This post is in collaboration with Balance Your Plate and Stouffer’s. As part of the collaboration, I received product and incentives in exchange for participating in the program
We are entering the holidays and thinking of meals that will not only appeal to everyone’s tastebuds but also be easy to pull together can sometimes be a riddle. Since our first hosted Thanksgiving as a married couple, my husband knows that the weeks leading into Thanksgiving are filled with testing recipes and deciding what we will wow our guests with. This will be our 9th Thanksgiving and while the menu should be set in stone by now, it’s not. Yes, of course there’s the turkey, the stuffing, and the cranberry sauce, but I like to add some more flair to my dinner table to appease everyone.
My father looks forward to my lasagna every year, but with three kids and other menu items I need to plan, I needed to look for a shortcut. I remember my mother getting Stouffer’s lasagna for the weeknights that were just too busy for her to pull a meal together. I couldn’t tell you what it tasted like 20 years ago, but for my picky mom to put it on her dinner table, I knew it had to be pretty good. I wondered if my dad would be able to tell the difference between homemade and frozen lasagna, but then I remembered that I too, freeze my own lasagna when creating freezer meals. I skimmed the ingredient list and felt confident that the ingredients were not only similar to my own, but also simple and fresh. Stouffer’s recently announced their “Kitchen Cupboard” commitment. This new initiative focuses on shortening and simplifying recipes that only include ingredients that consumers can recognize and can find at home, like vine-ripened tomatoes, freshly made pasta, and real mozzarella.
I took my Stouffer’s meat and sauce lasagna home and hoped it would be one less thing I would have to worry about on Thanksgiving day. The lasagna cooked in the dish it was frozen in, and in about an hour I had a perfectly made lasagna. Now, the taste test would be the most important thing. After my husband basically licked his plate clean, he stated that Stouffer’s Meat & Sauce lasagna was the closest thing to homemade. It passed the test! The perfectly cooked noodles, just the right amount of sauce, and deliciously salty cheeses, Stouffer’s Lasagna will be making an appearance on our Thanksgiving table this holiday season.
You can purchase Stouffer’s Meat & Sauce lasagna from your supermarket in the freezer aisle.