A Fresh Attitude About Lunch On-The-Go

The reason salad and I almost never get along is that I like hot food.

It’s true. The only time I don’t prefer hot food is that short three week period of the summer here in Ontario where temperatures hit around 40C. Those are the times of year that I’d rather listen to the Hamster Dance on a ten hour loop than turn on my stove and risk heating the house up.

Naturally, the problem with this is that when you like hot food, you don’t eat salad, and when you don’t eat salad, you don’t eat near as many vegetables as you probably ought to. I know I’m not alone in this; we’ve got an obesity epidemic in North America, and Canada’s Food Guide is constantly imploring people to jam more fruits and vegetables in their mouth instead of so much pasta and bread.

Fortunately, there is a solution for us hot-food addicts. I personally believe whoever invented stir fry was a genius.

Stir fry is my lifeline to vegetables. After I birthed kidlet, and I realized that the assurance that all the baby weight would just magically disappear in a poof of fairy dust was a horrible lie, I allowed one of my good friends, Deanne, to personal train my butt for 8 weeks into shape a size smaller than my maternity-wear. If you’ve never paid to be bullied by a personal trainer, I highly recommend it. She was quite enthusiastic about forbidding me anything that resembled a starch more potent than a carrot, and she had this really annoying endearing habit of yelling 80s weight loss and military slogans at me from where she sat, filing her nails.

There were lots of stairs, but none of them were in Pennsylvania, by the way. And there was lots and lots of stir fry. I admit, I did swap it up with a salad once in a while for variety in those days just because otherwise I was looking at eating 112 stir fry dishes in a row. 

This was over 6 years ago, now, and any “allergy” I might have developed to the idea of setting foot in the produce aisle has eased (a good thing, too, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this new illustrious career!). But before I had my new illustrious work-at-home career, I was a work-outside-home person just like many many people. Packing a lunch every day was a pain, the kitchenette at work consisted of a microwave, and you know how food court options go.

Fresh Attitude has developed something new. So new, so revolutionary, it just might be considered crazy (as in, that’s CRAZY, why didn’t we think of this before?). It’s a unique packaging solution that allows you to prepare a hot, fresh meal, chock full of vegetables in the microwave (if you want to, you can prepare it on the stove too). And it works really, really well (as in, quite possibly the best microwave dinner I’ve ever put in my mouth).

You open up the box, dump the middle box’s container onto the vegetables (minus the fork), and close the top lid again before microwaving for 2 minutes. It’s that simple. All the pieces are recyclable, and it’s a good food grade plastic (#5 Polypropylene).

While the list of ingredients was long, it was readable, and there were few additives and preservatives compared to the average prepackaged meal. The meals are all vegetarian, replacing the meat with crunchy nuts and noodles. For the calorie-conscious group, it’s between 350 and 390 calories per bowl (depending on variety). And while it’s kind of hard to to tell from the photos, what you get in a portion size for those calories is really filling and satisfying.

Seriously, look at this thing. There’s KALE in there, baby!

And my favourite part? They are prepared in Canada from farm fresh vegetables, grown locally in season.

If you’re looking for an easy boxed lunch to grab and go that’s hot and loaded with vegetables, these bowls are pretty cool! Give em a try. They’re available in 4 Asian-inspired recipes: General Tao, Sweet & Sour, Teriyaki and Thai. The bowls run about $5.99 each, and are carried at major supermarkets (including Sobeys, Foodland, Urban, IGA, Metro and Super C). 

Disclaimer: I was provided samples of all the product in exchange for an honest opinion about them.