Prepared Meals from the Kitchen of Cooking Light Magazine

I hope you know that I love to cook, all kinds of meals and foods, whether its on the stove, in the over, on the grill or in the microwave (yes I was converted to cooking in the microwave).  But like anyone, I am always looking for some thing new, quick but good tasting for when we just don't have the time to actually cook.  In my case that is usually during tax season, but for mother's of young kids it could be during baseball or football season or soccer and lacrosse seasons.   Or maybe its dance lessons or recitals or pretty much anything involving kids!  I don't know if you have seen these yet, but you really should be looking for them.

I happened to stumble on these at one of the warehouse chains and thought I would try them.  There are quite a few different types of meals available, but I picked two that I thought my family would really enjoy try when I put it on the plate.

The first one we tried was the Sliced Turkey Breast Meal.  It did require the use of the oven, but it really wasn't something that you had to "watch over".  It was pretty much put in preheated 375 degree oven for just 30 minutes and serve.

The next one we tried was the Seared Sliced Beef Sirloin.  This was cooked the same way as the Turkey.  Put into a baking dish covered with foil in the preheated 375 oven for 30 minutes.

For both I made a starch (one rice the other noodles) and gravy - since in my house if they sit down to dinner, there really needs to be gravy.  I tell them I could serve them a car bumper and they would eat it if it had gravy!

Anyway, both of my picky eaters enjoyed these.  I knew we had a winner when they only put the gravy on the rice or noodles and not the meat!  AND they actually ate everything and went back to look for more!

I will definitely be looking for these again (directions do say if you freeze them to defrost in refrigerator before heating) for times when I want a good meal but don't have hours to cook it.

Some of the other meals I see that they have are Heirloom Tomato and Spinach Ravioli, Chicken Parmesan, Chipotle Pork Roast, and a variety of soups plus more!  I think you could definitely find some meals that your family would like when you don't want to or can't cook a sit down meal.

I know I will be looking for others to try.


 Just make sure that you read the ingredients (no its not because there are lots of unknown things on the list) if you or anyone in your family have food allergies.  The beef notes that it contained soy, but since we luckily don't have any problems with food allergies, I didn't even think to check until I started writing here.