New Healthy Ready Meals from Goodlife Foods

I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly 30 years now and I’ve often felt that vegetarians get a poor deal when it comes to ready meals. Visit any supermarket and your choice is lasagne or an insipid curry. I was pleased when I discovered that Goodlife Foods (who make a properly interesting range of veggie foods) have just started selling a small but interesting range of ready meals. 

The new range from Goodlife Foods features two well thought out meals. Each containing 3 portions of veg and both look like the healthiest ready meals I’ve ever had in my freezer. Both of the ready meals take 8 minutes to cook from frozen in your microwave, or 35 minutes in the oven. They’re currently available online at Morrisons and Iceland and cost just £2 each. But how do they taste?

The 3 Bean Chilli with Cauliflower Rice is packed full of beans and other vegetables including sweetcorn, tomatoes and peppers. It’s served with cauliflower rice which I thought might be bland, but was a surprising hit with us all. The chilli was spicy without being too much and was well flavoured with heavy hints of smoked paprika.

The 3 Bean Chilli with Cauliflower Rice is low fat, high in protein and full of fibre. It is Vegetarian Society approved and suitable for vegans. This 400g portion contains just 276 calories, which makes it perfect if you’re counting calories.

The second ready meal we tried was the Vegetable Masala with Cauliflower Rice. I was worried this would be yet another disappointing curry, but I was very much mistaken.

The vegetable masala was rich and creamy and tasted far naughtier than it was. The contents of the curry had been well thought out and I was pleased to see a smattering of lentils in the mix as well as chickpeas, red peppers and chucks of roasted sweet potato. It was quite delicious and I was very impressed with the depth of flavour of this meal.

The Vegetable Masala with Cauliflower Rice is a tiny bit naughtier than the chilli butt still manages to only be 294 calories per 400g portion. It’s slightly higher in fat than the chilli, but still contains 3 portions of vegetables and is Vegetarian Society approved (it’s not suitable for vegans though). 

Both my husband and myself go through phases of being on the 5:2 diet, so these ready meals are perfect for those fast days. We were both really impressed with these Goodlife ready meals and we’re total converts to cauliflower rice now.

These meals are the kind of thing we can throw in the microwave after a busy day without having to worry about how bad what we’re eating is for us; in fact we can feel quite virtuous after eating these virtually guilt free meals!

You can find out more about Goodlife Foods including finding your local stockist and their full range on their website.

 
Note: I was sent these products for review purposes, all images and opinions are my own.