LEAN CUISINE Salad Additions BzzCampaign

As a BzzAgent, I was invited to take part in the LEAN CUISINE Salad Additions BzzCampaign.  I love salads.  I actually get “salad envy” when I see someone eating salad if I haven’t had one for a while.  Lo will see me looking longingly at a salad and as me if I have salad envy – it’s a real thing.  Lately we haven’t been eating many salads, mainly because I haven’t been to Costco to get a huge container of organic spinach – it’s so much less expensive there.  I was excited for this campaign because it would force me to finally buy salad greens and make some salads.  Salad Additions comes in four flavors – Cranberry & Chicken, Asian-style Chicken, Bistro Chicken and Southwest-style Chicken, and all included chicken, vegetables, toppings, and dressing.

I finally made it to Kroger to buy the Lean Cuisine Salad Additions and I hadn’t read the coupon or the campaign material very closely, so I was searching and searching in the salad section for it.  I was just about to ask an employee when I took out the coupon and realized it said “in the freezer section”.  What?!

Lo finally found them in a freezer end cap, but they only had two flavors.  Luckily one of them was Southwest-style Chicken, because that’s the one that I had my mind set on.  It’s also the only one that is completely gluten-free.  The others have gluten-containing toppings, but those could easily be left out because they are packaged separately.  I grabbed a big container of organic mixed salad greens that were reduced for quick sale.

I took the LEAN CUISINE Salad Additions to work the next day and was pretty excited when lunchtime came around.  To prepare, you have to heat the chicken and vegetable package in the microwave, much like you do with frozen veggies that you steam in the bag in the microwave.  You also have to thaw the dressing in a glass of water, which didn’t work at quickly as the microwave portion, so I ended up holding it under the faucet and kneading the packages.

I was happy to find that my salad was awesome.  I was concerned that the pieces of chicken would be slimy or fatty – like they were from a poor cut of chicken, but it actually had a good texture.  The dressing was AWESOME – I love chipotle flavor and it was spot-on.  It was also a good portion size, and the whole salad was about 260 calories, so it’s a healthy option.

I wish the product could be left in the fridge to thaw instead of microwaving to thaw/cook, because I prefer that my salad toppings and meat be warm or even cool.  These were really hot coming out of the microwave and I didn’t have a lot of time to let them cool down, so my lettuce got slightly wilted.  The box specifically said to keep frozen until use, so I was afraid to just leave it in the fridge to thaw, but the definitely would have been my preference.  It would also make it a good option when people don’t have a microwave available.

Other than that, I wouldn’t change a lot about it.  The price is about $3.69 per box, so I probably won’t buy unless they are on sale or a coupon is available.  There are actually coupons available on the Lean Cuisine website right now for 75 cents off, so if you want to try these out, print off one of those bad boys now.  I’d like to keep one or two of these in the freezer for “emergency” lunches or dinners, but it also inspired me to make and freeze some packets like this for a quick option.  I never thought about freezing salad dressing, but that would solve the issue of having too many open dressings in the fridge that end up going bad.

Have you ever tried these?  Do they sound like something you’d enjoy?

*disclosure: I received a coupon for a free LEAN CUISINE Salad Additions through BzzAgent, but I was not obligated to review or blog about the product – I only did because I actually liked it.