My week-long experiment with processed instant lunches: tag zwei.
I'm trying to keep an open mind, I really really am. But last night, I cooked a casserole-type thing with broccoli, red and yellow bell peppers, cauliflower, carrots, peas, corn, eggplant, zucchini, roasted mushrooms, soaked in organic veggie broth and topped with both mild and sharp cheddar cheese, mozzarella, and whole wheat bread crumbs. I stuck to my promise to eat these crappy ready-made meals, so into the freezer my delicious veggie casserole-type-thingy went. I guess the comparison just isn't fair.
Tuesday
Lean Cuisine chicken with basil cream sauce*
I assume there's some law that states that these things must include a pointless descriptor on the front. For today's lunch, this pointless descriptor (which is placed right between the title and the picture, so it's not like you couldn't deduce the contents yourself through common sense) is thus: 'chicken breast with rib meat & angel hair pasta'. Fair enough. The image displays some white angel hair pasta, with a few decent chunks of yellow and red bell peppers and a decent helping of herbs/spices (probably parsley). The two pieces of chicken look to have been baked or fried, judging by the browned edges and mild browning overall. The chicken is drizzled with a bit of cream sauce. It's looks a bit pathetic, as far as meals go, though one could always eat two if one was hungry.
Cooking is, again, a five minute wait in front of the microwave. Fortunately there was no need to 'rotate 1/4 halfway through cooking' like yesterday, so I was able to occupy my time otherwise (by reading the ingredients list on the side, if you're wondering). After cooking, I am apparently to leave it in the microwave for 1-2 minutes. I forgot about this delightful meal, and no one was waiting for the microwave, so today I fulfilled the requirements as per Lean Cuisine. I'm quite proud of myself -- clearly I am mastering the world of processed convenience products!
Do you remember that soggy bit of cardboard left out in the rain that I mentioned yesterday? Well, imagine eating it, and you've a good idea of how the chicken tasted. Or didn't taste. Okay, so it was past its used-by date (of April 2008), so maybe it tasted better once upon a time. But the flavourings (i.e. spices, herbs and sauce) were still there, so I'm not sure how they would stick around while the delicious taste of well-cooked chicken would not.
The cover was -- surprise surprise -- somewhat inaccurate. The cover shows a small amount of sauce, with the majority of the meal made up with chicken and pasta. The plastic tray of food product that I ingested was perhaps 50% sauce, two pathetic bits of chicken smaller than the size of my palm, and some sad looking white angel-hair pasta (why can't they use whole-wheat? It's delicious, and adds fibre to an otherwise fibre-deficient meal) with minuscule bits of red and yellow bell pepper. The bell peppers were quite juicy, but unfortunately without flavour. The chicken was an abysmal shade of off-white, a far cry from the browned chicken featured on the cover.
That said, the flavour in toto was a hell of a lot better than yesterdays chicken pot pie. It was, dare I say, almost good, had I never eaten a home-cooked meal in my life. The spices added were quite a respectable fit with the meal, although they covered up the low quality of the food in the same way that salt attempted to conceal the low-quality of the chicken-pot pie. I like spices, but personally I'd rather under-do it and have the taste of the food shine through. Flavours should enhance, not be the taste. And frankly, there are more spices available beyond parsley and salt.
I think y'all already have a decent idea of what's in chicken with pasta and bell peppers (and you can make up a quick cream sauce easily with butter, flour, and milk/cream). I certainly do, which is why I was surprised (although not shocked) to see a short story under the 'ingredients' heading. Here 'tis:
I'm not sure where the walnuts are, but I assume they were ground up into flour and added to the cream sauce. I hope? And why is sugar a seasoning? I should remember that next time I'm eating chocolate: 'oh, it's just a little cacao bean, milk powder, and seasoning'. As usual there is a variety of corn product in a meal that doesn't include corn, ensuring that our subsidised farmers continue growing more corn than necessary, because monocultures are awesome for the environment. Supposedly there are no preservatives in this dinner, which does leave me to wonder what the potassium chloride is intended to do. Potassium Chloride is what they give to those on death row (I hear George Bush is a big fan). I won't say any more about it, except that I'd like to know what it's doing in my food. Phosphoric acid, meanwhile, is a great rust killer, so I'm going to make a giant stretch of logic and assume that it's also a wonderful remover of calcium deposits (CLR anyone?), which must be great for your bones.
I'd also like to know why parmesan cheese paste is required, and . . . . well, what the hell is it?
But thumbs up to the combination of walnuts and blue cheese: I made a pistou forestier a few weeks ago that was so-so (that's what I get for following a recipe and ignoring my own instincts on what is a reasonable amount of parmesan and salt to add to a meal), until the addition of great chunks of walnuts and crumbled blue cheese on top. Unfortunately for both myself and this dish, neither the walnuts or blue cheese could be tasted, rather defeating the purpose.
The calorie count is on the other side of the bell curve for appropriate lunches: 280 calories (240g per serve, which is 1 box probably not including the packaging). Let us assume you have roughly the same number of calories for breakfast and lunch: 300 each. Say you have a snack of 100 calories (and I'm guessing that the type of people who would willingly pick up one of these Lean Cuisine thingies are probably also the types to eat those 100-calorie-in-a-pack snack foods). By dinnertime, you've had a whole 700 calories. Let's say you have a chicken pot pie for dinner: 730 calories. Bringing you to 1430 calories throughout the day. I can only hope such a diet involves absolutely NO physical activity, and/or a decent level of gorging at midnight. Because it's been less than an hour after eating this thing, and I'm already hungry.
The Daily Values are a little better than yesterday too: 11% total fat, 13% saturated fat, 12% cholesterol, 20% sodium (okay, maybe not so good), but only 8% daily fibre (which is a decent indication of just how tiny those bell pepper bits were). I think back to my weekend breakfast of (completely organic) muesli comprised of a diced pink lady apple, uncooked rolled oats, raisins, walnuts (or pecans), sunflower seeds, cinnamon, coconut, flax seed and half a tablespoon of honey, all mixed in with some delicious yoghurt (with some fair-trade vanilla extract added if the yoghurt is not sweetened) and a bit of date syrup if I have any lying around. No question my muesli has a much higher calorie count, but it tastes amazing, without the huge levels of sodium, fat and cholesterol, but surely with a much more respectable amount of fibre.
The dirty fork can be easily washed. The box seems relatively clean, so I am going to assume it's recyclable. The plastic flap-thing is now useless -- I can't even imagine a way to reuse it. The plastic tray is not to be reused, although the damage is at least halfway mitigating, as it is a No. 1 recyclable. Each meal is roughly $4.29 online, although I imagine it could be cheaper at sale time, which is good since you'll need to eat at least two to fill yourself up.
I'm still not sold on the convenience. This is a far far better tasting meal than yesterday, but it's still not as good as a home-cooked meal made by a human being with a functioning cerebral cortex. It takes 5 minutes to heat and 1-2 minutes of 'waiting time'. At 6 minutes each, that amounts to 30 minutes a week; I can make enough food for a week and a half in 20 minutes, and have fun doing it. Plus, a home cooked meal will actually fill me up, largely because I can adjust the portion size to how hungry I am, rather than be a slave to a Lean Cuisine box. I don't think the ingredients are so bad that one meal will kill you (and again, it's a great improvement upon yesterday). But if you're eating these things two, three times a week, I can't imagine the buildup is going to be good for you. And that's assuming everything else you're eating is real food. The so-far regular visual disappointment of what's inside the box vs what's on the box is going to wear thin quite soon. Much like my father, I do follow a philosophy that 'it's all going to come out the same', so I don't fret too much about how my food looks, but there is something to be said for appetising food. The thump as the frozen chunk of plastic hits the counter combined with the depressed looking contents made me want to hurl. I am completely unsurprised that the average Lean-Cuisine shopper is invariably a cranky middle-class white lady with a propensity for blaming everyone for everything and complaining about traffic. If I had to ingest this on a regular basis, I'd be fairly bitter too. And the next time some half-witted 'tard tells me that home-cooking is 'too expensive', I can confidently cut that bullshit down to size, in much the same way as I do to idiots who try to claim the dishwashers are more efficient on the basis of some study they've never read.
Yes it was lean, but no, it was certainly not cuisine. The chicken died a pointless death and I just ate a pointless meal. Disappointment persists.
*Why isn't it capitalised on the front of the box? Net-speak has gone too far, gueyz.
Tuesday
Lean Cuisine chicken with basil cream sauce*
I assume there's some law that states that these things must include a pointless descriptor on the front. For today's lunch, this pointless descriptor (which is placed right between the title and the picture, so it's not like you couldn't deduce the contents yourself through common sense) is thus: 'chicken breast with rib meat & angel hair pasta'. Fair enough. The image displays some white angel hair pasta, with a few decent chunks of yellow and red bell peppers and a decent helping of herbs/spices (probably parsley). The two pieces of chicken look to have been baked or fried, judging by the browned edges and mild browning overall. The chicken is drizzled with a bit of cream sauce. It's looks a bit pathetic, as far as meals go, though one could always eat two if one was hungry.
Cooking is, again, a five minute wait in front of the microwave. Fortunately there was no need to 'rotate 1/4 halfway through cooking' like yesterday, so I was able to occupy my time otherwise (by reading the ingredients list on the side, if you're wondering). After cooking, I am apparently to leave it in the microwave for 1-2 minutes. I forgot about this delightful meal, and no one was waiting for the microwave, so today I fulfilled the requirements as per Lean Cuisine. I'm quite proud of myself -- clearly I am mastering the world of processed convenience products!
Do you remember that soggy bit of cardboard left out in the rain that I mentioned yesterday? Well, imagine eating it, and you've a good idea of how the chicken tasted. Or didn't taste. Okay, so it was past its used-by date (of April 2008), so maybe it tasted better once upon a time. But the flavourings (i.e. spices, herbs and sauce) were still there, so I'm not sure how they would stick around while the delicious taste of well-cooked chicken would not.
The cover was -- surprise surprise -- somewhat inaccurate. The cover shows a small amount of sauce, with the majority of the meal made up with chicken and pasta. The plastic tray of food product that I ingested was perhaps 50% sauce, two pathetic bits of chicken smaller than the size of my palm, and some sad looking white angel-hair pasta (why can't they use whole-wheat? It's delicious, and adds fibre to an otherwise fibre-deficient meal) with minuscule bits of red and yellow bell pepper. The bell peppers were quite juicy, but unfortunately without flavour. The chicken was an abysmal shade of off-white, a far cry from the browned chicken featured on the cover.
That said, the flavour in toto was a hell of a lot better than yesterdays chicken pot pie. It was, dare I say, almost good, had I never eaten a home-cooked meal in my life. The spices added were quite a respectable fit with the meal, although they covered up the low quality of the food in the same way that salt attempted to conceal the low-quality of the chicken-pot pie. I like spices, but personally I'd rather under-do it and have the taste of the food shine through. Flavours should enhance, not be the taste. And frankly, there are more spices available beyond parsley and salt.
I think y'all already have a decent idea of what's in chicken with pasta and bell peppers (and you can make up a quick cream sauce easily with butter, flour, and milk/cream). I certainly do, which is why I was surprised (although not shocked) to see a short story under the 'ingredients' heading. Here 'tis:
- Blanched macaroni product (water, semolina, wheat gluten), milk, cooked chicken breast meat with rib meat (chicken breast meat with rib meat, water, seasoning (sugar, romano cheese and blue cheese {cultured cow's milk, salt, enzymes}, spices, salt, modified food starch, walnuts, dehydrated garlic and onion, citric acid, flavourings {(modified food starch, corn syrup solids, flavour, smoke flavour, partially hydrogenated soybean oil), maltodextrin, citric acid, gum arabic, natural flavour}, garlic extractives), olive oil, chicken flavour (dehydrated chicken broth, chicken powder, natural flavour), modified cornstarch, salt, spice), red peppers, yellow peppers, parmesan cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), water, soybean oil, modified cornstarch, basil, bleached wheat flour, salt, garlic concentrate (garlic, salt, natural flavours, sesame oil, canola oil, citric acid), spices, parmesan cheese paste (granular and parmesan cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), water, salt, lactic acid, citric acid), extra virgin olive oil, cheese flavour (enzyme modified parmesan cheese (cultured milk, water, salt, enzymes)), cheese flavour (cheddar cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), water, salt, enzymes, cultures, phosphoric acid, xanthan gum), dehydrated onions, potassium chloride.
I'm not sure where the walnuts are, but I assume they were ground up into flour and added to the cream sauce. I hope? And why is sugar a seasoning? I should remember that next time I'm eating chocolate: 'oh, it's just a little cacao bean, milk powder, and seasoning'. As usual there is a variety of corn product in a meal that doesn't include corn, ensuring that our subsidised farmers continue growing more corn than necessary, because monocultures are awesome for the environment. Supposedly there are no preservatives in this dinner, which does leave me to wonder what the potassium chloride is intended to do. Potassium Chloride is what they give to those on death row (I hear George Bush is a big fan). I won't say any more about it, except that I'd like to know what it's doing in my food. Phosphoric acid, meanwhile, is a great rust killer, so I'm going to make a giant stretch of logic and assume that it's also a wonderful remover of calcium deposits (CLR anyone?), which must be great for your bones.
I'd also like to know why parmesan cheese paste is required, and . . . . well, what the hell is it?
But thumbs up to the combination of walnuts and blue cheese: I made a pistou forestier a few weeks ago that was so-so (that's what I get for following a recipe and ignoring my own instincts on what is a reasonable amount of parmesan and salt to add to a meal), until the addition of great chunks of walnuts and crumbled blue cheese on top. Unfortunately for both myself and this dish, neither the walnuts or blue cheese could be tasted, rather defeating the purpose.
The calorie count is on the other side of the bell curve for appropriate lunches: 280 calories (240g per serve, which is 1 box probably not including the packaging). Let us assume you have roughly the same number of calories for breakfast and lunch: 300 each. Say you have a snack of 100 calories (and I'm guessing that the type of people who would willingly pick up one of these Lean Cuisine thingies are probably also the types to eat those 100-calorie-in-a-pack snack foods). By dinnertime, you've had a whole 700 calories. Let's say you have a chicken pot pie for dinner: 730 calories. Bringing you to 1430 calories throughout the day. I can only hope such a diet involves absolutely NO physical activity, and/or a decent level of gorging at midnight. Because it's been less than an hour after eating this thing, and I'm already hungry.
The Daily Values are a little better than yesterday too: 11% total fat, 13% saturated fat, 12% cholesterol, 20% sodium (okay, maybe not so good), but only 8% daily fibre (which is a decent indication of just how tiny those bell pepper bits were). I think back to my weekend breakfast of (completely organic) muesli comprised of a diced pink lady apple, uncooked rolled oats, raisins, walnuts (or pecans), sunflower seeds, cinnamon, coconut, flax seed and half a tablespoon of honey, all mixed in with some delicious yoghurt (with some fair-trade vanilla extract added if the yoghurt is not sweetened) and a bit of date syrup if I have any lying around. No question my muesli has a much higher calorie count, but it tastes amazing, without the huge levels of sodium, fat and cholesterol, but surely with a much more respectable amount of fibre.
The dirty fork can be easily washed. The box seems relatively clean, so I am going to assume it's recyclable. The plastic flap-thing is now useless -- I can't even imagine a way to reuse it. The plastic tray is not to be reused, although the damage is at least halfway mitigating, as it is a No. 1 recyclable. Each meal is roughly $4.29 online, although I imagine it could be cheaper at sale time, which is good since you'll need to eat at least two to fill yourself up.
I'm still not sold on the convenience. This is a far far better tasting meal than yesterday, but it's still not as good as a home-cooked meal made by a human being with a functioning cerebral cortex. It takes 5 minutes to heat and 1-2 minutes of 'waiting time'. At 6 minutes each, that amounts to 30 minutes a week; I can make enough food for a week and a half in 20 minutes, and have fun doing it. Plus, a home cooked meal will actually fill me up, largely because I can adjust the portion size to how hungry I am, rather than be a slave to a Lean Cuisine box. I don't think the ingredients are so bad that one meal will kill you (and again, it's a great improvement upon yesterday). But if you're eating these things two, three times a week, I can't imagine the buildup is going to be good for you. And that's assuming everything else you're eating is real food. The so-far regular visual disappointment of what's inside the box vs what's on the box is going to wear thin quite soon. Much like my father, I do follow a philosophy that 'it's all going to come out the same', so I don't fret too much about how my food looks, but there is something to be said for appetising food. The thump as the frozen chunk of plastic hits the counter combined with the depressed looking contents made me want to hurl. I am completely unsurprised that the average Lean-Cuisine shopper is invariably a cranky middle-class white lady with a propensity for blaming everyone for everything and complaining about traffic. If I had to ingest this on a regular basis, I'd be fairly bitter too. And the next time some half-witted 'tard tells me that home-cooking is 'too expensive', I can confidently cut that bullshit down to size, in much the same way as I do to idiots who try to claim the dishwashers are more efficient on the basis of some study they've never read.
Yes it was lean, but no, it was certainly not cuisine. The chicken died a pointless death and I just ate a pointless meal. Disappointment persists.
*Why isn't it capitalised on the front of the box? Net-speak has gone too far, gueyz.