Lean Cuisine - Stuff Parents Need

I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper amplification for Collective Bias and its advertiser.

I have to tell you, as much as I love the fact that my family is together for almost every single meal daily (even lunch!), it comes at a price to my ability to maximize my work day. Since I work from home, I’m the one who is in the house and can get lunch and dinner ready each day. Mondays and Wednesdays are the worst, because I don’t have the kiddos with me before lunch, and it is prime “work” time. To spend 30 minutes of that precious time preparing lunch totally wrecks my attempt at a balanced lifestyle, because it gives me less time to get my job done, which in turn makes me more stressed out.

I’ve been noticing that as a result, I’ve been throwing together meal options that aren’t the best choice for my family due to their high salt intake, and I’ve been stress eating while trying to work lightning fast on those days. I need to get back on track with some healthier options that are also really convenient so that I can focus on my work, and also not feel guilty about what I’m eating.

#wowthatsgood stocked freezer

So I headed to Walmart to find some options that would help me make the most of my work hours without coming at a steep cost to my waistline. I really hit the jackpot, too, and now my freezer has an ample supply of healthier choices that can be prepared in a flash.

Breakfast this week has been looking like this:

#wowthatsgood lean cuisine turkey sausage english muffin

This is the LEAN CUISINE Morning Collection Turkey Sausage English Muffin. I’ve been eating it with some sliced citrus and a glass of almond milk. It is totally filling and takes 2 minutes to prepare. The box I purchased at Walmart cost $2.50 for 2 muffins, which makes it very reasonably priced (I can tell you from experience that a similar product at a certain fast food joint with golden arches costs more than double that price per serving where I live, and I don’t even want to know what the calorie difference is!).

For lunch, my new favorite go-to dish is the Lean Cuisine Sesame Chicken dish.

Now, in my experience, frozen Chinese food is ok at its best. And if it is a lighter version? You’ll be doing good for it to taste edible. I know that LEAN CUISINE has a reputation for putting out excellent products, so I wasn’t expecting it to taste bad.

But I also wasn’t expecting it to taste great. But it really did! It tasted like REAL Chinese food, and it cost only $1.97 and was ready in 4 minutes. It is safe to say that I was shocked by just how yummy it was. Sesame Chicken from LEAN CUISINE immediately went back on my shopping list, and I plan to buy 5 more, and then treat myself to this particular lunch once a week for the next month! Little Layah also LOVED the noodles in the dish, and certainly ate her fill of them after tugging on my sweater and pleading, “Mommy! Noodle! Peeeze!”

Did you know that LEAN CUISINE items actually come with a Money Back Guarantee? I just recently learned this, and that’s really all I needed to hear in order to start trying multiple new (to me) products each week. I’ve tried their Salad ADDITIONS before (AMAZINGLY good, by the way), and I have just learned that they also have Wrap ADDITIONS. I picked up the Creamy Balsamic Chicken, and it is DELICIOUS, and MINE, MINE, MINE! Tim doesn’t like balsamic vinegar, which means I don’t have to share. Hooray!

I’ve also been wanting to try the LEAN CUISINE Simple Favorites Macaroni and Cheese, as that is a go-to dish for really bad/hard days (it is comfort food, after all) and I’d really love to try LEAN CUISINE’s take on it. With that Money Back Guarantee, I’ve got nothing to lose!

But here’s the tricky thing about the mac and cheese: getting it past my kids without them taking (ridiculously large) bites of it! Not only did I NOT get to keep this all to myself, but when I prepared this dish, it was all I could do to get a few bites in. My little ones were like hungry piranhas around it!

When I was shopping, I also knew that I needed to help myself make some better choices during my coffee breaks (which are frequent!). I’ve been curious about CoffeeMate’s Sugar-Free French Vanilla creamer, so I picked some up. Now I just needed a little chocolate, and found a great option with Skinny Cow. They have Divine Candy is a variety of options, but I knew the moment I laid eyes on the peanut butter creme filled chocolates that they would be going home with me. What a delicious and guilt-free snack break! I highly recommend them! And as for the creamer, I was very pleasantly surprised! I think it will take a little bit of time to get used to the sweet factor being not quite as strong, but given how much coffee I drink, making the switch to a sugar-free creamer is going to have a significant impact on my daily intake of calories. I’m glad I made the switch!

Later today I’m going to be serving a really fun snack to my entire family. LEAN CUISINE Three Cheese & Spinach Stuffed Pretzels will make for the perfect 3 o’clock treat for my crew, and is a much better choice than the alternative, which at the moment is leftover holiday candy.

What about you? Do you struggle to find food options that don’t take long to prepare and that promote a balanced lifestyle? Any particular products you think I should pick up the next time I’m grocery shopping?

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.

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