Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

Garden Lites Spinach Souffle

Spinach Souffle and Zucchini Souffle

When we're looking for products to review, we try to limit ourselves to products and brands that are widely available. As I mentioned a few weeks ago when we reviewed two products from Lean Cuisine, sometimes it seems like we've exhausted all our frozen food options, so it's nice to discover a new brand for our frozen food reviews that's available in stores like Winn-Dixie (as opposed to Whole Foods Market).

Garden Lites bills itself as "The Delicious Vegetable Company," claiming that vegetables are "the first ingredient in all of our products." We checked their web site, and even their muffins appear to start with vegetables. Wow - we'll have to keep an eye out for those.

People seem to be intimidated by the idea of making souffles, but I love them. The truth is that the toughest part is beating the egg whites. If you're one of those who fear that your Spinach Souffle will fall, there's good news: now you can microwave it.

The Spinach Souffle from Garden Lites is light and fluffy and has great spinach flavor - a real winner, in my opinion. It has 170 calories and 550 milligrams of sodium, but spinach needs a fair amount of salt to really bring out the flavor. Under 400 milligrams of sodium in this dish and the spinach just wouldn't pop. This would make a great breakfast with a bowl of fruit or you could split this in two and serve it as a side with a piece of fish and a rice dish like my Spanish Rice.

The Zucchini Souffle, on the other hand, is a disappointment. There's very little zucchini flavor and the overall flavor profile is that of an oniony egg white omelet. It's "too watery-tasting," as one of our panelists put it, and the texture is that of dense wet bread. The Zucchini is definitely not worth the $3.79 price tag - but the Spinach is. We'll be keeping our eyes peeled for more varieties.

Reviewed: June 19, 2015