My wife got a coupon that along with a few other complementary offers allowed her to pick up one Hillshire Farms Entree Salad package. She brought it home and placed it into the fridge. As I opened up the fridge all of my ‘excess money spending’ sirens went off and in a near panic (not really) I asked where such a unit had come from. She had picked up the Chicken & Bacon variety.

Inside of the plastic package were the following items (as best as I can recall):

• 1 Pouch of Light Ranch Salad Dressing
• 1 Pouch of Bacon pieces (bigger than tiny bits, but not whole strips)
• 1 Pouch of Cheddar cheese
• 1 Pouch of Chicken, chopped into roughly 1/4″ pieces
• 1 Pouch of Croutons

I believe suggested retail is $3.99 for the package, but I’m going to guess that this is a very, very, very bad deal for your money. We can buy a jar of high quality, high flavor, name brand salad dressing for $3.99 without a coupon. Enough for many salads. Enough for roughly 12 salads at least I would guess (unless you like salad soup which is really just an excuse to eat salad dressing in my opinion).

I can go to the deli counter and get 4 strips of very tasty, high quality bacon, usually around 1/4 pound, for around $1.75. This would be enough for at least 6 salads (unless your salad is an excuse to eat fried pig bits, in which case maybe half that).

I can get a huge block of excellent Tillamook cheese for $7.99 at the bulk store, Costco. I think this is enough for 30 or more salads (unless you like to add lettuce to your very dairy salad soup).

I can buy a bulk package of roughly 8 individually sealed chicken breasts that I can season for myself as I like (I like ‘em spicy) for $17.50 and it will make many, many salads. Lets assume that I’m only going to cook 2 breasts. Those two breasts would create enough chicken chunks to last me 8 salads at least (unless your salad is just an excuse to eat meat). That’s roughly $3.90 for the chicken meat.

I could buy croutons. I don’t know why I would. I could make them. I don’t know why I would do that either, but lets assume that you’ve watched your fair share of Good Eats episodes and you know how to make your own. You could turn a loaf of French bread from the grocery store into infinitely better croutons at $0.99/loaf. Enough croutons for 30 or more salads (unless of course your salad is just an excuse to eat buttery, salty, garlicky carbohydrates).

So, I could buy 10 packages of these pre-built meal deals for the price I could make tens of salads worth of fixings. This is a “Leave It” deal just for that.

Oh, I forgot to mention one very important thing: these meal packages don’t include the lettuce! You have to provide your own greens bumping the cost of using the meal pack and buying a package of salad to somewhere around $6.00 (assuming a cheap salad blend from the produce section). Sounds like someone’s making some good cash there at the Hillshire Farm!

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