More Dream Dinner Opinion

Well, hey, looks like the hired blogger folks at Dream Dinner found me....see post about Hell's Kitchen and click on comment....

Continuing on - have no clue if these are helpful to anyone but I sure wish someone had done this before so I'd know what not to order at Dream Dinners!

The Good

Chicken Enchilada - these are no-brainer to fix if you had to make them at home but you can't beat the convenience of having this ready in your freezer. The sauce you add to the chicken (this is cooked diced chicken you add with the rest of the filling) is a mixture of sourcream and salsa and a bit of green chilies, green onions and a little cheese. I've tried doing this at home but it never tastes as good as the DD version. I'm sure it has something to do with the brand of salsa they use (I'm assuming it's all SYSCO brand). Anyway, when I do try to copy this at home, I use whole grain tortillas, non-fat sourcream, fake chicken strips (Morningstar brand is pretty good) and light cheese. I'm not sure how much calories I save my family but they prefer the DD version.

Chicken Mirabella -they call this customer favorite and comes back several times a year at the shop. I have a recipe very similar to this one but have to admit, that mine has more sour flavor whereas DD's is a little sweeter. This has prunes (yes - sounds weird but think of fiber=good for your kids). It also has green olives and capers. It's a great dish to serve when you're expecting company. The only thing I don't like about this is that they stopped selling this with rice. As a matter of fact, very few DD entrees the last couple of months no longer come with a side of something. Hmmmmm.....

Bombay Chicken with Coconut Rice - I think the last time this was offered was last June and am hoping that the paid bloggers at Dream Dinner gets a whiff of this post and tell the DD folks bring it back sometime soon. This was absolutely fantastic!!! However, if you're one with pedestrian taste, then you'd probably hate it. It had cumin, chutney and other things I can't recall but it earned 4 stars in my book! We've grilled the chicken and also done it on stovetop and it's delicious both ways. If they do offer this again and offer it with the side dish of coconut rice, you'll need to add an extra 1/2 c. of water to the rice for the medium serving and about 3/4 c. for the large serving.

The Bad

Anything with Southern Living or Body + Soul or REDBOOK in front of the entree name is a waste of your money. You may as well spend that money on frozen dinner from the grocery store! The ones we've had were:

Body+Soul Chicken with Papaya: Sounds yummy and exotic, right? WRONG! This dish has too much ginger (and I'm careful not to add too much ginger when I'm at the shop!). The papaya adds nothing to the dish - it may as well be squash and you'd never know the difference. It also had a bit of a sour taste. I couldn't figure out how to make this palatable and made me mad that I had ordered two of these entrees.

REDBOOK Madras Chicken Curry: This one smelled fantastic but the flavor was shallow. It tasted like it needed to simmer for a couple of days for the flavors to fully develop. I can't recall what was in it except that I didn't want to order this again!

Body+Soul Moroccan Chicken with Pumpkin: There they go again, tempting you with exotic names but don't be fooled, this was very so-so. You can pull out your Betty Crocker cookbook and make something similar in taste. I think it had raisins and too much cinnamon flavor. Best to save those 2 ingredients in a pie. If you want something Moroccan, go to a Moroccan restaurant.

Southern Living Herbed Chicken & White Beans: Oh, I had high hopes for this dish - especially since my submission for Chicken Cassoulet didn't even win a mention in the Dream Dinner Recipe contest (if you want my cassoulet recipe, leave me a comment and I'll send it to you - super easy and a one-pot-meal that even your children would eat!). Anyway, it looked like a good, stewy dish to eat on a cold evening but this dish needed a lot of sprucing up. I added extra garlic and a dash of balsamic vinegar just to try and wake up some flavors but that's already too much to do when this is supposed to be a defrost-cook-serve meal. The herbs called for were too strong and left a perfumy taste so I tried to overcome those flavors with the vinegar and garlic.

I'm not sure what Dream Dinner was doing there by having those Magazines "sponsor" those recipes. Maybe they got free advertisement in their magazines??? I hope they don't do a partnership like that again because I thought they were all disappointments and a sell out. Did those magazines really have input with those dishes? Yuck! Please, Dream Dinner, don't do that again!

Now, I'm feeling rather hungry....