Review - Wanchai Ferry & Romano's Macaroni Grill

About 2 months ago as I was browsing one of my favorite money saving websites I came across a post about the General Mills Pssst program. When you sign up, periodically they will send you free products for you to try and review on their site. They also send you coupons for the products to use and distribute to friends. About 3 weeks ago I received in the mail two samples to try: the newest Wanchai Ferry flavor, Orange Chicken, and the newest Romano's Macaroni Grill flavor, Chicken Piccata.  Both retail for about $4.80.

Wanchai Ferry: Orange Chicken

We tried the Wanchai Ferry Orange Chicken first. It comes with rice, seasoning for the chicken, orange sauce and red chilies. You provide water, chicken, vegetable oil and any vegetables you wish to add. In short, my family loved it. It was really delicious and very easy to prepare. My son, the tender tongue, thought it was too spicey (I only used one red chilie, not all 4 that were included.) The directions were very easy to follow, especially if you've ever stir fried before. I added about 1 ½ cups of green & red pepper to it and there was still enough sauce for all the food The package says it contains 4 servings, but my family of 2 adults and 2 young children easily ate all of it. In fact, we were wishing for a bit more rice.

My family gave it 3 ½ out of 4 thumbs up.

Romano's Macaroni Grill: Chicken Piccata

We tried the Chicken Piccata second. It comes with angel hair pasta, cooking wine with lemon juice, seasoned flour and piccata sauce seasoning. You provide chicken, butter, and water. There are no veggies to add to this, but it would go quite nicely with a side alad or other veggies. Again, this was also very easy to make. The directions are easy to follow and clear. My family really loved this one. Hubby wasn't home when I fixed it, but had some leftovers the next day for lunch. It was still delicious. For various reasons, I usually try to limit the cheese dishes we have. This was a great pasta dish sans cheese and without tomatoes. It was so good I went in search of a recipe I could make from scratch! The one suggestion I'd make is to really watch the sauce as it's reducing. I got distracted and let it go too long so the sauce was a bit thicker than it should have been. This box indicated it makes 6 servings. In this case we found we had too many noodles for 4 people, but 1 lb of chicken was just right for us.

My family gave this 4 out of 4 stars.

A few general thoughts:
We really enjoyed these dinners and as long as you remember to pull the chicken out of the freezer the night before, they make a quick dinner. You do need to add side dishes. The down side is that, considering they only contain the grain and seasoning for your dinner, I think they're a bit expensive. I don't think making them from scratch would be that much more time consuming. However, if you find a good sale and can match it with a coupon, it might be worth the money.

If you'd like to try some of General Mills products you can go here to sign up for Pssst.