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What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead. ~George Bernard Shaw

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Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Penne Primavera

October 16, 2006 | Reviewer: Jess

Dollar meals. How do they stand up against a dollar menu? Do they fulfill the claim of being an actual meal or should you be shopping around for $3.00 worth of fast food? Jess explores these topics with Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Penne Primavera.

Price: $1.00
Serving: 1 bowl, 8 oz.
Calories: 240
Fat: 11%, 7g
Sodium: 22%, 520mg
Protein: 9g
WW Points: 5 Winning Points

Michelina says: Whole wheat pasta with vegetables in a light Alfredo sauce

Jess says: This meal kind of tastes like plastic, which is surprising since it is cooked in cardboard with a cardboard flap, so the plastic must be a special ingredient, not merely packaging essence. Still, it isn’t bad and was entirely edible. In fact, it made me wonder if I could eat plastic were I to be stranded on a tupperware island, though that must be hell on the digestional tract.

Of course, the meal isn’t good either. The sauce is blah and the portion is meager. In fact, the one thing that I can say about this meal is that is uninspiring. My cup usually overflowth while writing food reviews, but this meal has dried my mental inkwell.

If you only have one dollar to your name (and I guess some pocket change for tax), go get a sundae from the McDonald’s dollar menu. If you are lactose intollerant, get fries. If you don’t have any money to your name, but you have a microwave and someone gives you this meal, go ahead and eat it. It will do the job.

Strangely, Hungry-Girl raved about it.

Michael Angelo’s Chicken and Asiago Sauce

October 13, 2006 | Reviewer: Abi

Price: $4.19
Serving: 1 tray, 10 oz.
Calories: 390
Fat: 20%, 13g
Sodium: 20%, 490mg
Carbs: 14%, 43g
Fiber: 9%, 2g
Protein: 24g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Michael Angelo says: This delicious sauce combines a generous amount of high quality Asiago and Reggiano Parmesan cheeses, fresh garlic and onions and a touch of basil. We add beautifully seasoned and roasted chicken breast cut into hearty sized strips, toss it with our ‘al dente’ linguini pasta and top it all with red and green bell peppers.

Abi says: While Michael Angelo continues to deliver satisfyingly cheesy sauces, you can’t help but wonder who is sourcing the chicken. In every meal I am confronted by dry, mealy ‘hearty sized strips’ of chicken breast. Sure, there was plenty of chicken to go around in this meal, but I couldn’t help wishing that the chef had reduced the cook time considerably. Remember, these are meals that have already been cooked. We’re just reheating, Mr. Angelo.

The red and green bell peppers were more of a garnish than an ingredient. Yes, I was warned, but while stirring the meal I couldn’t help but think to myself ‘Well, it looks like there’s a shard of green pepper in there.’ Shard+Food=Bad. If you’re looking for a balanced meal of pasta, sauce, protein, and veggies, you’ve come to the wrong place. The sauce shows off Michael’s deft hand with a cheese grater and leaves you wondering just how fat you’d get if you ate these every day. Probably very fat. But it would be a happy fat because the sauce it so great.

Chicken aside, Michael Angelo’s Asiago sauce was indulgent and is probably habit-forming. At $4.19 per box, I’ll probably limit these meals to once a month.

UPDATE: I’ve since had another one of these and the chicken was much, much better. If you see it, try it!

Gabila’s Potato Knishes

October 11, 2006 | Reviewer: Heather

Price: $3.49
Serving: 1 piece, 4.5 oz.
Calories: 170
Fat: 9%, 6g
Sodium: 18%, 440mg
Protein: 6g
Carbs: 10%, 29g
Fiber: 22%, 5g

Gabila’s says: The Original Coney Island Square knish.

Heather says: Right. I know. “What is this?,” you might ask. Lean Cuisine, it is not. Take this random product review as testament to the dearth of vegan products in the local mainstream grocery store. Normally, I get my tasty earth-friendly meals from one of the local whole-foodsy chains, but I was in a rush last week and needed to grab something from the local Fry’s supermarket. Ha. Rush. Right. What a joke.

If there’s anything you do a lot of as a vegan, it’s reading the back of labels, throwing up your hands in disgust, moving on to the next product, and repeating aforementioned behavior. So it was that after about five minutes of trying to find something anything, please God, anything that didn’t have animal product in it, I finally found this item, the knish.

I have tasted a fresh-baked knish before and found it to be mighty tasty. I did not, however, have high expectations for this product. Something about frozenness and mushy potatoes just not coexisting peacefully. Imagine my surprise then, to find that these knishes kicked vegan ass. They tasted, not surprisingly like: “lightly seasoned mashed potatoes wrapped in a crispy crust” (as Gabila’s says). They were, in short, delicious. I would recommend slicing one open and topping it with whatever you fancy. These things would make your Jewish vegan grandma proud. Seriously. Eat up.

Trader Giotto’s (Joe’s) Bambino Pizza Formagio

October 9, 2006 | Reviewer: Josh

Price: $1.59
Serving: 1 pizza, 4 oz.
Calories: 250
Fat: 12%, 8g
Sodium: 19%, 460mg
Protein: 15g
Carbs: 10%, 30g
Fiber: 12%, 3g

Bambino says:No Artificial Preservatives. No Artificial Flavors. Keep Frozen.

Josh says: It’s a good thing there are 4 of those little pizzas in the box. For one thing, an individual little pizza isn’t big enough to serve as a complete meal for me. But the more importantly is that I was able to heat these pizzas with two different cooking styles. Two I warmed up in the microwave and the others I heated in a toaster oven. The pizzas pictured were cooked in the microwave.

The first round was ‘baked’ via the microwave method. It was a rather unimpressive product and I was thoroughly disappointed by the lack of flavor in the pizza. All I got was a temporary satisfaction to my hunger pains. Don’t microwave these TJ’s pizzas; they lack an ever-important crisping tray.

On the second go-around I used the toaster oven and formed a much better opinion of Trader Giotto’s work. The bread crisps up nicely and the pizzas had a decent flavor. There’s still too much sauce in the sauce-to-cheese ratio. But overall, these pizzas are a decent product when toaster-oven-heated.