BF Review: Lean Cuisine Salad Additions

It even happens to me, dear Foodies. I wake up late, get out the door late, get the kids to school and..."Oh crap! I forgot to pack lunch!"

Thankfully there's a supermarket between the diva's school and my job (I only work about 3/4 mile from their school!) so I headed there to see what they could offer me. And I came across this:

Lean Cuisine Salad Creations (Southwest-style chicken)

• Simply add your lettuce!
• 260 calories
• 9g fat
• 26g carbs (probably from the beans and tortilla strips)
• 4g fiber
• 18g protein

So I decided to give it a whirl! I like a salad and I'm an adventurous gal.

So the box gives three easy prep steps:

Step one: Put your dressing in a cup of room temperature water to thaw. Yeah. My office doesn't do room temperature. It does hot. So I worked with it.

Step two: Microwave chicken & veggies in the steamer pouch for 2.5 minutes on high.

Step three: Assemble your salad by putting lettuce on a plate or bowl (yes it really does say that), followed by chicken & veggies, dressing, then tortilla strips (I'm a rebel. I did strips then dressing).

Firstly, this is the MOST work I've ever done for a frozen meal, ok? This better be good cuz this is almost as much effort as making my salad from scratch. Well not really, but still.

So I taste and...

• Um...the star of this salad is definitely the dressing. The corn lends a lot of flavor and I am amenable to the texture of black beans but the dressing popped. Wasn't too spicy. It was just right.
• The chicken, however, was a wee bit...bland. But it's only got 590mg sodium (which is paltry in terms of frozen stuff) so what can we expect?
• I wish I'd let the chicken cool a little bit more before I put it on my salad. It made my lettuce a bit wilty (and it was already wilty cuz it took me until 10:30 to put the bag of salad mix in the fridge).
• Some might question my decision to use the tortilla strips. My pouch, my choice. They do separate them out so there is nothing stopping you from tossing them if you are deathly afraid of tortilla strips. I like the crunch.

Final verdict: I actually liked this. I think if I was better prepared I would not have found the steps quite so labor intensive. But then, isn't the point of frozen meals that you don't HAVE to be prepared? That's a debate point I'll leave to you, dear Foodies. Long story short, I think it's a good option, especially on those days when you want a salad and can't/don't want to go out and procure one. 

And lookit! I even found you a coupon so you can try it for yourself! Squee!