WHAT: Lean Cuisine Honestly Good entrees
STATS: Vary by flavor. The Roasted Red Pepper Chicken, for example, contains 270 calories and 7 fat, 29 carbohydrate, 5 fiber and 25 protein grams. For complete nutrition facts, visit leancuisine.com. We found them at Target, 420 S. University Ave., Little Rock.
THE SKINNY: We like the idea of Lean Cuisine’s new line of minimally processed frozen entrees with no artificial ingredients and preservatives.
But the name? Honestly Good? Honestly, it makes us feel bad - duped about all those apparently deceptive and deficient microwave meals we’ve been lunching on all these years.
The line includes six heat-and-eat (well, heat then-thaw-a-sauce-packet-in-water-then-heat-again-and-eat) entrees: Honey Citrus Chicken, Pineapple Black Pepper Beef, Plum Ginger Grain-Crusted Fish, Pomegranate Chicken, Roasted Red Pepper Chicken and Lemongrass Salmon. We tried the last two.
A lively red pepper sauce perked up the small grilled chicken breast filet and whole grain cavatappi pasta (it made up for the waterlogged side of lifeless broccoli florets). Honestly good.
As for the salmon, we can say that the coconut-crusted wild-caught filet, served with brown rice and a vegetable medley, had a clean flavor - in that its ginger and lemongrass sauce reminded us of soap. Honestly not so good.
Slim Pickings is a weekly review of light foods. E-mail: [email protected]
Food, Pages 33 on 05/22/2013