Kashi Chicken Florentine

I usually eat one of three things during my lunch break at work.  It’s almost always Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Chicken Alfredo Florentine, Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Roasted Sirloin Supreme, or a bag of light butter microwave popcorn.  I rarely deviate from this short list, unless I’ve got something homemade (which isn’t often).

On my most recent trip to the grocery store, I saw that Kashi frozen dinners were on sale at a price of two for six dollars.  The Lean Gourmet meals are usually in the $1.25 range, so the Kashi dinners were considerably more expensive.  After thoroughly perusing Kashi’s offerings, I decided to go for it.  I bought the Chicken Florentine, as well as the Lemon Rosemary Chicken.  I’ll review the latter sometime later this week.

I’ll start with the good, then move on to the bad.  In the culinary world, “florentine” is usually tacked onto a dish containing spinach as a prominent ingredient.  Kashi didn’t skimp on the spinach here.  The spinach was flavorful and appeared to have been well taken care of on the way to the deep freeze.  Many times in frozen meals, spinach comes out looking like limp and slimy leaves, with little of the flavor remaining.  This was actually identifiable as spinach, in regard to the appearance and flavor.  Also present were red peppers, portobello mushrooms, Kashi’s special multigrain pilaf, and grilled chicken.  The chicken was delicious, and fairly plentiful.  It wasn’t your standard frozen meal chicken, as the quality was high and the flavor was great.  The multigrain pilaf was an interesting taste and texture combination.  A white wine sauce and parmesan cheese were also onboard for this healthy microwave excursion.

This dish is packed full of nutrition, in comparison to most frozen dinners.  It’s high in fiber, with a whopping 5 grams.  It’s also a good source of several vitamins.  The whole grains are definitely in the house with this dish.  The multigrain pilaf contains: oats, long grain brown rice, rye, hard red winter wheat, triticale, buckwheat, dehulled barley, and sesame seeds.  All in their whole grain form.

Now, the bad.  There was only one slice of portobello in the entire dish, which really irked me.  The sauce was decidedly bland, as was the dish overall.  I was not impressed at all with this dinner as a whole, and won’t be buying it again.  It was terribly bland, and the only thing that saved it from being a complete loss was the fresh-tasting spinach and flavorful chicken.  Sadly, everything else tasted like….well, nothing.  The multigrain pilaf’s texture was a welcome addition, but the flavor fell short.  Maybe some more seasoning?  On Kashi’s website, consumers post their opinions on the products in the form of comments that can be found on the individual pages for their offerings.  Several customers raved about the wonderful flavore, the prominent garlic, and several other things.  The general consensus was that this shit was the best food ever created, with the exception of a couple of negative reviews.  I just didn’t think it was that great.  In the end, I felt like I’d eaten farm animal feed with some chicken and spinach mixed in.  Not cool, mostly because I’m not a farm animal.  I’m hoping the Lemon Rosemary Chicken is better.