces of smallish pink shrimp, 4 pieces of apparent egg and an abundance of shaved carrot, peas and what looks like diced red pepper (TBD). The first thing I noticed when removing the dish from the microwave was that it basically just looked like rice with bits of green and orange limply lying around. I double-checked the box to make sure that this was “Shrimp Fried Rice” and not “Plain Fried Rice with Colored Bits”, but alas, it was that of shrimp, and I trudged on. I guess you really can’t expect many shrimp bites for $1, but I literally counted only 3 pieces (as well as 3 pieces of egg), which was very disappointing, especially considering shrimp is the second ingredient on the ingredients list. Listen: for about $3, I can get a box of Chicken Helper Fried Rice (always on sale somewhere for $1), a bag of frozen Ocean Jewel Frozen Cooked Salad Shrimp (almost always $1 on sale) and a few eggs and make a shrimp fried rice that would be the Benihana to Michelina’s Panda Express (did that even make sense? Moving on…). Seriously though, this site is about buying and reviewing easy, reheatable products, not about how to survive college on a $5/week food budget, so I’ll continue describing the dish.

The shrimp had the distinct brine-like, frozen aftertaste that most frozen shrimp I’ve eaten has, so I wasn’t expecting anything more. Though the amount of shrimp was extremely small, I was satisfied with the actual size of the shrimp, which was that of your typical cooked-frozen shrimp variety (about nickel-size). I was also impressed by the amount of shaved carrot; once I stirred the dish around a bit, it added a nice touch of color if not a tiny amount of carrot crunch (note: tiny). The most disappointing aspect of this dish, however, is the overall lack of flavor. There really isn’t ANY flavor to it and that “non-flavor” is spread over the entire dish, making it a pile of nothing, really. Although the ingredients list such tantalizing flavor-improvers such as soy sauce (listed twice, actually), butter flavor, peanut oil and liquid pepper extract, no such flavors were detected. I could only make it through about 5 bites before I added some soy sauce and crushed red pepper flakes, to which the dish vastly improved (bumping it up from one star to two).

All-in-all, this dish is edible, if not utterly boring and lackluster. I would purchase it again, but only if all the other decent Michelina meals were sold out and if it was still on sale for $1 or less (which it seems it is, indefinitely). I must admit that if I didn’t have any condiments to dress up the taste of this meal, I probably would have stopped eating the meal and dug into my half-empty bag of oyster crackers. Bottom-line: $1-worthy, but there are better $1 meals that are worthier.

Price: $2.65
Serving: 9oz.
Calories: 260 per serving
Fat: 6%, 4g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 23%, 550mg
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 14%, 41g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 5

Lean Cuisine says: White meat chicken with stir fry vegetables and white rice.

Amber says: While I will never actually buy this meal again, I would eat it if I discovered one that had been in the freezer at work for two months and had just been handed a noon assignment that would last for a good two hours. But I’d pour some Tony Chachere’s or Tabasco in it.

The first thing I noticed about this meal after I took it out of the microwave and began stirring the rice and sauce together is that it didn’t smell like anything. “Well…that’s not always a bad thing,” I told myself.

Then, I noticed that it seemed like there wasn’t enough sauce for the rice. I thought to myself, “Maybe there’s more sauce at the bottom” and I stirred some more, because I love exercises in futility involving frozen dinners.

After much rice maneuvering, I discovered that I wouldn’t find enough thin sauce in this meal for my plastic plate of rice and veggies, no matter how vigorously I stirred with my plastic fork. And yet, that doesn’t even matter, because even if you only had one grain of rice sitting in an entire ocean of this sauce, you still wouldn’t taste the sauce. This meal is best described as damp chicken and rice with a few carrot slivers and a random red pepper.

I tried, nay, strained to taste anything besides chicken and rice coated with tasteless liquid. I purposefully concentrated on tasting something in the sauce or even detecting a hint of saltiness. I shouldn’t have to concentrate on anything during my lunch break, except finding something to watch on TV and not dropping food in between the cushions of my couch.

The chicken itself seemed not scary and not full of fat or hard, unchewable chunks. The water chestnuts were surprisingly crunchy, so they added some interesting texture. I had about 8 slivers of carrot, all of them the kind of mushy vegetable I expect from a Lean Cuisine meal.

I can’t tell you whether or not this 260 calorie meal is filling because I gave up halfway through and ate a bag of gummy bears and Goldfish crackers for lunch instead.

[Tanya over at Iateapie.net didn't think much of it either. Link]

Price: $2.08 + tax
Serving: 10oz.
Calories: 280
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 16%, 50mg
Sodium: 29%, 690mg
Protein: 17g
Carbohydrates: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 14%, 3g
Sugar: 6 g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Lean Cuisine says: Rice & white meat chicken mixed with crispy vegetables & eggs in a sesame sauce.

Becky says: Normally, I’m a huge fan of fried rice, and I make it from scratch quite a bit (my secret ingredient is sesame oil). So during my last lunch shopping excursion, I didn’t object to this meal when my youngest stepdaughter picked it out for me.

I think she just lost that privilege.

When I took this out of the box, I noticed that it was just plain white rice in the bowl. That’s okay – I figured that the sauce was probably at the bottom. Once it was stirred, I realized the not-so-great truth – while there was sauce at the bottom of the bowl, it was not enough to make a difference in taste. I think a little low-sodium soy sauce would’ve gone a long way here, but that’s not in high demand in our office.

On a good note, I was surprised at the quantity of chicken, egg, peas and carrots – they were plentiful, and cooked perfectly. The chicken was tender, juicy, and tasted like chicken. There was more egg than what I had expected, but that wasn’t a bad thing!

As far as the nutritionals are concerned, the only thing that surprised me was the sodium count. I could not taste the 29% of my daily allowance of the stuff – in fact, I could’ve used more! It just goes to show how much salt we take in without knowing it . . . I’m sure that homemade toffee that I’ve been nibbling on all day is packed with that stuff.

I doubt I’ll get this meal again. The sheer lack of TASTE was enough to do it for me – there’s better ways to add flavor without compromising the nutritional value. Get to it, Lean Cuisine.

SRP: $3.99
Serving: 1 tray, 9.5oz.
Calories: 360
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 10%, 30mg
Sodium: 37%, 890mg
Protein: 16g
Carbs: 15%, 46g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Kahiki says: Grilled white-meat chicken with no added antibiotics. Served with vegetables and brown rice in our signature zesty sauce.

Abi says: I was torn when Tim Tsao, the VP of Sales and Marketing (and son of the company founder) at Kahiki contacted me after reading Jess’s review of Kahiki Sweet and Sour Chicken and offered to send a case of their reformulated entrees. Being a person intrigued with reformulated recipes and nearly incapable of declining free frozen meals, I accepted the offer. I’d just read about their makeover in an issue of Refrigerated and Frozen Foods Magazine (yes, I subscribe) and I was curious about the new Naturals line.

“But,” I told myself when the package arrived at my office (a.k.a. home) “You are going to be strict about these meals. You are not going to let their freeness affect what you say in your review. You will be firm.” Yeah, I gave myself a talking-to. And then the meals sat in my freezer for a month. What if I didn’t like them? What if I broke Tim’s heart?

Finally, I decided to start with the General Tso’s Chicken. Never a fan of the chicken in my youth due to its unidentifiable pieces of fried dark meat (hey, I couldn’t tell what was in there), I looked forward to trying a healthy non-fried version.

Can I just say ‘Wow’. Wow. Not a Carolyn Hax ‘Wow’ of disbelief about what your mother-in-law just said about your grandma’s apple pie recipe. No, this is a wow of yum. The General Tso’s sauce is spicy, wonderfully spicy. It has enough tingle to almost make your nose run with the spice, but not enough heat to make you get up and get a glass of water right at that moment. The chunks of chicken breast are moist, lean, and feature weird grill marks that look really fake but I forgive them that because they are delightfully smoky. Sure, that grilled flavor comes from vegetable oil, but by the time I learned that I’d already consumed the entire meal and used my finger to lick the remaining sauce out of its section of the tray.

Under the chicken you see in the photo is a little village of broccoli, drenched in that fantastic sauce. There were also two insignificant carrots. And maybe a water chestnut. I’m not sure what it was, but I ate it because it was in the zesty sauce. Mmmm, sauce.

The rice is brown rice. It is boring. There is an amount appropriate to the other items in the tray. It is actually very pale and non-nutty for brown rice. It seems more like white rice. Or maybe beige rice. Perhaps it is a new strain of non-healthy-seeming brown rice. I do not know because I am not a rice scientist. Lacking a rice-science background, I’m going to assume that the rice was ultra-nutritious.

This meal is not your typical restaurant Genera Tso’s. It is a healthier adaptation that features a cringe-free ingredients list (how often does that happen?) and no mystery breading. Thinking about other General Tsos’ meals I’ve tried for HeatEatReview.com (Healthy Choice General Tso’s Chicken and Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers General Tso’s Chicken) I have to say that Kahiki’s variety leaves them in the dust. Sure, it lacks that deep fried hallmark coating of restaurant General Tso’s, but when I caught myself eyeing another box of it at Whole Foods, I knew that I’d found a gem.