Eating Right - Frozen Dinners for the Lazy, Tired or Lame

SO, having just decided to stop eating anything that could look up at me with those big, soulful, trusting eyes--that is to say, anything that has FEET (--fish don't have soulful eyes, well, not THAT soulful, anyway), i soon realized that a vegetarian lifestyle requires actual COOKING on a regular basis, since fresh, organic, ultra-healthy veggies don't freeze well-- and okay, even if they do, freezing takes prep time, so i might as well cook if i'm going to prep-- and they don't come in individually sliced and wrapped packages, as far as i know, a la Kraft Singles. Except of course for those peeled and prepared bagged carrot thingies. Personally, i'm afraid to eat anything that comes out of a plastic bag from the produce section, these days. And don't even MENTION canned veggies. I don't know what those flavors ARE, but they bear no resemblance to the original vegetable.

So on one of those nights when i left work thoroughly zombified, dreading the thought of cooking--though i normally LOVE to cook, it's my hobby--i wandered into the local Safeway and considered a novel idea-- a precooked frozen item. Yes, i know that it doesn't make logical sense to think of frozen food as any more free from packaging cooties than plastic-baggied food, but...maybe my subconscious thinks bacteria are somehow cryogenically suspended for all eternity and will not revive upon the thaw, or something. It works for me, anyway.

There i stood, full of hope, in front of the cold case.

Okay, so i was sucked in by the packaging, i admit it. Good, simple, "organic" looking, clean design, and the bonus of those big "nutrition" dots--yes, i was looking at Safeway's new product, "Eating Right" frozen dinners. Since going vegetarian, i've become all nutrition-crazy. The dots with the "call outs", that is, highlights of each dinner's biggest nutritional selling points, such as "High in Fiber!" "25% DV Iron!" really jazzed me, as did the good design, since i'm a writer and designer by trade, and bad design annoys the crap outa me.

Ever since i was "tricked" by Campbell's soup with their "Swanson's" brand (--i thought i was buying something superior to Campbell's when i bought Swanson's--) I have become suspicious, and so one of the first things i did with the "Eating Right" box was flip it over and look for the distributor. Lucerne's. Okay, i have no beef with Lucerne's. Whatever.

The next thing that caught my eye was the interesting menu choice, "Vegetarian Masala". And the fact that the photo looked downright yummy. Okay, well, palatable.

So, being on sale--i guess they're doing a big push for the new brand with the low price--i bought five. Not all the same menu item. I got cheese ravioli, the aforementioned Masala, mac and cheese, spanish rice and beans, and some sort of garlic pasta shrimp thing. (Aside: all the "healthy" lower-calorie frozen brands are sadly lacking in vegetarian choices. But there are a few to be had.) My formerly-Atkins self kicked in and guilt-tripped me for picking out so many items involving bleached, overly refined starchy stuff, but hey-- as i said, i was zombified. I had to take what i could get.

Here's the review part. YES, as i just mentioned, these things are Starch Central. Expect about 75% or more starch in each dinner, and don't go looking for multi-grained nutrition. We're talking white rice, white spaghetti, white noodles, white, white, white. While you're eating all this refined starch, look at the big "nutrition dots" to regain your sense of virtue. Yeah, if you trust the marketing guys to tell the truth, then you're getting 8 grams of fiber, 11 grams of protein and 35% of your RDA of vitamin A. Feel better about yourself. (The virtue-points vary from dinner to dinner, 'natch.) But whatever you do, do NOT look at the carbs. If you've ever done Atkins, acknowledging how many carbs you're consuming in your albeit lowish-calorie dish will throw you into immediate catatonia. (In fact, i would recommend to Lucerne that they put one of those "scratch off" silver coatings over the carb info, with the words "scratch at your own risk" on it.)

You can also count on very few veggies, a sizeable amount of sodium, and flavor aimed at your average 8-month old child. IF you're inclined to buy this stuff, and let it be a big IF, or only for Zombie Days, you'd better be prepared to doctor the hell out of it with your own herbs, spices, salt (believe it or not, it needs even MORE salt!), pepper...and if all else fails, a gigantic bottle of hot sauce. (Hot sauce fixes everything.)

On a positive note, they get brownie points for trying, brownie points for the "nutrition dots"--the package calls them "color-coded information dots", a rather cumbersome title-- brownie points for actually having a dish with the title "Vegetarian" anything, and brownie points for the good graphic design. Oh--and also for the extra-heavy plastic dish, which is recyclable, but heavy enough to try to reuse. I haven't tested it in the dishwasher yet, however. The dish is also good for leaving out on your desk at work an hour or two after you've finished eating, as it starts to smell 100 times more wonderful than the food that actually came in it tasted.

I'm serious. It allows you to imagine that what you ate was really as good as the dish smells, and to forget the ugly, hot sauce-laden truth.

Okay, one more negative criticism and then i'm outa here: the stock photo on the back of the box. Personally, i don't want to be reminded that i'm a middle-aged woman in a frumpy outfit with an extra 20 pounds on me, even if i AM strolling happily hand-in-hand with a fairly decent-looking tall dude with all his hair. The End.