by Marianne Plunkert
Overall rating: 4.9
Meal Description and Cooking Instructions
While the title of this meal on the menu is “Cheesy Stuffed Chicken Breast with Vegetable Medley,” the name provided on the 2-compartment plastic tray in which it arrived provided a more accurate description of it: “Breaded Chicken Breast Stuffed with Broccoli & Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, Peas & Carrots.”
One section of the tray contained a fist-sized breaded chicken breast with about ¼ cup of peas and carrots, and the second section held about 1/8 cup of mashed potatoes. The heating instructions indicated that I should nuke the meal on high for 1 ½ to 2 minutes. I added an extra 15 seconds, as usual, and that was the perfect amount of time for my microwave.
I needed to add a serving of fruit and a serving of non-fat dairy. I chose a handful of blackberries and an ounce of low-fat cheddar cheese to fulfill these requirements.
Breaded Chicken Breast Stuffed with Broccoli & Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, Peas & Carrots
My General Impressions
The meal was wonderfully appealing to the eye, with the golden-brown chicken breast, green peas, orange carrots, blackberries, and golden wedge of cheese arranged on the plate. And it proved to be wonderfully scrumptious as well.
While I’m one of those weird people who actually like broccoli, I feared that the broccoli flavor would overpower any cheese used in the chicken stuffing when I first cut into the chicken breast and spied a lot of green. I’m happy to report that I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I could barely discern any taste of that much-maligned green vegetable. That said, there was also only a slight cheese flavor to the filling although the list of ingredients includes cheddar, mozzarella, parmesan, and neufchatel cheeses. The most I can say about the broccoli-cheese stuffing is that it was moist and tasted good enough, but it didn’t have a distinctive flavor—good or bad.
The chicken breast was also moist and tender, and if someone had told me this dish had just been popped out of the oven, I would have believed him. And the mashed potatoes were to die for. They were smooth and creamy with a rich buttery flavor. My only complaint was the paltry size of the serving.
Unlike the peas and carrots side that accompanied a previous eDiets entrée I have tried (the Chicken Carbonara), both the peas and the carrots included in this entrée had a decent texture and were delicately seasoned.
Nutritional Content
As delectable as the entire meal was and as rich-tasting as the mashed potatoes were, I expected this to be one of the higher-fat eDiets entrées. I was wrong again. Only 70 of the meal’s 280 calories are from fat. That translates to only 25%.
It contains a healthy 22 grams of protein, too. Total carbs are higher than I generally prefer, at 28 grams, but I guess I can’t always get everything I want. There are 5 grams of sugar and 4 grams of dietary fiber.
It’s a wonderfully vitamin-rich meal, providing 60% of the daily recommended dose of Vitamin A and 35% of Vitamin C. It also supplies 8% each of the daily calcium and iron requirements. And this is another meal in which all the major food groups are well represented.
Both the chicken itself and the egg used in the breading are from the protein group. The bread crumbs used are a starch. The broccoli in the stuffing and the peas and carrots combine to make at least one serving of vegetables. The cheeses used in the stuffing and my wedge of low-fat cheddar provide more than 1 serving from the dairy group. My blackberries supplied a serving of fruit. And there are a number of oils listed among the ingredients—vegetable oil, soybean oil, canola oil, olive oil—to represent the fats section of the food pyramid.
Food Rating/Quality
I rate this meal as a 4.9 on a scale of 1 to 5. It stops just short of being exceptional in my mind because of the nondescript flavor of the broccoli-cheese filling. Still the filling was moist, and the chicken breast itself was deliciously succulent. The peas and carrots were cooked properly to provide the al dente texture that I prefer. And my mouth waters as I recall the creamy goodness of the mashed potatoes.
The meal had a wonderful visual appeal as well. I could hardly wait to dig into it. I wouldn’t mind seeing this entrée on my menu again.
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