Lean Cuisine: Lemon Chicken
Welcome to a whole new week here at Tasty Lies. Apologies for not posting this yesterday, I took the day off due to a cold I was battling. I seem to be on the mend, though! So on with the show we go! But first, a little business. I wanted to drop a link to something I wrote elsewhere simply because, well, it's food-based in a way. I wrote a blog over on my personal site about the early 90s corn snack Pizza Crunchabungas. It made me happy so I thought I'd share the love.
Now onto today's meal. This one comes from regular Tasty Lies writer Heidi. It's been quite a while since we've had a new Lean Cuisine meal reviewed on the site, over a month in fact. I'd nearly forgotten about their strange new packaging. I understand it's marketing to what I am assuming is their largely female customer base with more vibrant colors and designs on the box, as opposed to say how flat and blocky HUNGRY MAN meals tend to be. That said it gives the meals a fresh look and definitely does make them far more eye-catching when strolling the frozen aisle. I can't say for sure because I haven't done a big comparison, but the pictures look a lot more detailed and of a higher quality as well. Add some clever branding with things such as a "Chef's Pick" badge on the front and it goes a long way in dressing up what may have become a stalling brand. Lean Cuisine has been the big dog in the low calorie yard for quite a while. I just looked it up and they go all the way back to the early 1980's. At the time there wasn't a lot of competition. Healthy Choice arrived in the late 80s, with a Weight Watchers brand of meals following soon after. That split the market up considerably. Both companies eventually lost the battle to the big man on campus, though, and Lean Cuisine ended up at the top of the food chain.
These aren't those times, however. Healthy Choice was reintroduced in 2009 with sleek new packaging and a big marketing campaign and has carved out a big slice of the diet frozen meal pie. As has Weight Watchers, which was re-branded Smart Ones when Weight Watchers got bought out and went public, independent of longtime owners Heinz. Heinz is still responsible for the meals, licensing out the Weight Watchers points system.
I hope you enjoyed your frozen food history lesson today. If anything, I'd like to inform. Let's talk about today's meal, Lemon Chicken in a fancy new box.
It's a good looking meal, that much is for sure. It's very clean, the rice looks nice and fluffy, a good amount of vegetables but definitely not too much. The lemon zest on top of the chicken is an awesome touch, along with the sweet lemon sauce. It all looks very delicate and tasty. I have abnormally high hopes for this one, which will probably be my ruining. Let's take a look...
It's a common complaint from me on this site, but it cannot be disputed that there is a lot more sauce in the actual dish than is pictured anywhere on the box. But it's entirely possible the rice is concealing the majority of the sauce on the box. The rice looks really good, a nice little mix of veggies in there. The chicken looks exactly as it was on the box, right down to what I'm assuming is the pepper. All in all I'd say they'd accomplished what they were trying for, provided the sauce is good. But that's for Heidi to decide...
I feel like I have reviewed this before. But I think it was the Lemon PEPPER chicken which was good as well. (Editor's note: I believe Heidi is referring to Lean Cuisine's Lemongrass Chicken.) I realized I was eating fairly sloppy lately and needed to incorporate veggies and fruit into the mix. This is a really good meal. You get TWO pieces of magic chicken patties, some oregano rice with red peppers, broccoli, and carrot pieces. And you have a nice little meal. And the sauce is just right and not the swimming variety that usually comes with a lean cuisine meal. I wonder if it has anything to do with the chefs on the back cover or the new box presentation? I give it five stars.
Rating: 
Michael Angelo’s: Vegetable Lasagna
I'm not feeling particularly creative today, but it's Wednesday and I've got some Tasty Lies to get out there to you, the loyal reader. Slowly but surely the amount of you is growing and I couldn't be happier.
Well, I couldn't even begin to explain how uncreative I felt...Because it's now Thursday. I didn't get beyond those few sentences. But it's a whole new day, and we've got to get this done. I promised Christen (she did this review) that I'd get it up.
Let's rap about lasagna for a bit, could we? I love lasagna. It's layers of pasta, cheese, sauce, veggies, and maybe meat. In this case NOT meat. We have had a few veggie lasagnas on the site before, and one with soy meat (Oh MorningStar...) but my favorite was always the one supplied to us last year by the people at Stouffers (This isn't shilling, I genuinely liked it). But those were all from companies that make lasagnas...And other stuff. Michael Angelo's is an Italian frozen food company. Surely if anyone's going to get frozen lasagna right, it's a company that specializes in all things Italian, riiiiiight? Let's be real, there's only ONE way to find out. So let's find out.
Before that though, let me say this: I just wikipedia searched lasagna and it seems to have NOTHING to do with Italy. Is this like how they co-opted pizza? Italian JERKS. Moving on...
So I'm on this new diet that limits my dairy and pasta intake and I have to say...This is killing me a little inside. It looks so delicious and pretty damn thick. It looks SO cheesy, so damn cheesy. And I love that it looks like there's a lot of ricotta. I'm also digging the veggies I see. I love broccoli...On EVERYTHING. Okay, probably not cereal, but most everything else! I find it odd that they tell you there's seven veggies in there but not what they are, but that's a small quibble. This thing looks fantastic. Let's see it in the harsh light of lunchtime...
Looks pretty right on. I see a bunch of cheese, some broccoli, and some zucchini on top. Score for them. I think I see carrots in there too! Awesome stuff! It looks like it'd be a pretty great and filling lunch, but that may just be my eyes...What did Christen think?
Michael Angelo's Vegetable Lasagna made a very enjoyable lunch. The vegetables were delicious! It had broccoli, spinach, carrots, mushrooms, cauliflower, and zucchini. I also loved that it was made with ricotta, Romano, and mozzarella cheeses. This meal even cooked pretty well, and lasagna dishes can be very tricky in the microwave. The taste was really amazing. Even though this meal isn't made with whole grain pasta and doesn't really try to watch fat content, it is still delicious and nutritious. It is a little more expensive than other frozen meals, but I think it's worth it. I would give this meal 4 out of 5 stars.
Rating: 
Banquet: Cheesy Smothered Charbroiled Patty Meal
The Banquet parade continues into this new week! Kudos to the Banquet people for trying to have a pretty large selection of meals. And, dammit, kudos to ME for slowly working my way through them. Some are easier to get through than others. I like their meals in line with chicken fingers...Mostly because I love chicken fingers. Because I'm not a crazy person. I'm both sane AND awesome. Sane, awesome types probably had chicken McNuggets as a child. You see, once upon a time you could get McNuggets, fries, Hi-C fruit punch, and a TOY for a low price. And it was awesome. You could ALSO do that today, but today it's a child-killer, obesity, blah blah blah. And that's all true.
Sometimes though you have to splurge a little bit and GET some chicken McNuggets. Especially since it's all white-meat or whatever now. Lord knows how much actual chicken used to be in those bad boys. I've gone way too far here, as the meal I'm reviewing has absolutely no chicken in it. So jumping back, today's meal is meat. Covered with cheese. Served with mashed potatoes. How about THAT? Let's check this out.
The cheese has BACON in it. This is like a meal based around savory and I love it. In the real world bacon and cheese are two amazing flavors and mixed together? Hell YES. Hopefully that will come across here. The potatoes have been covered numerous times here and hopefully they're fine. Thepatty could go either way. Hopefully it's decent. It's not going to be a high quality beef patty, that's for sure, but it might be okay. What's it look like?
Well the patty seems small, but in looking at the box maybe it's not. There's a good amount of cheese sauce and more bacon than I expected there to be. The potatoes were fine. They cooked well enough compared to other Banquet meals. None of these meals have potatoes that are going to touch the awesomeness of REAL mashed potatoes, but they're fine in a pinch.
The patty was, as predicted, not high in quality. It was decent. Not spectacular in any way, mediocre at best. The cheese sauce and bacon was tasty, however. It was thicker than it looked like it would be and both the cheese and the bacon had their individual flavors that mixed together well. It definitely covered up the taste of the patty, which isn't a bad thing. The nature of the 'meat' though is suspect. Something I missed in my initial posting was the fact that they don't clearly define what the "meat patty" is. This was pointed out to me by reader Forrest.
He made a note, and correctly so, that this isn't a beef patty. When looking after his comment I found many instances of the patty being comprised of beef and pork and various fillers. However, upon further research this morning it seems Forrest is very correct. The patty is actually made of mechanically separated pork and turkey and many fillers. That's a real killjoy on this meal that is bringing the star rating down quite a bit. The reason you can't discern exactly what the patty is is because it's a mix of a bunch of things...None of which is beef.
Update: All of my coworkers think this is one of the grosser looking meals we've had. They seem to think it looks like the box but the box is something they wouldn't get in the first place. I don't know, I like the idea. But I'm crazy enough to buy every Banquet meal just to review them. So can I really be trusted? Not even a little.
Rating:
Banquet: Fish Stick Meal
Listen, sometimes after a long day of work I know I need groceries but I'm just not up to it. Maybe I don't want to wander around a store, maybe I don't want to stand in a check out line while some dude tries to decide between Big Red and Double Mint gum. Just buy some gum dude. Or be like me and stick to a brand (Eclipse, spearmint, what?). And you know what? There's a lot of crying babies at the supermarket. I feel bad for a parent that has to trot their kid around a store. Not all stores. There was one grocery store near where I used to live that was like a magical wonderland. I miss you sometimes, Albertsons.
I'm getting sidetracked. Sometimes I don't want to go to the store so I go home and I'm forced to rifle through things looking for some manner of cohesive meal. I usually fail and end up with a weird mishmash of things that don't really fit together, but they'll do the job. Banquet has done that job for me. Never again do I have to think "Man, would rice work with tuna?" (It does, by the way.) Never again will I worry about a little meatless spaghetti with, say, a porkchop. (Sounds good in theory, doesn't it?) No sir, Banquet is here to combine weird things FOR me and call it a meal. And that's exactly what they've done today. I present to you...FISH STICK MEAL. That's it's actual name.
Alright, what do we have here. I see fish sticks (Three or four, I can't be sure). I see macaroni and cheese, because why not...And I see. Wait. Pudding? PUDDING? In a TV dinner? Like, frozen pudding? Do I cook the pudding? Do I have to pull the pudding out way early and let it thaw? And why the hell is it with fish sticks and MACARONI AND CHEESE? This is such a strange combination (But a good source of protein I guess) to have for lunch...Or any meal. Ever. But I'm all in. Let's do this. And yes, you cook the pudding as long as you cook the rest of the meal. Figure that out.
Well how about that. There ARE four fish sticks. That's nice. And I kid you not, the pudding cooked to a boil. I don't recall ever seeing pudding boil...Or be cooked for that matter. Bill Cosby would throw a fit. As you can see it all looks pretty standard. I've had the mac and cheese before. It's fine, if not bland. You may notice quite a few Banquet meals lately...It's because I bought just about all of them and I'm trying to burn through them. Of course now I see they have a fancy Banquet line (Review coming from Heidi soon) so that's all out the door.
Anyways, mac and cheese is bland but fine with a little hot sauce (I'm a Tapatio man). The fish, well, tastes like a fish stick. Though the taste is a little weak it's definitely there. And I did the unthinkable. Damnit, I'm not ashamed to admit this. I dunked one of the fish sticks into the pudding. YEAH I DID IT. I don't know why. I was wishing I had tartar sauce, then I looked at the plate and I thought to myself "Chris, when are you EVER going to have the opportunity to dunk a FISH STICK into hot CHOCOLATE PUDDING again?" The answer is never, so I dunked the bastard. And you know how it tasted? It tasted wrong.
That all said, the chocolate pudding was surprisingly the best tasting part of the meal. It tasted exactly how it should; just like chocolate pudding. The hot factor was a weird change, but it was pretty tasty. I'd definitely have hot pudding again (And I WILL, review coming soon).
It's a small meal but a decent meal, not my favorite Banquet meal but definitely not the worst. Just somewhere in the middle of the road. Were I to get it again, I'd make sure to have tartar sauce on hand. And whatever you do, don't dunk the fish in the pudding. Like I have to tell YOU that.
Rating: 
Wendy’s: The W
Story time! Once upon a time there was an awesome guy named Dave who was always on TV talking about his daughter and hamburgers. His daughter was this ginger girl with really pale skin who was also a cartoon. Her name was Wendy and she was the spokes-toon for Dave Thomas's Wendy's burger chain. Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, got his start as the head cook at the very first KFC that good ol' Colonel Sanders spun out into his vast fortune. Dave was his right-hand man it seems and eventually sold his stock back to Sanders to start his own chain. Kind of an awesome story.
I always liked Wendy's, myself. As a kid I was fascinated by how their burgers were in the shape of a square. Plus, Wendy's somehow managed to make ice cream acceptable as a drink to go with your meal. Sure, McDonald's and the like has their shakes (which as it turns out are NOT made of potatoes), but there was something about the Frosty that was special. And what more, one time someone told me "Hey, dunk a french fry in that bad boy." I did, and love was born. The kind of love that a young boy can have with ice cream. That wonderful mix of sweet from the Frosty and salty from the french fries was something I'd not had before. And it rocked. This little ginger girl was changing things.
But now it's 2012, Dave's been gone ten years, and Wendy's needed a change to get back in the burger game. They've always been around, but needed something of a jump start. CUE WENDY! That's right folks, Wendy is back in a big way. But here's the weird part...Wendy isn't a kid anymore, she's an adult. And not a cartoon. The new Wendy's approach to marketing is to have Dave's actual daughter Melinda (Nicknamed Wenda, which became Wendy) take over for her dad in Wendy's commercials. And it's weird. Check this out...
See what I mean? That's kinda' strange. I mean, it's cool that she's doing it to honor her dad or whatever, but at the end of the day they've named the new line of burgers "Dave's Hot and Juicy." That sounds creepy. And it can't be just me. I did a quick survey and it seems people agree. (Christen is on the fence, Derek thinks it's funny, Marissa thinks it's a bad idea...But at least we'll remember it.) Christen even brought up the fact that cheeseburgers should already be both hot AND juicy...So it's pointless to call them that. And I agree. Are the other Wendy's burgers cold and dry?
It's that commercial that made me venture to Wendy's for the first time in a long time and the crazy thing is, I didn't even GET a Dave's Hot & Juicy. Instead I got something that sounded way too classy to be at a Fast Food joint. Remember the Arch Deluxe? It was McDonald's most expensive failure ever. They tried to classy up McDonald's and it didn't work. But Wendy's isn't a kiddie joint with a clown mascot, so maybe it'll work for them. There's only one way to find out and with that (and a super-long, rambling intro that took me down memory lane), I present: THE W.
That is a beautiful looking cheeseburger. First of all, the square patties make me happy. Is it a big deal? No, but it's different and that makes it stand out. And that's what you need to do. In a world filled with fast food burger joints, why not just look a little different? Topped with lettuce, a thick slice of tomato, some red onions, pickles, and some manner of special sauce that looks suspiciously like the Big Mac secret sauce (THOUSAND ISLAND DRESSING), and you've got a hell of a burger. And a double cheeseburger at that. This thing looks so thick, it's ridiculous. I love it. And the bun looks incredibly soft. The patties are slimmer than the Angus Deluxe from McDonald's but you get two of them. And there's cheese. All in all I'd say this is a damn good looking burger. The real deal?
Well...There's good and bad. First and foremost, it looks like almost all lettuce. You can't really see the other veggies at all and the lettuce is certainly thicker than the beef. but that's all mind-trickery. There's definitely two patties that are pretty much the same size as the picture above, maybe a tiny bit smaller. They measure up, though. The the veggies are there too. The thing about this one is the bun IS soft, so they've been pressed into it. Check it out:
First and foremost, that's a very nice slice of tomato if you like tomatoes (I personally don't, so I didn't eat it). Same goes with the pickles. All the veggies promised are here, along with a big piece of lettuce. SO they definitely delivered. And, you know what? It tasted pretty good. I compared it to the Angus Deluxe earlier and I think that was a good comparison. They are both a "higher-end" burger at their respective restaurants. And they are both good. But I have to be honest, even though the Angus may be a better quality of beef (I'm not sure if that's actually the case), The W wins out in the end. The beef was definitely both hot AND juicy (Good job, Wenda), and it didn't have that distinctive taste that takes a little something away from all McDonald's burgers. This one tasted like (You guessed it) beef! It tasted like a decent burger The special sauce was, as I expected, very similar to the Big Mac special sauce but it's a good taste so why not? I dig this burger. And best of all, it was decently priced. I think I got it with iced tea and fries for around 5 bucks. Totally decent lunch price. The beef was good, the veggies were crisp, and the bun was soft. Kudos to you, Wendy's. Strange commercial aside, Dave should be proud.
Rating:
Healthy Choice: Three Cheese Marinara
Today's Tasty Lie is care of Christen. It's a good meatless lunch from Healthy Choice's 'Natural' line. There's no preservatives, which rocks. It's also a steamer bowl-type meal. Hopefully it's a good one!
Nice bowl of pasta. Not much to really say beyond that. I see some cheese, red sauce, and pasta. I see a small amount of zucchini too, but didn't notice them until I read the description on the box. I like that it has those things, adds a little heartiness to a meatless meal. This one looks pretty delicious. What's it really look like?
This is just weird. The only part that looks like the box is the shape of the pasta. This is so, so strange. It doesn't look bad at all, but it looks like a completely different meal. Huh. Anyways, what's Christen think about it?
The Three Cheese Marinara was another satisfying, but not overly impressive meal from Healthy Choice. It's made with a "nine-grain pasta," which is good, but not as good as a whole grain pasta. The vegetables - yellow zucchini, tomatoes, and onions - while fresh-tasting and well-cooked, are not the most nutritious options out there. I always get excited about a meal that contains broccoli or spinach because they're tasty and full of nutritional benefits. The taste of this meal was good. I like Healthy Choice's steam cooking method. Most of their meals turn out well-cooked. I like that they are indeed healthy and affordable. I just wish this meal could hit a slightly higher mark on the vitamins and minerals scale. I would give this meal a 3 out of 5.
Rating:
