The Orchard at Tesco - My Fit Lifestyle Programme!

Last month I became a member of 'The Orchard at Tesco'. This is their product testing site, where you can experience their services and products, free of charge (once you've been invited to one of their programmes), or at a special premium.

Within 12 days of joining I was invited to the 'My Fit Lifestyle' programme; this programme is all about making healthier eating easier. I thought this was a great programme so joined immediately, having recently suffered a bad break out I've been watching what I eat and reducing my intake of unhealthy food.

The Tesco My Fit Lifestyle Range has a large number of products from snacks, drinks and full meals all under 500 calories (This part of the range isn't of much interest to me as I don't watch my calorie intake but I guess this is helpful to those that do).

As part of this programme I received an Orchard pack containing;
- £12 off Coupon for products in the My Fit Lifestyle range, the minimum spend being £12
- Pass along coupons for friends and family, for £1 off when they spend £3 on My Fit Lifestyle Products

With my voucher I ordered the following products online:
- Tesco Whipped Raspberry Yoghurt 70g
- Tesco Spanish Chicken & Prawn Paella 400g
- Tesco Indian Graze Box 291g
- Tesco Butter Nut & Cheese Ravioli With Veg 355g
- Tesco Wasabi Peas 30g

I also ordered; which I didnt receive;
- Tesco Rice Cakes & Pumpkin Seeds 30g
- Tesco Sea Salt With Vanilla Popcorn
- Tesco Honey & Oat Bites 22g
-Tesco Apple & Cinnamon Mini Cereal Bites 22g

I was quite disappointed about that because they were mainly sweet items that I wanted to try more than the rest. I was given a substitute for the Rice Cakes which was;
- Tesco Roasted Snack Mix 30g

Firstly I tried the 'Tesco Whipped Raspberry Yoghurt' , it has a mousse like texture but not your typical mousse like flavouring. The raspberry taste reminded me of the raspberry flavoured petit filous just not as nice and more artificial in taste. There are raspberry seeds throughout the mousse an indication that although the taste of raspberry isn't a natural one, there's maybe real raspberry's throughout. Overall I didnt really like the taste of this, as the taste is really sour and it left an aftertaste in my mouth and I didnt find it fruity enough.

The next item I tried was the 'Tesco Wasabi Peas', these had a distinctive taste just like English mustard, these weren't overly strong but had a nice kick to them, not too spicy. I could only eat about three of these i'm not a big fan but I would try them again.

                     

A similar snack to the wasabi peas, was the 'Tesco Roasted Snack Mix'. This packet was a mixture of lightly salted, crunchy dried corn, dried broadbean, peas, chickepeas, wasabi peas and edamame beans. The dried corn in this was my favourite, it was soo nice it tasted just like popcorn just not fluffy in texture. I really enjoyed the combination altogether. I would buy this again as a nice quick snack that can easily be carried around in your bag, when out and about.

'Tesco Indian Graze Box' was next, as soon as I opened this lovely aroma's came out.

The Chicken was delicious and lovely and tender, the mint coconut dip, I was really dubious to try as I don't like coconut at all, but it was surprisingly really nice one of the best mint dips I've actually tried, I would actually buy this in store if it was sold separately as I think it would compliment a lot of other dishes too such as lamb. I wasn't a big fan of the roasted onions I only tried a little bit and it was literally just that ... roasted onions, however the tomato's with the onion (HUGE TOMATO FAN!!) were great nice and tasty!

I found the samosa quite disappointing, I was really impressed that it came raw down to the pastry, it looked really authentic, however on cooking I realised filo pastry wasn't used but quite a dense type of pastry that was quite hard and not nice and flaky like a normal samosa. I didnt like the filling it was just tasteless spinach, but if you're not big on flavours I guess it would be nice for you.

Typical clumsy me I dropped the 'Tesco Butter Nut & Cheese Ravioli With Veg', so there's no photo of how it looks before heating unfortunately, but on appearance this looked very creamy with lots of veg. Initially this tasted to me just like baby dinner, bleurgh, but its quite nice, subtly flavoured, quite sweet in taste, which i'd say is due to the butter nut squash. 



There are loads! of vegetables which is lovely. I slightly over did mine in the microwave it said 4 mins max but I only put half in. I didnt like the spicy tomato sauce in it, it really wasnt spicy at all and the goats cheese used in this was fortunately not a very strong one and had a nice flavour. I'm not a big fan of egg pasta either but overall this isn't a bad dish, I personally wouldn't buy it again as there's no wow factor.

The final product I tried from the my fit lifestyle range was 'Tesco Spanish Chicken & Prawn Paella'. Now I haven't tried an authentic version of Paella before so I cant comment how similar or dissimilar this is to the original. Straight away the smell of the chorizo was very distinctive. On appearance before cooking there was A LOT!! of green veg, i'd say more than what you'd have in a normal portion of veg.

Under the label there was a handy breakdown as to how to build a healthy eating plan with Tesco My Fit Lifestyle programme.

During the cooking process I feel the Chorizo lost a lot of its flavour as it wasn't very pungent in comparison to how strong the smell was previously. This was quite unfortunate as I love Chorizo, it was also disappointing that there were only very small chunks of it too. The Prawns were barely cooked before heating which was nice, made the dish look really fresh on appearance, however after heating I found them quite rubbery. I really liked the veg, I'm a little bit biased as I'm a fan of green veg ha ha. The chicken in this tasted curried and was nice.

The rice wasnt too bad, but the tomato sauce it was cooked in I found quite bitter and on serving there was a lot watery sauce on my plate, If I had heated it longer I'm sure I would have less of that, but then I would have overdone veg and bullet like prawns. I think this wasnt a great dish but not an awful one. I wouldn't buy it again as I'm not a big fan of rice.

Overall I would buy from this range again as I have only tried a couple of things from such a  large range, I will definitely, but the roasted snack mix again and if they sold the mint coconut dip and tandoori chicken from the Indian graze box alone I would buy that too.