Amy’s Kitchen Instant Meals Two Ways – Spaghetti Italiano and Tamale Verde – Lazy Vegan Friday

Wegmans is a store many Ontario folks are probably familiar with, as the answer to the closest one-stop-shop  for all those delightful USA vegan grocery items we might not be able to find in the USA.  So on a recent trip to the USA we stopped at Wegmans on the way back home from a mini-roadtrip.

It was too late to go out to eat anywhere, so we ended up looking through the natural foods/frozen foods aisle and finding a couple of potentially interesting options. What better way to encompass lazy vegan Friday than with a DIY convenience meal buffet at a 24hr grocery store?

I picked up the Amy’s Kitchen Spaghetti Italiano. I was slightly put off by the Light & Lean label, as that has often mean things will taste like old cardboard. Not so much in the case of this vegan friendly fare, that said, in retrospect,  I still wonder what possessed me to choose a microwavable whole grain pasta for dinner.

The noodles handled their frozen and microwaved existence fairly well. Only minor grainy-ness, which you would likely expect from a “whole wheat” pasta. Sauce was surprisingly good, and while the not-meat balls were pretty soft, that might be a selling point for tender not-meat ball lovers out there.

I am not saying that I would eat this for dinner everyday. But it’s not bad at all, and if you have a hankering for pasta, but no pot or stove, this would be an entirely decent option.

But, as I realized after stealing several bites from JC’s dish…  the thing I wish I had picked was the Tamale Verde.

This is another dish that does not look as wonderful as it’s outer packaging, but I was very impressed with the actual flavour of the whole tamale dish, sauce, and filling.If you buy this product for yourself, and you find  yourself heating it up in a Wegmans-style microwave, you may want to keep it in for a little longer than the instructions say.

I could skip the Spaghetti Italiano in the future, it’s not bad, but even in my laziest of vegan days, I’d rather boil some noodles and throw on some tomato sauce than have a microwaved pasta entree. That said,  I would definitely pick up the Tamale Verde again sometime for a quick lunch/dinner.

*Both of these are available in Ontario. But we bought them at a Niagara Falls, New York Wegmans Location.