Ah Sweet Earth… Where have you been?
Those of you who are new to Freezer Meal Frenzy might not know this, but Sweet Earth was one of the very first brands of frozen food that we reviewed, way back in our formative years. See, Sweet Earth has a pretty substantial line of vegetarian-friendly frozen burritos, and we’re all about the frozen burritos here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. So whenever we see Sweet Earth at our local grocery store, we feel a pang of nostalgia.
Today, we’re dipping back into this line with the Sweet Earth Pesto Chik’n Lasagna. It’s like a rendezvous with an old friend!
First, we need to cook it up. The package does give instructions for the oven, but that’s 45 minutes of cook time we didn’t want to spend. In the microwave, you’ll cut that down to about six minutes, which is what we did. Yeah, that’s a bit long for a frozen food, but we typically expect lasagna to require a bit of extra cookin’. This certainly didn’t come as a surprise. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the back of the box, check out our package scans at the bottom of this review.)
Another thing that didn’t surprise us is the fact that this is vegetarian-friendly, swapping out the ground beef with a faux chicken (or chik’n). Everything Sweet Earth makes is safe for vegetarians to eat, and some of it’s even okay for vegans!
Now, this does end up looking a bit, um… swampy? But don’t let the drab olive coloration throw you off; this actually tastes quite delicious. The main event is a tasty sauce that’s a lot creamier than we expected and has some lovely sweet undertones. And then, of course, comes a blast of pesto, which we really enjoy.
As we mentioned earlier, this comes with a chicken substitute, and it’s not bad. It’s a bit tofu-like in its consistency (it’s actually made from a soy protein concentrate, so that comparison isn’t coming out of left field or anything). There’s not a ton of it in this dish, so it probably won’t really have much of an impact on your enjoyment of this tasty frozen dinner.
A bulk of the meal is actually the crinkle pasta, and we have no complaints about it. It’s a satisfactory pasta that does its job admirably. It’s not the part of the dish that’s really crave-worthy (that would be the sauce), but there are no glaring flaws. It’s pretty hard to screw up a lasagna pasta, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t companies out there that can make a real mess of these things! Sweet Earth is not one of those companies.
One serving contains 360 calories and 570 mg of sodium. Both of those numbers are lower than we were expecting, so we double-checked the package to make sure they weren’t doing something sneaky, like trying to claim half a dish as a serving. Nope, the serving size is the full container. This is a little bit on the light side, though, so keep that in mind. You might want to whip up a salad or something to eat alongside this.
The Sweet Earth Pesto Chik’n Lasagna is a really tasty dish that vegetarians will swoon over. Sweet Earth was really firing on all cylinders when they put this meal together, and we can’t wait to go back to the store so we can pick up another box of it!
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this vegetarian-friendly frozen lasagna, check out our package scans below.
