Lean and looking lousy....

This weekend I purchased a new Lean Cuisine “Honestly Good” meal.  It seems to be their new line with all natural ingredients, no preservatives and minimal processing.  The picture on the box alone was making me hungry in the frozen food section of Target.  I selected a few flavors and todays happened to be pineapple black pepper beef.

The photograph, don’t worry I posted one on the bottom so you can look at what sounded so absolutely divine, inspired the idea of tender beef and chunks of luscious pineapple.  What transpired… well, let’s just say microwave is a cheating, lying, whore!  That picture is also included at the bottom of this disaster.

Pushing beyond the unappealing look to this culinary abortion was something I had to do, not for the betterment of my review, for the fact that it was noonish and I was starving!  Swiping up a fork full of long grain rice and veggies I held back a moment.  With a stiff upper lip I chomped in.  This was not bad.  I mean it wasn’t in five star culinary heaven, more like 3 star I can deal with this as an alternative to fast food (which is generally disgusting anyway).

With only 8g of fat and 320 cal don’t expect epic portions but, with 23g of proteins and 26g of whole grains you are looking at something that is a lunch time experience that won’t leave you regretting a decision.   I did like the use of uncommon veg like wax beans and yellow carrots, but the slivers of almond just seem sporadic and unnecessary.  The beef itself was over cooked but, I think that was my microwave and the fact that the dinner had been sitting and thawing before I nuked it for a like 2 hours because I was too busy to shove it in the freezer.   I think some of this was major user error… The sauce that pulled in a lot of pineapple flavor but the black pepper was clearly lost in the mix somewhere, which was a shame because I love black pepper.

What I really loved about the meal was the “Honestly Good Giving.”  This is a program that honestly good does with local farmers to donate a portion of the vegetables grown for these meals is donated to local communities.  This is in addition to their “partners” program.  The ingredients for the dishes are supposed to be grown from local farms like George Chiala Farms in Morgan Hill, Ca.  I like the idea of local growers, not sure that it is true but the idea is lovely.

All in all I will try it again in an effort to discern if it was my microwave or if this is really a halfway-decent tasting, unappealing-looking mother trucker.