This week, I continued my quest to find the most delicious microwave meals for college students.
While roaming the aisles of the freezer section at the grocery store, the Healthy Choice All Natural Entrees stood out to me.
The tagline, “Real food. No Preservatives.” sounded intriguing and contradicted my stereotype of microwave meals filled with strange preservatives and fake ingredients.
The thought of Pumpkin Squash Ravioli made my taste buds get very excited, especially when the description read, “Pumpkin filled ravioli with a butter-sage sauce, asparagus and butternut squash.” (Yum!) So I decided to try this one in hopes that the flavors would meet my expectation.
The cooking process was super easy, as customary with microwave meals. It totaled to about seven minutes in the end.
Unfortunately I wasn’t thrilled with the result.
The ravioli pasta was too think and was very chewy, as if it hadn’t cooked all the way through. The pumpkin filling was overly seasoned and tasted like there was way too much pumpkin pie spice added in.
Along with the asparagus, which actually cooked to a perfectly crisp texture, and the butternut squash, which was mushy, there was a surprise of baked apples!
I would have never known they were included, because they were not advertised anywhere on the front of the box, but they did add a nice sweetness in contrast to the pumpkin.
Thankfully the butter-sage sauce was just the right amount of flavor and complimented the ravioli very nicely.
The nutrition value was pretty reasonable for the eight raviolis, sauce, and vegetables. The meal has 300 calories, 6 grams of fat, 52 grams of carbohydrates, and 9 grams of protein.
I applaud Healthy Choice for daring to make this very gourmet meal an option for microwave meals, but it just wasn’t a success for me. I’ve come to realize that sometimes the best microwave dinners are the simplest flavors, like the last Lean Cuisine dinner I reviewed. Until I find a different microwave option, it looks like I’ll have to wait and have ravioli at my favorite Italian restaurant.
