Banquet says "Thanks a Million"

From Mom Central: For over 50 years and crossing several generations, Banquet has created home-style frozen dinner meals for those hectic days when things have been completely crazy – when the answer to the question of "What's for dinner, mom!?" is "I have no idea!" For those times, my first response as a Mom is to look in the freezer and figure out what we can heat up and make fast! Either that or it's expensive take-out, which costs more money, time, or energy than I have left.

For nights like these, it helps to have some great rescue meals on hand, like Banquet frozen entrées. Dinner that the whole family will enjoy is on the table in minutes. Banquet offers more than enough single-serve dinner varieties so each family member is covered – whether you have kids who are picky eaters and only like Macaroni & Cheese or Chicken Fingers, or adults who prefer more sophisticated options like Chicken Pasta Marinara, Sweet and Sour Chicken or Creamy Pasta Carbonara.

As a way of saying "Thanks a Million" to their loyal customers over all these years, Banquet is giving away more than $1 million worth of redeemable cash prizes this February through April. Beginning February 8, look for Banquet frozen dinner meals with the "Thanks a Million" logo on the box. Each of these specially-marked packages will contain a special game piece, either one of over 16,000 redeemable cash prizes worth anywhere from $10 to $100,000, or a Banquet coupon. What's better than that? A quick dinner on the table in minutes and a chance to find the equivalent of the "Willy Wonka" golden ticket!

My take: It's tax season and for me, that means I'm eating a lot of frozen dinners at work. So when Mom Central and Banquet offered to provide me with a few of them, I jumped right on it. I used the three coupons they sent me to get three individual meals (valued at $1 a piece). Specifically, I picked up the Chicken Fingers Meal (breaded chicken patties, macaroni & cheese and a fudge brownie - 480 calories, 21 g. of fat); the Chicken Fried Beef Steak Meal (country style gravy and chicken friend beef patty fritter w/ mashed potatoes and corn - 380 calories, 17 g fat) and the Pepperoni Pizza Meal (reduced fat pepperoni pizza and chocolate pudding - 350 calories, 13 g fat). Now, these have more calories and way more fat than I'm used to having in a frozen meal but we've had the Family Crock Pot dinners before too and loved them so I wanted to see how the individual meals stacked up too. As you might expect from Banquet, they were quite good. The only complaint I had was in how these were packaged - as someone who doesn't like her different foods to touch, I wasn't thrilled that the different foods were not neatly in their compartments - for instance, the brownie mix was all mixed up in the chicken in one meal so when I heated it, I had brownie encased chicken sticks. I might also add I didn't win the $10,000 either so would that be considered a complaint too? LOL. I'll just have to try again!

This review was sponsored by
Mom Central

(which means: “I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Banquet and received a sample to facilitate my candid review (I received 3 coupons for free Banquet meals which I redeemed for 3 frozen meals that were priced at $1.00 each at my grocery store). Mom Central also sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.” )