Revisting My Columbus Roots with Kahiki (and a Chance to Win!)

Disclosure: I received a sample to facilitate this review; all opinions expressed are my own. 

Overwhelm. That's a key word for this phase of my life, but as I've shared before I know it will pass soon enough. For now I'm taking things in stride and still finding moments to hug up on my kids especially giving Baby Gray lots of squeezes because the baby phase really does go by in a blink! In the midst of my family's transition to New Hampshire there are quite a few things also going over my head and those include emails. I scan and re-scan my inbox for emails that may have fallen through the cracks and recently when I saw "Kahiki" in my inbox I stopped for a moment of nostalgia.

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio I was obsessed (and part scared) of the Polynesian-themed restaurant of the same name. It had large imposing statues in the front of it reminiscent of Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sadly it closed, but this article captures many of my childhood memories of the establishment (especially roasting the meatballs over blue flame!). It turns out the company is now in the business of frozen food so I was very curious to see what their email was about. 

Kahiki prides itself on offering all natural frozen food with no artificial ingredients or preservatives. With the tagline "Real Asian. Real Simple." I set out to explore their product line and offered to have my family give it a try. While I usually cook most of our meals, it was a welcome break to try Kahiki especially with Mr. Lovebird currently out of town and handling both kids on my own.

 

Kahiki is currently running its "How Do You Asian Night" sweepstakes giving away a year's worth of their StirFresh product line (a $500 value!) and 10 runners up winning woks filled with ingredients for Asian night as a family including StirFresh free meal coupons (each a $150 value). While my local grocery store doesn't carry StirFresh, I was able to give the Multi-Serve Meals a try. Drawn in by the broccoli on the package, Nia picked out General Tso's Chicken. Coming from NYC where Chinese take-out is renown I wanted to see how it would stack up. 

My first instinct was to put it in the oven, but I saw on the package it's recommended to go in the microwave. I also thought there'd be a packet of sauce to drizzle it on like the picture on the package, but it was all frozen together and had to be stirred in. I did see the StirFresh line has the sauce packet offered so I'd like to give it a try if my grocer ends up offering it. 

While the microwave definitely made the chicken mushy, the veggies rice and sauce were fine although I could've stood for more heat in the sauce since I like my General Tso's spicy, but for a simple ingredient list with things I could actually pronounce plus the fact that Nia actually ate it without complaining I call it a win. And a bonus for this busy mom?: The leftovers made a great lunch for Nia and me the next day!

Be sure to visit Kahiki's website and enter here to win the amazing grand prize - it ends this Friday, October 31!