New Marie Callender’s Multi-Serve Bakes

November 20, 2010 - 4 Comments by Mishi - Contests, Giveaways, and Reviews

When Michael and I were newlyweds, I hate to admit it, I didn’t cook.  He did all the cooking because, quite honestly, I was known to burn a pot of water that was boiling for pasta; I was THAT bad.    In 2003, though, I started to learn.  I added many dishes to my repertoire, and became confident enough to even cook meat.   Meat was my nemesis.  I can still remember that first chicken breast I cooked—or didn’t cook—being cut into on our dinner plates.  Pink.

Now-a-days, I love to cook and try new things in the kitchen.   I’ve learned to follow recipes (who knew it was that easy?), and I even enjoy putting ingredients together.  It’s the cleaning up that I really could do without, but I digress.

Last year I was spoiled and didn’t have to take the kids to any soccer practices, as all their extra curricular activities were earlier in the day.    This year?  No such luck.  This year, Olivia sings with a local youth chorale.  Her practices run from 5pm-7pm, which makes for a busy night.   And, it’s virtually impossible to juggle dropping her off, coming back, cooking something, picking her up, and the coming back to eat.   These nights have easily become our easy-meal night.

Enter Marie Callender’s frozen dinner entrees—

I chose to make two different entrees, because I like to live on the edge that way.  Actually, some of us love lasagna layered with chicken, crimini mushrooms, spinach, and rich ricotta cheese, while others do not.  The ones who do not are more than happy with chicken and bow tie pasta tossed in a creamy Alfredo sauce, tossed with broccoli, carrots, and sun-dried tomatoes.   Then there are some of us (cough*cough*Michael) who are more than happy to eat both.

The first thing that really made me happy was that I could actually read the ingredients of these dinners.  Of course, there has to be some kind of preservative, but there isn’t a whole whacked out list on the box like other frozen entrees I’ve seen at the store.

The other thing that really made these great were the taste.   They tasted so yummy that I wanted more than my portion.   But, I stayed strong!

Don’t you love how I tricked everyone by putting them in semi-fancy-shmancy serving dishes?

The servings size was just enough, and went along  well with a quick Caesar salad (which didn’t make it into the pictures above because when I put the plates in front of Mikey and Davey, they tore into it too fast!)  Three kids (2 boys and 1 girl) loved what they ate.  One boy ate oatmeal, however, because anything that starts with a “v” and ends with a “-table” is definitely not something he loves.

The entrees were under $5.00 at my local grocery store.  I thought that was pretty good, considering two pizzas for our family costs us about $15.00.

All-in-all, I was very pleased with switching it up on our busiest night of the week!     I’m so happy to share these meals with two of my readers.  Just leave me a comment telling me what you do for dinner on your busy nights.  Two commenters will be randomly chosen to receive their very own coupon.  Plus you can receive a hand written card from yours truly!    I will email the coupon recipients a week from today, on Saturday, November 27th.

[Disclosure:  I was asked to review these Marie Callender’s Multi-serve Bakes by The Motherhood.  They provided me with coupons for myself and two readers.  They also paid me a stipend for my involvement.  My feelings expressed in this post are purely my own.]