Wednesday, April 7, 2010

I Love Fresh & Easy

There is a very interesting chain of stores called Fresh & Easy and I just love them.  If you are fortunate to live in California, Nevada or Arizona, you just might live near one.  Living in Los Angeles, I live near quite a few of them, including the headquarters!  So, I’ve shopped at Fresh & Easy since they pretty much opened a couple of years ago.  There is so much to love about them that I actually can’t tell you everything right now but here are five things: the prices, the special parking spaces for families, the peanut butter cookies, the self-service checkout (it’s fun for me), and that there is always something new!  Just last week I was invited with some other local bloggers to visit Fresh & Easy’s headquarters to taste their brand new Eatwell line which launched today, April 7!  Basically, Eatwell is a line of prepared meals with limited calories, fat and sodium.  The idea is to give customers nutritionally balanced meal options without having to give up quality or flavor.  Below the "Eatwell" title on each package is the catchphrase "no compromise on taste".  I was intrigued as I perused the new packages while I sipped some of Fresh & Easy's wine offerings waiting for the tasting to begin.  Each package has an easy to understand label that shows the amount of calories, fat, saturated fat and sodium per serving on the front.  Each Eatwell complete meal contains 25% or less of your daily caloric intake and 25% or less of your recommended fat and sodium intakes (based on a 2,000 calorie diet).  The first phase of the Eatwell launch consists of 17 items including prepared meals, soups, salads, sandwiches and sushi.  Like the other Fresh & Easy prepared foods, the Eatwell line is all made in the Fresh & Easy Kitchen.  There is a second phase coming and it will consist of grocery items.  Stay tuned for the launch announcement.  I will have the breaking news.

At our tasting, among the Eatwell items I sampled were: the Bruschetta Chicken ($3.99), Farmer’s Market Salad ($3.99), Honey Dijon Salmon ($4.99), Veggie Hummus Wrap ($2.99), Spicy Tuna Sushi Square ($3.99), and Turkey Chili ($1.99).  Of those, my favorite was the Spicy Tuna, really, really good!  Everything was tasty, very light and fresh, which I appreciated as I thought about the frozen soggy "diet meals" of my past.  The Turkey Chili could use some spicing up which would be easy to do with some Tabasco.  At the tasting as I asked some questions of the Fresh & Easy team and learned more about the products, I realized what an amazing concept they really have here!  You can basically go into Fresh & Easy and buy a day’s worth of meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, controlling the portions, calories, fat and sodium and do it all for oh, about $13.  There are Hollywood meal delivery services that essentially do the same thing for you but for about $50 per day.  How exciting that Fresh & Easy is making it so simple to eat healthy, tasty and affordable prepared meals.  I wasn’t able to swing over to my local Fresh & Easy today but I look forward to getting there tomorrow and filling my shopping cart like I always do.  I’d like to thank Fresh & Easy for extending the kindness of inviting me in for their wonderful tasting and tour of their headquarters.  They also gave me a very nice cloth wine bag wine carrier, available in their stores and a bottle of Saludas Red Spanish Wine.  I’d also like to thank my good buddy Caryn, Rockin mama, for taking all the fabulous pictures you see here on my post and sharing.  My camera is on the fritz and she is my photographic hero.

2 comments:

Rachel Valencourt said...

I also love F&E! Not only do I save $$$, but they owned by British Grocer so they carry a lot of my husbands favorite foods from England. Thanks for posting about this wonderful new chain of stores.

Elizabeth said...

Hello Fabumom,
Thanks for stopping by. When I lived in England I shopped at Tesco. So Fresh & Easy's parent company and I go way back! They do indeed have a nice little British food section. We love Fresh & Easy!