The Good & the Bad of Lean Cuisine

One of the great things about being a working girl these days is the nice lunch break in the middle of the day. You get to relax, do some impulse shopping on the city streets, & stuff you face full of whatever they serve at that great restaurant down a few city blocks from your place of employment. Well...it's one of the great fantasies about being a working girl. In reality, your hour lunch break is spent running errands, emptying your bank account to pay your dog's $500 vet bills, & quickly scarfing down whatever finds its way to your mouth. Don't believe what "Sex in the City" tells you about being a working girl. It's akin to believing that high school would be exactly like what they portrayed in "Saved by the Bell" that you watched on a weekly basis when you were 10, falling in love with Zack Morris, wanting to be Kelly Kapowski, admiring Jessie Spano ("I'm so excited! I'm so...scared!") for her opinionated & feminist personality, and not being able to wait until high school started! Lies. All lies!!

Ahem. Our point being that our working-girl lunch-hours pass quickly & stressfully. So what is our preferred choice of lunch? Lean Cuisine meals. They're not too expensive & some of them are quite tasty! They are a smaller portion, and sometimes we are left hungry an hour after lunch. However, sometimes they hit the spot. But most of the time, it's just what we have to eat. And like. Here's our list of great Lean Cuisine meals, so-so dishes, & flat-out wouldn't-touch-it-with-a-plastic-spatula creations:

So good! Your taste buds won't know what hit them:

• Any of the pizzas, especially the Margherita Pizza.
• Most of their Italian dishes are pretty darn great, like the Cheese Lasagna Florentine Bake.
• The classic Macaroni & Cheese. It's delicious!
• Roasted Potatoes, Broccoli, and Cheddar Cheese Sauce. It's lighter & won't keep you from going hungry all afternoon, but it's still quite yummy.
• Three Cheese Stuffed Rigatoni...there's nothing to be said of it's greatness. Just eat it & be delighted.
• Most of the chicken dishes are pretty safe, and even delicious, like the Grilled Chicken Primavera and the Chicken Carbonara. To. Die. For.

Eh. They'll do the job:

• The Chicken Fettucini is ai't. It kind of tastes diety, if you know what I mean.
• The Asian food collection is also a little iffy. Sometimes it just isn't enough (Vegetable Eggroll) and a little under flavored, or it's just way too overpowering for the small portion sizes (Chicken in Peanut Sauce)
• Their panini selection has potential, but falls a bit short. While they do taste yummy, like the Southwest-style Chicken Panini, their new-fangled, space-age grilling mechanism it comes with is suppose to grill the panini in the microwave, and it lies. They would taste better actually grilled, but instead are a little soft & flimsy.

Don't even think about it, unless you're planning on using that cyanide capsule you've kept around in case of emergencies:

• Chicken with Almonds. This falls under the too-much-Asian-Flavor found above, but really goes overboard to the point of nastiness.
• Anything with beef in it. The worst culprits are the Salisbury Steak and the Spaghetti and Meatballs. Remember that iron-y tasting stuff they slopped onto your tray in elementary school? It's like that.