Organic Frozen Meals

There was no cooking for me last night. I’m seriously in a funk. I can’t determine whether it’s the actual cooking, if I’m bored, if it’s the blog or something else entirely. The only way that the cooking can end is if I win the lottery, but since I haven’t been playing that’s not very likely. Sigh. Someone needs to shake this funk out of me and get me back on track. Although I can’t really complain about it too much since we had sushi delivered for dinner last night. Yum! I promised myself that I would be cooking the Salmon Packets and Kale Chips tonight come hell or high water.

What I have for you today is two more reviews of frozen meals that I had for lunch this week. I decided to purchase two meals from the organic, natural section of Wegman’s. These always make me a little leery. I was well aware that there was going to be some sort of tofu like product in these meals. Sometimes I can handle tofu and other times it freaks me out just a bit. So I decided to pick out two meals that I recognize and enjoy. I figured if it’s something I normally like, I should be able to find something halfway decent about it.

The first one is Helen’s Kitchen Thai Red Curry. This meal is made with organic butternut squash, green peas, and brown basmati rice. The packaging states that this is 2 servings of vegetables and 11 grams of protein. It also said GMO free (trust me I didn’t know what that was either!), gluten free , and vegan. My first beef is I really didn’t see any butternut squash, well okay I saw two very small pieces of butternut squash. I don’t feel two small pieces is a significant enough amount to advertise this meal as having butternut squash in it. My only other complaint and it is a huge one is the Signature Tofu Steaks, they were icky. There was something about the taste of them that wasn’t appealing and they didn’t skimp on those! There were tons of pieces in there. I don’t know if it was the texture or just the taste, but I couldn’t even eat all of the tofu steaks. I took a few out of the meal and trashed them. I can not eat a tofu steak again. Blah. It was horrifying for me. Truly! I checked the ingredients in the tofu steak and there is nothing weird, so it might just have been the texture combined with the flavors of this dish. No more for me! I say try it if you are a tofu connoisseur, but I have never claimed to be one and I just don’t think I can try another meal from this brand.

The second meal is Amy’s Black Bean Enchilada Whole Meal. Now this one I really liked. The packaging states it is non-dairy, cholesterol free (that’s a plus for me!) and gluten free. The meal is an organic corn tortilla, with organic black beans, tomatoes, zucchini, tofu, black olives, and green chilies. The side dishes are Spanish rice with sweet corn and green peppers and organic pinto beans. There wasn’t much about this that I didn’t enjoy. The rice was even pretty tasty even after having been frozen. I love, love, love pinto beans! The tofu was chopped very small and stuffed into the enchilada so I had no problem with it. The only thing a little off was the enchilada sauce. There was a slightly odd taste to that. I added some Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and that helped. Overall this is probably one of the best frozen meals I’ve ever had and I am definitely buying another to try next week. I say try this meal if you like Mexican food. Obviously it’s not as good as going out to get it or cooking it yourself, but it’s a good representation. Yay for decent frozen food! My life is almost complete now!

I honestly didn’t realize how “crunchy granola” these frozen meals were. I’m glad I was putting something fairly healthy into my body. I do care about where my food comes from; I just don’t have the money to eat that way all the time. As far as frozen meals go these were about average in price. No shoppers club discount available. I wonder if there ever are? Sometimes I speculate if eating less gluten will help with my stomach troubles, so that’s another plus for these meals when it comes to me. I do not have celiac disease thank goodness, because there is no way I could be gluten free all the time. I’d die without my pasta and bread. In fact tomorrow I plan on having Spaghetti O’s with Sliced Franks! Yum! I know, it's a weird thing to enjoy, but I love Spaghetti O's!

Okay so I’m sucking it up tonight and I’m cooking. While I was writing about my frozen meal experience it got me excited for trying kale chips tonight. I know they are super good for me and I really hope I will enjoy them. Maybe I will start craving kale chips instead of tortilla chips. Okay maybe not. I’m wondering if I will be offering Anthony enough to eat with that meal though. Salmon and kale chips. I feel like I need to add a starch of some kind. That’s not a good thing since we have officially run out of potatoes, rice, and couscous. Although we do have a box of Rice-a-Roni I keep around for emergencies. I might have to break that out.

Frozen Meals Part 2

I didn’t cook last night. We went to Rohrbach’s a German Restaurant/Brewery for an event they hold once a month called Brewtopia. It’s a beer tasting that has a theme. Last night’s theme must have been fruity beers, because that’s mainly what we had. So we tasted beers that had apricot, blueberry, orange, and black cherry flavors to them. We also ate there. I had a Reuben, which is one of my favorite sandwiches of all time. Anthony ordered a German pretzel and a German sausage sandwich (can’t remember which one but it was either: liverwurst, bratwurst, or bauernwurst). Both of our entrée’s were served with German Potato Salad. It’s soooo yummy. It has the right combination of bacon, vinegar, sugar, and potatoes. The food at Rohrbach’s is very good and of course so is their beer.

I tried two more frozen “healthy” meals this week. I’m going to be picking up more at the store this weekend. I figure I’ll try as many as I can and let all of you know which brands I think taste the best and are worth the money. On another note I did eat Spaghetti O’s this week for lunch too and I still love them!! They might not be the healthiest thing for me to eat, but they are just so yummy. I think they are one of my comfort food items. They remind me of my childhood, and I didn’t have a terrible childhood so that’s a good thing! I might just have to buy the one with sliced “franks” this weekend.

The first frozen meal I tried this week was Kashi Lemongrass Coconut Chicken. I was pretty excited to try it since I like other Kashi products a lot. Plus the company is all about healthy, natural products which are things that I find important. Then there was lemongrass. Lemongrass is not an ingredient that I know much about. I’m certain that I’ve had it a few times in my life, but I can’t remember what it was in. Lemongrass is not something I ever really want to taste again. Of course we all know I will have to try it again, since I have the “3 strikes and you’re out rule” to eating food (see my Shrimp and Quinoa post). This meal probably would have been on my list for all time favorite frozen meals, if the lemongrass took a hike to Cambodia. The meal had chicken, broccoli, carrots, sugar snap peas, coconut flakes and red quinoa pilaf. The texture was great and I really enjoyed the quinoa pilaf. The sauce is a lemongrass coconut sauce. They should just admit that it’s only a lemongrass sauce. They should also admit that you will not taste anything other then the lemongrass. And that it so strongly tastes of lemongrass that it has a bit of a bite to it. While eating it I was reminded of Lemon Pledge and my belief that I was eating Lemon Pledge sauce was confirmed when I saw other people on the Kashi website describe it that way. I’m not joking people, this tasted like Lemon Pledge smells and it wasn’t good. I was so very disappointed since I love coconut and was really hoping to get some of the coconut flavor. Never fear Kashi, I will be trying another variety of your frozen entrée’s but I will be avoiding any that include lemon of any sort!

The next meal that I had was Lightlife Indian Veggie Masala. I cheated a bit with this one. I’ve had this entrée before and I like it a lot! Whether it’s actually healthy for me or not (there are a good amount of carbs in it), it feels super healthy. The box says it has three servings of vegetables and one serving of whole grain. That right there is more then I typically eat in a day, so this meal is perfect for me. The Indian Veggie Masala has cauliflower, sweet potatoes, chick peas, tomatoes, peas, onions and brown rice. The sauce has a tomato, ginger, curry taste to it that I just loved. The texture and flavors are really good in this meal. Plus the meal is pretty filling, for mostly just being vegetables. And I feel healthier just for having eaten it today. Will I be trying other varieties of Lightlife? You can bet on it!!

You can’t win them all, so even though the Kashi lunch was not what I had been expecting I’m very grateful that Lightlife knows that a little goes a long way! This blog is getting more and more fun for me to write every week. I’m enjoying trying to cook. I’m super excited about my brand new Anthropologie apron (I’m in love with that store!). I can’t wait to try poaching some eggs tomorrow, let’s hope I succeed! I’m also quite intrigued about going to the grocery store and picking out some more frozen entrees to try. Fun stuff!