[/caption]Price: $3.99
Serving: 1 croissant, 1.5oz
Calories: 150 per serving
 Calories from Fat: 80
Fat: 14%, 9g
 Saturated Fat: 27%, 5g
 Trans Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 6%, 150mg
Protein: 3g
Carbohydrates: 5%, 16g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers: 4 POINTS EACH

Trader Joe’s says: Croissants are meant to be served and savored fresh from the oven. Chef Jean-Yves Charon shapes these croissants to a smaller size that’s ideal for feeding a crowd. He makes the puff pastry in the traditional style, using butter and ultrathin layers of yeast dough, laboriously folded and refolded, cut and shaped by hand. You’ll appreciate how easy it is to bake them: Let the frozen croissants rise for about nine hours or overnight, then bake and voilà: warm flaky croissants. Set of 24. A Williams-Sonoma exclusive.

Abi says: Yes, that text above is from Williams-Sonoma. Why? Because Trader Joe’s didn’t put a pun-filled story on the box of Mini Croissants. Instead, they are suspiciously quiet about the origin of these flaky crescents of buttery love. But I have a feeling these pastries have the same maker as the Trader Joe’s Chocolate Croissants: world famous pastry chef Jean-Yves Charon. He also makes the Trader Joe’s Lemon Tartes. I did not like those.

But I liked these croissants a lot. Also, I’m easy. After 10 minutes spent trying to think of croissants I don’t like, my only conclusion is that letting croissants go stale makes them inedible in non-bread-pudding situations. Now, considering Williams-Sonoma wants me to share other consumer’s reviews over my own Facebook or Twitter profile I figured I’d cobble together a few statements to show why these croissants are so awesome (and why you shouldn’t pay $40 for the ones from William-Sonoma – unless you live 500 miles from a Trader Joe’s, then you should consider it – these croissants are quite nice with a bit of homemade blueberry jam).

Culled from 44 pages of positive reviews, here are some comments from William-Sonoma purchasers and my own additional remarks.

These are by far the best Croissants I have ever tasted and at 235 lbs I have tasted a lot.

I can’t decide if this is my favorite quote or if it makes me think twice about making croissants for the weekend.

These frozen mini croissants are exceptionally good – far better than those I make from scratch – (which I thought were pretty good!).

She’s right, they are better than the ones from scratch. It goes to show you that professional pastry chefs know their stuff.

I originally heard about these croissants on the Oprah show. I decided to try them, although they were more than I wanted to pay for them. After I served them for the brunch on Christmas Day, one of my two sons said, “Mom, you have to have these every Christmas now – they are fabulous!”

Oprah: making you buy stuff that is wonderful, but way, way too expensive.

They are like having a french baker living in your freezer.

But easier to explain to your husband. And the police.

Calling them ‘mini’ is a bit of a misnomer. They look tiny out of the box, but once you’ve baked them each croissant is about the size of a champagne mango, albeit nearly hollow inside. They make for a great sandwich, but I prefer pulling apart a croissant and spreading each bit with some jam. No butter is necessary.

The major drawback of these croissants? You have to think ‘I’m going to want croissants in the morning’ and then put out the croissants and have an apartment that is warm enough for bread to rise. Unrisen croissants are one of the saddest sights on a sleeting Saturday morning.

P.S. Trader Joe’s charges you 50¢ per croissant. William-Sonoma charges $1.67 per mini croissant. Are you willing to pay 3 times what you should (plus overnight shipping!) for mini croissants? I sure hope not.

Price: $3.00
Serving: 1 cup, 5.68oz
Calories: 250 per serving, 625 per box
ALL INFO BELOW FOR 14.2 ounce box
 Calories from Fat: 350
Fat: 35%, 23g
 Saturated Fat: 10%, 2.5g
 Trans Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 7%, 25mg
Sodium: 90%, 2175mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 28%, 82g
Fiber: 15%, 3g
Sugar: 5g
Weight Watchers: 14 POINTS

Tai Pei says: Chicken, vegetables, and fried rice with oyster flavored sauce.

Abi says: For years readers have implored me to try these faux-take-out meals, but even though I enjoy a great many items from 7-11 (including the Monterey Chicken Taquito – immensely satisfying when you’ve been drinking) I’m wary of the frozen meals. Frozen meals at 7-11 are overpriced and low on variety, inducing me to look elsewhere for lunch. Elsewhere being Safeway, the place that had these meals on sale at 2 for $7.00. Meaning $3.50 each. Not exactly a bargain.

The rice must be heated for about 6 minutes WITHOUT taking off the plastic. And then left to sit on your desk as you ponder the precise moment when it will be okay to open the plastic portion without burning yourself. I can say with certainty that it takes more than 1 minute and 30 seconds for that moment to arrive.

The actual contents of the carton are disheartening in their mushy glory: 10 thumbnail-sized chunks of albino chicken (and I have little thumbs, the image on the package is a lie), 8 chunks of baby corn, 12 carrot shreds, 16 peas, and a mass of lumpy steamed rice with replete with salt, oyster flavor, salt, yeast extract (AKA MSG) and salt. Oh, and caramel coloring.

In an effort to do something (anything) to improve this dish, I added soy sauce. While my arteries considered that a mistake, at least it confused my tongue enough to allow me to finish the meal. How is it that leftover fried rice is so amazingly delicious, yet this frozen fried rice was the worst lunch I’ve had in weeks?

Ingredients: COOKED RICE (WATER, RICE), COOKED WHITE CHICKEN STRIPS (CHICKEN WHITE MEAT, WATER, MODIFIED TAPIOCA STARCH, SALT, SODIUM PHOSPHATE), SAUCE (SOY SAUCE [WATER, WHEAT, SOYBEANS, SALT, ALCOHOL, VINEGAR, LACTIC ACID], CANOLA OIL, SESAME OIL, OYSTER FLAVORED SAUCE [WATER, SUGAR, SALT, OYSTER EXTRACTIVES, MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, CARAMEL COLOR], DEHYDRATED SOY SAUCE [SOY SAUCE (SOYBEANS, WHEAT, SALT), MALTODEXTRIN, SALT], SUGAR. CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF: NATURAL FLAVOR [POTATO MALTODEXTRIN, NATURAL FLAVOR, YEAST EXTRACT, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, SALT, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE], ONION POWDER, GARLIC POWDER, FLAVOR ENHANCER [AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, SUNFLOWER OIL, LACTIC ACID], XANTHAN GUM, SPICE), CARROTS, GREEN PEAS.

CONTAINS: OYSTERS, SULFITES, WHEAT, SOYBEANS.

Price: $3.49
Serving:1/3 pizza, 5.36oz.
Calories: 320 per serving
Calories from Fat: 110
Fat: 18%, 12g
  Saturated Fat: 25%, 5g
  Trans Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 35%, 12mg
Sodium: 19%, 460mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 31g
Fiber: 4%, 1g
Sugar: 1g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 POINTS

Safeway Select says: Safeway Select Ultra Thin Crust Pizzas have been expertly created with exciting flavor combinations, using premium ingredients that will delight you and your family with full pizza flavor on a delicate, cracker-thin crust that won’t weigh you down.

Add pizazz to your next pizza night with Garlic Chicken with grilled chicken, onions, plenty of garlic and a butter Bordelaise sauce.

Abi says: Bordelaise? Border? Mayonnaise? What? Raise your hand if you know what a Bordelaise sauce is. I’ve read Jacque Pepin’s autobiography and I didn’t have a clue what it was (thank you, Wikipedia) until just now. Bordelaise is a classic French sauce named after the Bordeaux region of France. It contains wine. And meatiness. The New Orleans version is more about garlic, butter and parsley than about red wine and bone marrow.

So, FYI, no bone marrow in this pizza.

But oh dear Lord, the garlic. I am a professed lover of garlic. Garlic and I are chums, pals, BFF’s, but perhaps after this pizza we are frenemies. When I told my husband (we celebrated our first wedding anniversary yesterday) that I was going to write about this pizza he asked if I would tell all of you how bad it was.

So here I am telling you that while you might think that this pizza is scattered with the strangest looking pieces of chicken, those are in fact nearly raw garlic pieces. And the 10-12 minutes they’ll spend in your oven is not enough time to bring them anywhere near edibility. Unless you like old, semi-baked garlic, I recommend staying far, far away from this pizza.

“But wait!” You must be thinking, “aren’t there other redeeming elements? Isn’t there chicken?” Sure, there is chicken, cut into alarmingly small (1/2 centimeter, what kind of chicken is this anyways, did I just combing a fraction and metric measurements?) cubes. And yes, there’s some cheese, all covering up an absurdly buttery sauce. Take a gander at the ingredients…

I don’t think it was an accident that when transcribing the “add pizazz to your next pizza night” text from the box I typed “add pizass to your next pizza night”.

Ingredients: Crust (wheat flour, soybean oil, yeast, sugar, salt, calcium propionate (preservative), soy lecithin (processing aid)), cheeses (whole milk mozzarella cheese [whole milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes], low moisture part skim mozzarella cheese [part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes]), chicken (white chicken with rib meat, water, seasoning [salt, modified tapioca starch, garlic powder, onion powder, chicken powder [chicken broth, chicken fat, maltodextrin, natural flavor], dextrose, spices, maltrodextrin, grill flavor [from partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil], natural smoke flavor, natural flavor], sodium phosphate), sauce (water, modified food starch, sugar, natural flavors [including butter and wine], salt, butter powder [cream, salt], , nonfat dry milk, BHA, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolized corn protein, garlic powder, onion powder, xanthan gum, spices, extractive of turmeric), butter oil (soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, soy lecithin, artificial flavor, artificial color, citric acid), parsley, roasted garlic, onions.

Price: $3.49
Serving:1 pastry bite, 0.71oz.
Calories: 70 per serving
Calories from Fat: 50
Fat: 8%, 5g
  Saturated Fat: 16%, 3.5g
  Trans Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 6%, 20mg
Sodium: 4%, 100mg
Protein: 1g
Carbohydrates: 1%, 4g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: <1g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 POINTS EACH

Trader Joe says: Pastry bites with Feta cheese & caramelized onions, no preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors, keep frozen.

Abi says: After several trips to Trader Joe’s and several rounds of sighing over these little treats, I finally purchased one batch…and then another batch…and then another batch of these puff pastry snacks. It turns out that if I like something enough, I’ll actually make (er, heat) appetizers for my own meals.

These two bite delights require nearly half an hour in the oven, so you’ll have to plan ahead if you want to treat this like a true appetizer and not another portion of your dinner. I’ve found that approximately three puffs per person is a nice way to tide you over until the actual meal. Considering there are 12 puffs in a package, you can just slice the package in half (see cut up packaging in picture), put it on a cookie sheet (no mess! no clean up!) and heat up appetizers for two. It is probably the most domestic thing I do in an entire week.

You should note that these will be super hot when they come out of the oven. I know, you’re an adult and you cooked them at 400 degrees for almost half an hour, but even after they seem cool, the cheese inside will be piping hot. And you might forget they are hot and burn yourself.

If you succeed in not burning yourself, you’ll get to enjoy a light, crispy, slightly greasy pastry surrounding a pocket of feta and cream cheese, topped the briefest dollop of sweetly caramelized onion. What a pleasant way to start any meal.

Ingredients: Puff pastry (enriched wheat flour [wheat flour, malted barley flour, ascorbic acid (vitamin C as dough conditioner), niacin, folic acid, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin], water, butter [milk], salt), cream cheese (pasteurized cultured cream and milk, natural acids, salt, xanthan, carob bean and guar gums), onion, feta cheese (pasteurized milk, salt, cheese culture, enzymes), egg, sugar, unsalted butter [milk].