Gardein Seven Grain Crispy Tenders Review

When I first became a vegetarian, one of the things I would "cheat" with sometimes was chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets are a basic comfort food for many of us who grew up eating them, either in our Happy Meals or at home when our mom cooked the frozen, dinosaur shaped ones. These days I look for vegetarian "chicken" nuggets in the grocery store whenever I can. Today was the first time I tried Gardein's Seven Grain Crispy Tenders. I found them at the grocery store. I've mentioned before that I live in a small town with only one real grocery store, so it great that they seem to be carrying more and more vegetarian and vegan foods.

Anyways, my picture of the bag came out blurry, but you can visit their website to see the ingredients and nutritional information. The top of the bag says, "Always vegan." and if you look at the ingredients list you can see that it is true. That is good to see, because some vegetarian products are not vegan.

One thing I wished, when I saw the cooking directions, was that they had a microwaveable option. I'm a little lazy when it comes to cooking (and other things) and when I'm hungry I'm not always patient enough to wait for the oven to preheat and then wait 16 minutes for my food to cook. They do have a :quick" option that involves microwaving the crispy tenders for thirty seconds or so to defrost them, and then transferring them to the oven, but it only saves about six minutes. In this case it actually seemed easier to just bite the bullet and do the regular oven method. (There is also a toaster oven method, but I don't have one of those.)

Here's what they looked like when I took them out of the bag.

The serving size is only three, by the way. My appetite is always bigger than the serving size!
I put them in the oven for eight minutes, then turned them all over, and then cooked them for another eight minutes. Here's what they looked like when they came out.

I like to dip my fake chicken nuggets. Sometimes I like Ranch dressing, but I also like ketchup. I've mentioned before that my favorite kind of ketchup is Portland Ketchup, which is popular where I live. I talked more about it on my Veggie Corn Dogs post.

They were super hot and smelled delicious, so I was glad to settle down and eat them!

The first thing I noticed was the texture. The outsides were crispy, and the insides really reminded me of chicken nuggets. Not the cheap "pink slime" kind, but the good "all white meat" kind. They felt and tasted just like chicken! They were especially good with the ketchup. I think my cat was confused, because she kept begging for some, but when I'd tear off pieces for her, she just looked at them funny. She kept standing up and trying to touch the ones I was eating, but she didn't actually want to taste them! My dog, however, was completely fooled and ate several bites without questioning them.

Here they are as part of a complete dinner.

I could have eaten six more of these. In fact, I can't wait for lunch time tomorrow so I can have some more! The best part about them is that I can eat something I love, without having to eat an animal. Chickens like to be out in the sunshine, pecking the ground for bugs and chasing each other around... not getting made into nuggets!