Last week my family and I took a trip to Walmart to get a nice meal that was really easy to prepare and would give us lots of fuel for our packing and wrapping left to do before Christmas. We spent $12.22 plus tax for a 16″ cheese pizza (Walmart has the best deals on cook and serve pizzas!) and a beautiful, healthy, scrumptious salad that looked like this:
I didn’t use any coupons to put this together, and the only thing I had on hand was the romaine lettuce. I combined that with spinach, which is part of what my $12.22 went toward.
So how did I build a salad with grilled chicken, broccoli, red onions, yellow carrots, whole grains, sesame sticks, dried cranberries and raspberry vinaigrette for such a low price? Would you believe that I put this all together with something found in the frozen food aisle?
Lean Cuisine has recently launched a FANTASTIC new product called Lean Cuisine Salad Additions. Basically it helps you build a super yummy AND super healthy salad for a VERY reasonable price. This kit I bought to create a cranberry & chicken salad was only $2.50! All you have to add is the green base of your choice. It’s SO SO SO easy!
It is designed to feed one person a very filling and satisfying salad. But we turned it into a side dish for our family’s meal and got 3 adult size servings out of it!
Using the Lean Cuisine Salad Additions is very easy. All the components come together in their own packets and with clear instructions. I was surprised that I needed to heat up some of the food rather than just let it thaw, as I usually eat my veggies raw on my salad. But I followed the instructions and thought the final product tasted just wonderful.
There are two main things I really appreciate about Lean Cuisine Salad Additions. First, it saves you a lot of calories. I absolutely love eating salads IF they have a lot of yummy goodies in them. But that’s exactly what makes salads a potential landmine. If you aren’t careful with your choices, you can end up with a salad that has as many calories as a deluxe cheeseburger from a fast food joint! Lean Cuisine has carefully selected ingredients for you so that your portion is correct and your calories are in check, all without sacrificing flavor.
The other thing I love about this product is that it saves you time and money! While I was at Walmart I did some comparison shopping and found the ingredients I would need to buy if I wanted to recreate this salad on my own. If you’d like to see what I found in more detail, check out my shopping trip. Here is the cost breakdown:
- grilled chicken: $2.50
- salad dressing: $1.66
- dried cranberries: $2.98
- sesame sticks: $2.98
- carrots: $1.18
- broccoli: $2.28
- red onion: $.98
total: $14.56
Now, obviously if you buy all of these ingredients you will have more food on hand, but much of it will need to be used up quickly. So if you don’t want to have this salad every day for the next week, you have to come up with some other ideas for how to use up the products. Additionally, you have to be responsible for putting all the elements together and getting your portions right, which is very tricky.
So in my humble opinion, spending $2.50 to get exactly what I need is SO much better than running all over the store and spending significantly more money just so that I still have to go home and prepare all the individual elements and make sure I don’t over-indulge. I’ll take a pass on that and opt to pick up the Lean Cuisine Salad Additions, thank you very much. It leaves me much more time to hang out with my family and watch a fun movie together rather than being stuck in the kitchen cleaning up!
There is no doubt in my mind that I will be purchasing this product again. It is the perfect option to have on hand for those days when you feel like eating a really good salad (and I DO get those cravings from time to time, as does my husband). It also makes a healthy side dish option for my entire family for those days when I know we need some fresh veggies, but I’m short on ideas for what to do. I was very impressed with the flavor of the salad and the ingredients. To be honest, I would never have guessed that it was Lean Cuisine just because I think it tastes too yummy to be light on calories!
If you think you’d like to try Lean Cuisine Salad Additions, be on the lookout for a nationwide magazine ad with a coupon going out on 01/06 (so check your favorite mags next month!) and there will be in-store demos at select stores on 01/03, and coupons will be handed out along with samples! I’d also suggest following Lean Cuisine on Facebook. I really enjoy following them, myself, and from time to time, they reward their fans with special treats like coupons!
So what do you think about this new product? Have you ever tried to make a salad with lots of great ingredients and been horrified by the cost? Or by the calories?
I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias® and NESTLE #CBias #SocialFabric. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.
