The Green Giant does the stirring for us

CAROLYN WYMAN AND BONNIE TANDY LEBLANG
SUPERMARKET SAMPLER

Green Giant Freshtables Stir-Fry Vegetables & Sauce. Garlic Szechuan, Tedyaki, Sweet & Sour and Spicy Thai. $3.99 per 16-ounce bag.

Bonnie: Green Giant Freshtables Stir-Fry is my kind of convenience food. Each bag, found in the produce department, contains fresh veggies to stir-fry in a non-. stick skillet along with – if you want – shrimp, or diced or sliced beef or chicken. Each bag also contains a pouch of sauce to flavor the vegetables. The package claims to serve 2.5 people. I say that with the added meat and a side salad, you could serve 3. But with just the veggies (as I enjoyed it), it serves 2.

The Sweet & Sour's combination of just carrots and sugar snap peas is too boring and its sauce too sweet, with that sweetness coming from high-fructose com syrup. I liked the vegetable combinations in the others and the flavor of the spicy Garlic Szechuan. The packets contain much more sauce than is needed. Use only half, as I did, for more subtle flavor and to moderate the high sodium level.

Carolyn: Green Giant Freshtables Stir-Fry is a refrigerated version of the skillet meals that were all the rage among frozen food-makers a few years back. Because this dish doesn't start out frozen and because the veggies are jumbo-sized, they cook much faster and to a nearly perfect stir-fry crispiness, despite the fact that no stir-frying is involved.

Instead, you place them in a covered pan with the sauce over medium heat for 5 to 7 minutes. This is the same easy method employed by most of Green Giant's frozen skillet competitors, but without the usual resulting defrosted mush.

As for the varieties, I agree with Bonnie that the Sweet & Sour, with its dull sauce and overabundance of sugar snap peas, is the worst. The pleasantly spicy Garlic Szechuan, with its interesting blend of broccoli, sugar snap peas and especially bok choy (whose flavor screams Asian but rarely makes it into foods from mainstream American companies), is by far the best.