Minda Reviews: Del Monte Harvest Selections

After I read back on Saturday's post, I thought "Wow! We eat too much processed foods." We don't really. Or at least I don't. But occasionally when you're balancing work, school and a home life you don't have time to pack a lunch. This is where packaged processed foods come in handy.

As I mentioned on Saturday, I bought two Del Monte Harvest Selections meals with a bogo coupon. On Monday, I tried the Beef Stew with Vegetables and today (as I type-lunch break blog) I had the Chicken Cacciatore.

The pluses to these meals: Both contain two full servings of vegetables which is good for someone like me who struggles to get her daily veggie servings in. Both have 5 Weight Watchers points which is pretty good for a lunch. They require no refrigeration so if you suddenly get lunch plans you don't have to worry about a frozen meal wasting away in the tiny office refrigerator which has no freezer.

The drawbacks: They require no refrigeration and claim no preservatives so they are pretty sodium heavy. And shelf stable meat is just weird.

So how do they taste? Pretty good.

The beef stew to me tastes a lot like Chunky Beef Soup except the Del Monte meat is weirder. The beef pieces are perfectly cubed like dice and have sort of an odd color and texture. They tasted ok but the look is not appealing. The looks says "You are eating shelf stable meat from a plastic bowl." The stew was filling and again tasted just fine but based on the appearance and the fact that I can buy a suitable equivalent (Chunky Soup) at a lower price, I probably will not buy the stew again.

The chicken cacciatore is much better. The chicken looks more like beef, despite the box's claim that it is white breast meat but at least it does look like meat. The sauce is very good, the pasta is the right consistency and you can actually see chunks of tomato and mushroom. Or at least you could see them before I cleaned out the bowl. If I was not wearing khakis I would be tempted to tilt the bowl for the last drop of sauce. I would, make that, WILL buy this one again and I look forward to trying other varieties.

If you are on the lookout for an easy take-to-work lunch option, I would recommend trying these meals. I would also recommend visiting Heat Eat Review. They do really awesome reviews of convinence food including pics of what the food actually looks like. Check it out!