Diet-us Interruptus - (Stouffer's Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Select Meals)

An astute reader points out, after reading the blog two weeks ago mentioning the NASCAR-branded lunch and snack meats, that Rival™ has launched a NASCAR-branded Crock-Pot™ line that you cannot buy in retail stores. Yes, you too can own a crockpot adorned with your favorite NASCAR driver’s face, car and number. I’m not sure I get the tie-in between slow cookers and fast drivers, but what the heck…from Jeff Gordon to Jeremy Mayfield to Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart (the Tony Stewart Crock-Pot™ is pictured), you have a choice of 17 different drivers. The Icebox Diner is a Rival Crock-Pot™ affiliate, so if you’re interested, you can see these NASCAR-branded Rival Crock-Pot here.

Another reader contacted me, telling me that she and her husband had purchased the Banquet Crock-Pot Classic Beef Stew to try, after reading some of the reviews about Crock-Pot Classic meals here and on the Icebox Diner. They rate it as fantastic, and said that they couldn’t reproduce the meal for the $5.99 purchase price if they tried. I wondered if that was true – how much, exactly, does it cost me to make stew when I prepare it? So that will be next week’s blog. Sometime this week, I’m going to make a pot of stew (had one planned, anyway), and actually calculate exactly how much it costs me, and how many servings we eventually get out of it. I cook by taste and experience, and don’t really use recipes much, so I’ll have to stop at each step of the way and measure or weight ingredients (like potatoes, as an example), but I think it’s an interesting exercise – compare Banquet’s Crock-Pot Classic Beef Stew to my own, cost-wise. Next week: The Taming of the Stew!!

Back to work THIS week, though....

This week’s review is about Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selects. I’ve eaten three of these over the past month or so, those being:

• Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selects Chicken Tuscan;
• Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selects Balsamic Glazed Chicken, and,
• Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selects Chicken Fettucini.

Notice a chicken-y trend here? These range in calories from 280-380, so they’re a good choice, diet-wise, if you’re counting calories.

I thought that the Chicken Tuscan was, overall, pretty boring. Basically, it's chicken medallions and spaghetti in a marinara-like sauce with a side of veggies. The chicken was adequate, the vegetables (broccoli and shredded carrots) were very good, but the pasta sauce seemed confused, as if someone couldn’t decide if it was spaghetti sauce from a jar (the sweet-ish kind) or a sun-dried tomato sauce. This meal provides a fair amount of food for only 280 calories, but it’s nothing to write home about.

Next up was the Balsamic Glazed Chicken, coupled with orzo pasta and vegetable medley and an apple crisp dessert. Clearly, Lean Cuisine assumes that people buying their dinners have a sweet tooth, because this dish was heavily slanted toward sweets rather than savories. I was surprised, because the equivalent dish in Stouffer’s Corner Bistro line (Stouffer's Corner Bistro Grilled Rosemary Chicken) isn’t sweet as all, and I was expecting something similar. The balsamic glaze was very heavy – sort of thick – as well as sweet. The orzo, coupled with green beans, spinach, and some red peppers, was pretty bland, but filling. I will say that the apple dessert was really quite good – sweet and crunchy. If you love sweets, this dinner may be for you. Not so much for me; I rate it 3 forks, I’m more of a savory person. The Corner Bistro version only has 420 calories, as opposed to this dish’s count of 380 – if you’re looking for the meal, rather than the dessert, I would choose the Corner Bistro Rosemary Chicken over the Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selects Balsamic Glazed version, for only a 40-calorie difference.

The most recent experiment was the Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selects Chicken Fettucini. Again, I’d expected something a slight bit different – given the fantastic success Stouffer’s has had with its parmesan and romano-tinged sauces in their Corner Bistro line, I’d thought that this chicken, fettucine and broccoli dish would have more “zip.” Unfortunately, it’s pretty bland, lacking piquancy, and even more unfortunately, it doesn’t smell very good when cooked. (Hubby came into the kitchen and announced “[t]hat kind of stinks, doesn’t it?”). The sauce also tended toward a sweet note, which isn’t what I’m looking for in an alfredo-type dish…I suspect that is due to the use of skim or powdered milk to make the sauce rather than whole milk or cream, to reduce calories and fat. On a bright note, it tastes better than it smells, for which I suppose I should be grateful. If you’ve tried the various Lean Cuisine chicken fettucini or alfredo dishes, and liked them, then you will probably like this one, which also comes with a baked apple dessert coated in a caramel sauce. It packs 360 calories, in total; unless you’re sold on the baked apple dessert, my first choice would be the Contessa Chicken Alfredo, at 330 calories per serving and a significantly better taste.

So, next week: The Taming of The Stew, where your intrepid reviewer makes her own homemade stew and calculates the actual cost.

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