Dinner: McCain Healthy Choice Plus; Creamy Chicken Pasta

After having such huge meals with Lite N Easy, I decided to pick a few bigger frozos. This cost me about $5.50 on special.

As you can see it came in a special steam heating container, to “lock in the flavours.” That implies there is flavour… ok, being a bit harsh. The chicken pieces did taste like real chicken and there was a decent amount of it (but looked like that 91% chicken 9% filler/stabiliser/sawdust stuff) I do love penne, and the veg didn’t taste like normal soggy frozo veg. Its just the sauce. I know it says creamy, I just expected a bit more flavour, cheesy even.  See the box is yellow, not pasty. And more mushrooms.

All over I ate all my dinner and felt satisfied.  But really I could have made the same meal last night (a few times and frozen it) pretty easily, but boosted its health profile with wholemeal pasta. So I think I might just do that next time and pick frozos that I couldnt make easily (Coles Risotto is really good, I forgot to take photos, so a review is still coming!) 6/10. Good but not a fav.

There may also be some old LnE reviews I never got to publish before I went on my crazy baking/eating spree. I dont blame LnE for that. I blame me making 3 different decadent baked goods in a night.

Dinner: Fish, wedges and veg!

 

LnE says -  Lightly crumbed fish fillet served with seasoned potato wedges and new season vegetables

Should keep my hopes low, in case I am disappointed ? Its a Friday which means FISH N CHIPPPPPIES for dinner. So I chose the fish fillet with …. WEDGES. Omigosh, I love potato wedges so much.

I want a quick meal, not oven baking, so I can relax into the weekend!

Smelt good, like real fish n’ chips. I decided to plate serve. There was a lot of veg.

The fish was crunchy around the outside and soggy in the middle. There was a high coating to fish ratio, but the fish did taste really good. I found it too chewy though. I wanted to tomato sauce it, but trying to stay on track. I think this is an oven meal

The wedges were also soggy BUT nice, probably because I like soggy chips. They were very full of flavour (as in potato flavour, not batter) As you can see they are less battery than the picture. They tasted healthy in a good way – not greasy or gross.

I do think "New season vegetables" is a silly way to say frozen 3 veg mix"…  There was a lot, A LOT of veg.

The meal was balanced, maybe too heavy on the veg (I would prefer salad, but you cant freeze salad) I would buy it again because it tastes similar to fish and chips from the shops, but healthier. After LnE I could recreate it pretty easily but right now I am enjoying the easy of a quick meal. 6/10

Day 1: Breakfast – Two slices of Grain Toast with Apricot Jam and Greek Style Passionfruit Yoghurt, and fruit medley

First, I just want to note I am VERY wordy to begin with, so you get me a little, and some of my biases etc. As I get through the food it’ll cut down, I just want to paint a picture for potential LnE customers. The key is I bold key points and section, so just skip my blab and get to the bold!

I went to the gym for an early morning class. Bloggers usually say they are are RAVENOUS after a big workout, but for some weird reason when I exercise I cannot stomach food for an hour or so. The harder I work the longer I cant eat for! This is bad, so I usually have an Up & Go within 30 mins of a workout, then some fruit or a muesli bar when I can stomach food.

Today I just forced myself to eat as much as I could within about 45 min of exercise, and just leave the rest for when I got hungry. I ate at about 7:15 at work. The only LnE labels were on the yogurt and jam lids which I pulled off, so I could be eating any brand really.

 

The Greek yogurt is pretty small – small as those packs of dessert yogurt from Aldi or Tamar Valley. Unfortch it is not as creamy or delicious as the dessert yogurts. Almost a little grainy, and also a little tart. BUT nevertheless it was quite good, and didn’t overdo the sauce at the bottom of the container. Personally I like smaller containers of yogurt like this.

I don’t usually do toast for brekkie – and if I do its one slice, loaded up with delicious options like vegemite topped with cottage cheese+avocado grilled, or ricotta berries and honey. But I thought I’d stick to the plan. The toast came frozen, in a  packet of two slices. I ended up eating both pieces because I toasted both and didn’t want to eat soggy toast for morning tea. There was not really enough jam for both slices, so next time I might just have one piece of toast, and replace the lost calories with a smear of avocado and vegemite. The bread was called "grain" which made me think nine-seed type stuff, but it was more like wholemeal with grainy bits. I did like it – it smelt great, the slices were BIG.

By 10 am I was ready to consider morning tea. But I guess still pretty full and a cup of tea would have crushed any cravings. Morning tea is planned as fruit medley – apricots, raisins, apple, maybe paw paw? I don’t usually eat such energy dense stuff unless I am hiking/studying furiously, but I was peckish by 11am. A decent serve. Quite sweet. Kinda wish it was a fruit and nut or seed mix. I didn’t find it that filling though.

Overall thoughts

LnE is a lot higher in carbs than I am used to, mostly coming from bread. I tend to get my carbs from some very grainy bread, oatmeal and bright veggies like sweet potato, and the odd serve of brown rice, so I am interested to see if this keeps me fuller than I am used to. Looking forward to the variety of breakfast though.

Overall a decent breakfast but I am glad every day is not like this, as this is pretty easy to replicate in terms of time/effort compared to cost. 6/10. That is still good. 5/10 would be acceptable for the cost, 4/10 would  pack my own