Lean Cuisine Makeover

While some frozen entrees are reasonably edible and even tasty, including Lean Cuisine meals, they generally aren't the most attractive foods when eaten straight from the container. Also, eaten alone, they rarely constitute a well balanced, full meal. For example, Lean Cuisine's roasted garlic chicken meal tastes fine, and the spinach side is actually pretty good, but it's fairly gross-looking after being heated in its plastic container. I mean, they don't even show a picture of it on the front in its actual container...and if you look closely at the top of the package, they've even added a side of bread with some sort of dip... The reason for this is that there are very limited carbohydrates in this particular meal, and by itself, it isn't a balanced meal, regardless if some people avoid starch or not.

I didn't take a picture of the meal in the container, but in case you haven't seen one of these meals...here's what the messy container looks like with the food removed. Yuck. (The container with the food in it didn't look much better.)

To balance the meal, I toasted two pieces of light Wonder bread and cut them into small triangles. The spinach wasn't as creamy as I expected, and I thought a small amount of crumbled cheese would look and taste good. I added queso fresco. To add even more color contrast and a bit of sweetness and additional vitamins to balance the meal even more, I also put a few seedless grapes on the side. Here's the final outcome, which tasted great!

Most frozen entrees can be greatly improved with the addition of at least a small salad and some fresh fruit. Even if you don't add anything to your frozen meal, I highly recommend putting it on a fresh plate if that is convenient/possible.