Price: $3.69 CDN ($3.05 USD)
Serving: 365 g., 12.9 oz.
Calories: 410 per serving
Fat: 15%, 10g
Cholesterol: % Unknown, 40mg
Sodium: 56%, 1350mg
Protein: 22g
Carbohydrates: 20%, 59g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 POINTS

President’s Choice says: Seasoned chicken pieces, vegetables and cashews in a sauce made with Chinese 5-spice, with long grain rice on the side.

Ridley and Avi say: This frozen Chinese-style meal looked good as we peeled off the plastic, but was disappointing on the fork or between the chopsticks.

The rice, as often with frozen Chinese meals, was slightly gooey and tasteless. It looked good, but didn’t stand up to the tooth test. The sauce had a welcome mild spicy-ness, but a slightly unpleasant aftertaste. While not quite chemical, it certainly seemed unnatural, which is the last thing we want from a dinner. The sauce also seemed not able to make up its mind: Sweet? Salty? Perhaps a vegetarian oyster sauce wannabe?

The chicken (which you can’t even see in the picture of our meal) was relatively tasty, but most pieces were structurally unsound and fell apart while we ate. More chicken (even reconstituted like this seemed) would have been welcome.

While some of the vegetables were decent, the celery reminded us of the time Ridley tried to drink soy sauce – a little taste is OK, but any more and you’ll gag. The red peppers added welcome colour and were sweet, if soft. The snap peas were a real mistake: funny texture, no taste, and a yucky watery splurt when we bit into them. There was barely a piece of onion to be found.

The namesake nut of this dish, the cashews, were a highlight, tasting almost like real cashews, though a bit soft from being microwaved. We were definitely looking for more of these babies.

It’s worth noting the chicken seasoning contains milk and fermented wheat protein. The sauce includes wine. And for those who live in a community with plastic recycling, the tray is made of plastic rated “1″.

It is also worth noting that this meal is not one of the President’s strongest Choices.

Price: $3.49
Serving: 1 box, 9oz
Calories: 330 per serving
   Calories from Fat: 190
Fat: 32%, 21g
   Saturated Fat: 39%, 8g
   Trans Fat: 0%, 0g
Cholesterol: 14%, 40mg
Sodium: 35%, 850mg
Protein: 9g
Carbohydrates: 8%, 25g
Fiber: 6%, 1g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 POINTS

Trader Joe says: Paneer Tikka Masala with Spinach Basmati Rice – Authentic Indian Recipe

Abi says: I love Indian food. I like the rich flavors, the enthusiastic use of seasoning, the way you can eat with your hands using rice and/or naan. I like that there are dishes with cheese and dishes with meat and dishes with neither cheese nor meat.

What I don’t like is that paneer tikka masala doesn’t travel well. Sure, I can throw some leftovers in a plastic container, but the constant fear of a purse full of sauce is a huge deterrent. I’m talking serious fear here. I love my purse. I love paneer tikka masala. I don’t want my purse to get any paneer tikka masala lovin’. What can I say? I am a jealous lady.

You know who else is jealous? Everyone who saw this meal, from my commute buddy to coworkers, people either saw the box and said ‘Wow, that looks really good. I need to start bringing frozen food to work.’ or they endured the amazing aromas of my lunch and said ‘I am going to go get some Indian food now. Also, I hate you Abi for making me spend money instead of eating my sandwich in peace.’*

This meal weighs in at just 9 ounces, but provides such a hearty portion of tikka masala’d paneer that I was worried I wouldn’t have enough rice. The tikka masala is fragrant with spices that must come straight from heaven. The individual cheese cubes are not quite in the same abundance as shown on the box. In fact, the picture on the box is only really a “Serving Suggestion” if the suggestion is “Buy two boxes of the meal and put them on the same plate.”

Alas, I can’t tell you much about the spinach rice. In my enthusiasm to consume this meal I completely forgot to taste it solo. I just mixed everything together into one rather unattractive mass of super-delicious food. So, as a sauce-conveying mechanism, the green rice is awesome. As a stand-alone meal component I’m at a loss.

What I can tell you is that Trader Joe’s knows what they’re doing with this meal. There is exactly enough rice for the paneer and sauce, the flavor of the tikka masala is divine without being overly spicy (I adore spicy, this was medium intensity), and there’s no chance that the meal will end up all over the inside of your purse. Could this meal get any better? Yes, it could include a chocolate lava cake, then it would be perfect.

Bravo, Trader Joe’s!

*Not an actual quote. More like the gist of a quote. Yes, that person did go buy Indian food.

Price: $4.29
Serving: 1 tray, 8oz.
Calories: 370 per serving
Fat: 20%, 13g
  Saturated Fat: 35%, 7g
  Trans Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 26%, 620mg
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 17%, 50g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 8g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Amy says: Mac n’ Cheese is a favorite with kids of all ages. We decided to offer it in our first “Kids Meals”. Macaroni with organic broccoli with cheese and a slice of focaccia bread. For dessert, there are two delicious “snacks” filled with honey-sweetened organic apples.

Stacey says: This being a kid’s meal I sought out the perspective of my 8 year old niece, Penny, making this a 4 cents review (her 2 cents and mine). This kid’s meal appeals to the one’s most basic need…the need for Mac n’ Cheese. Amy’s Kitchen does it right by combo-ing it with just-right accessories: broccoli, focaccia and little applesauce pies. The headliner of the show held it’s own with noodles that one could barely detect as “healthy” and a cheese sauce that tasted reasonably like what cheese sauce reasonably should taste like, though it could have been a bit less runny so as to stick to the noodles better. The genius of pairing a broccoli side with mac n’ cheese is that the runny sauce gets to do double duty as vegetable dressing as well, so no harm is done by food-touching, often a hot button issue for kids. Penny and I both would have liked a larger portion of broccoli.

Getting back to the food-touching issue, separating the little apple pie pillows into an inner removable tray shows the kind of attention to detail that makes all the difference in a successful kid meal. My preference would have been to have the focaccia bread also segmented into the removable tray, but Penny used her bread square as a sauce-mop so it was moot to her. The pies themselves were delightful; so tiny and charming the way anything miniature is instantly attractive. I felt the two tasty bites were a just right ending to a well planned meal, but Penny felt there should be more of them, she’d like 5 more, but the negotiator in her will settle for an increase of 2. As for the dénouement, Amy’s kids meals come with a spectacular prize – a temporary tattoo of a one-eyed dog, the wearing of which instantly makes you the coolest kid on the playground or in the conference room.

Price: $3.00 on sale, reg. $3.69
Serving: 1/2 pizza, 5.8oz.
Calories: 360 per serving
Fat: 18%, 12g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 32%, 770mg
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 16%, 48g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 per serving

Safeway Select says: A Traditional Margherita Pizza Made with Lightly Seasoned Diced Tomatoes and Basil, with a Blend of Mozzarella, Asiago, Parmesan and Romano Cheeses.

Liza says: Somebody Sure Likes Using Caps Over There. I think they found themselves in a confused panic about capitalizing specific cheese names and decided to throw in a bunch of extra caps just in case they were wrong. That way they could pretend it was just some kind of poetic free verse. Anyhow, let me get the bitchy part out of the way first: A “traditional” Margherita pizza? O rilly? ‘Cause I have never seen Asiago, Parmesan and Romano cheeses on a “traditional” Margherita. Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella, fresh basil, and fresh tomatoes are the only required toppings for a Margherita pizza. Maybe a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. That’s it, though.

Pizza pedantics aside, this little seven-inch rising-crust number was really quite good. The crust was both nicely doughy inside and crisp on the outside; it tasted very similar to a Freschetta crust, which doesn’t surprise me because house brands are often made with the exact same ingredients as name brands, in the exact same facilities, and are sometimes the exact same product with different packaging. If you like Freschetta, I’m fairly confident you would like the Safeway Select.

This pizza doesn’t have tomato sauce, but its diced tomatoes were decently tomatoey, not pink and acidic as is so often the case. The ingredient list doesn’t specify, but they tasted like they could be plum tomatoes. I liked the four-cheese blend well enough, but because three of the four were dry cheeses, this pizza isn’t gooey and melty. It’s pretty self-contained and won’t leave long strings of elastic mozzarella draping over your keyboard at work. The cheeses were nicely salty and a little nutty, and had cooked to a perfect golden-brown. I have mixed feelings about the basil, though. My first couple of bites were impressively bright with plenty of zingy basil, but then some other pieces had no discernible basil at all.

By the way, this is one of the few frozen entrees I’ve come across that offered high-altitude cooking instructions on the back. Those of us who live way up in the sky appreciate that. In this case, 20-26 minutes in a preheated 400 degree oven was the recommended cooking time, but it took 31 for my pizza to get lightly browned. I must also note that half of a seven-inch pizza is not going to satisfy most people, so let’s just assume we’re all going to eat the whole thing and be done with it. You could do much worse than infrequently consuming 720 calories for your main meal of the day. Would I buy this pizza again? Yeah, because even at the regular price of $3.69 it’s cheaper than Amy’s Solid Gold Crust pizza topped with black truffles and unicorn meat. Plus, Amy’s crust doesn’t even RISE. It thinks it’s above all that.