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Progress in civilization has been accomplished by progress in cookery. ~Fannie Farmer

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Lean Pockets: Roasted Turkey & Ham with Cheese

January 11, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Price: Provided by PR Company
SRP: $2.46
Serving: 1 pocket, 4.5oz.
Calories: 260
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 24%, 580mg
Protein: 12g
Carbs: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 14%, 4g
Sugar: 11g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Hot/Lean Pockets says: Roasted Turkey and Ham with low fat cheese with sauce in a crust.

Abi says: A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Nestle’s public relations people. They were writing to inform me that I’d be receiving multiple boxes of Lean Pockets in approximately 24 hours.

“Awesome,” I thought, knowing that the Hot Pockets category on HeatEatReview.com is sorely lacking reviews of anything but plain cheese pockets. And then I realized that they were sending that box to my old office, the one in Washington, DC.

I am in California. So, I sent an email to the PR folks letting them know about my new address. Visions of pepperoni danced in my head while I waited for the FedEx guy to show up with a box of dry-ice-encased Lean Pockets. Pepperoni Lean Pockets. I love pepperoni.

When the Lean Pockets arrived and were unpacked and sitting on my counter I realized that I had made a dreadful mistake. These were not pepperoni-containing items. They were not even the chicken fajita variety (which you should try, it is awesome), no these were all cheddar and chicken and brocolli combos.

Hmmmm. I put the boxes of pockets in the freezer and stayed away from microwave food for a couple of days, planning my dive into the world of Lean Pockets . . . I would get George to eat half of them.

My entre came the next day when George asked me if we had anything to eat.

“Yeah, I got some Hot Pockets the other day. You can have one of those.”
“Do I have to review them?”
“No, you just have to leave one for me to review.” In my mind my hands were rubbing together the way that evil super-geniuses rub their hands together when they are thinking about the destruction of the world.

George pulled a box out of the freezer and the plan fell apart.

“These aren’t Hot Pockets. These are Lean Pockets.” He said with disgust.
“You like Lean Pockets.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, those chicken fajita ones.” Do they even make those?
“I don’t see any chicken fajita ones here.”

Sigh.

I’d be alone in enduring the Lean Pocket marathon. I decided to start with the most innocuous(-seeming) in the bunch: Turkey, Ham and Cheese. I enjoyed sandwiches that contained turkey, ham and cheese. There should be no reason for me to dislike a pocket sandwich using those same items.

Holy freaking crap is this thing awful. I know that the idea is that you can have a potentially ‘healthy’ or ‘diet’ item and get to eat some hot melty cheese, but the reality of the matter is that this is bad, bad cheese. Low rent cheese. Ghetto cheese. This cheese reminds me of when I was a kid and we’d get food from the government that came in strict black and white packaging.

That sort of cheese. Lovers of Kraft Singles will probably adore this cheese. I found it to be watery, which is disgusting because we want cheese that is melty and gooey, but not actually a liquid. Viscosity is very, very important in melted cheese.

Nestled in that cheese was the meat. The weird, weird, meat. The photo on the box shows lovingly sliced and stacked deli meat. The reality is that the meat comes in ultra-thin, 1/2 inch-wide, 3 inch long strips. Band-Aids of meat, if you will. Really, really flat band-aids. I tried each of the meat-strips separately and have to admit that I could not tell the difference between the turkey and the ham. I’m assuming the ham was the darker meat strip, but I’m not positive on that one.

Encasing the watery cheese and mystery meat was a light, delightfully crisp crust. I really liked the crust. It was pleasantly flaky, plus it has whole grains. I’m sure that I’m supposed to have some understanding of what type of whole grains should be in my diet or how many grams I need a day but really I have no clue.

The amazing thing about this pocket is that the contents did not explode out of the pocket during the cooking process even though I had to cook the item for a considerable length of time due to the puniness of my microwave. This means that if you really want to, you can use the crisping sleeve as a carrying mechanism:

If only they made these for burritos. I’ve since warned my coworkers about the Lean Pockets. I wonder if they’ll still be in the office freezer at the end of this month.

Lean Cuisine Chicken Tuscan Panini

January 10, 2008 | Reviewer: Jess

Price: Provided by PR Company
Serving: 1 panini, 6oz.
Calories: 340
Fat: 12%, 8g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 25%, 590mg
Protein: 21g
Carbs: 15%, 45g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 points

Lean Cuisine says: Tender white meat chicken, peppers, olives, tomatoes and margherita-style sauce on Italian herb bread

Jess says: During the holiday season, I hear a lot of people talking about losing and/or keeping off weight. They say this a lot, as if the power of the declaration will make all the temptation of green and red sprinkled donuts, ginger bread lattes and holiday food stuffs from business consultants disappear.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this time of year was a boom season for Lean Cuisine and may explain why my Giant is being so grinchy about their sales on my LC favorites. If you are willing to pay full price for a Lean Cuisine, I’d again encourage you to stay away from their Paninis. All of these sandwiches that I’ve tried (this would be the second, the first was the Chicken, Spinach and Mushroom variety) are best called stale-toast-inis and offer very little in either substance or taste. The bread uses the technology of microwave toasting sheets to come out hard, crusty and unappetizing. The fillings, which are entirely average tasting, are meager. The resulting itty-bitty square of food disappears quickly and leads to a cheated, empty, still-hungry feeling after lunch that puts a damper on the rest of the day.

Remember that the key to losing weight is smart eating and sweating in the sauna that is over-crowded malls. Starvation, on the other hand, often leads to binging on the free foodstuffs in the office kitchen at 3:19 pm and a strange sense of shame upon being caught having eaten it all by your repulsed coworker. Mmm, assorted chocolates.

Bumble Bee Prime Fillet Chicken Breast Lightly Seasoned with Garlic & Herbs

January 9, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Price: $1.50 (on sale)
Serving: 1 pouch, 4oz.
Calories: 270
Fat: 2%, 1.5g
Cholesterol: 25%, 75mg
Sodium: 20%, 490mg
Protein: 24g
Carbs: 0%, 1g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: 0g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Bumblebee says: This skinless, boneless, and 100% natural white meat chicken breast is lightly seasoned with a savory blend of zesty garlic mixed with the subtle flavor of select herbs, including oregano, basil, parsley and rosemary. It is a delicious way to serve a healthy, fast and simple meal any day of the week! Just heat in the microwave for 20-30 seconds, add a side dish and dinner is done!

Abi says: I purchased this non-refrigerated chicken breast thinking that it would go well with Pasta-Roni. I love Pasta-Roni. I have a love/hate relationship with meat that does not require refrigeration. One one hand, I don’t eat home-cooked meat very often, so it is nice to get some quick protein without purchasing perishable goods. On the other hand, there’s something a bit weird about non-refrigerated meat. Canned tuna, smoked salmon, even beef jerky all seem a little creepy if I think about it too much.

It is meat! From a can (okay, packet)! It is exclamatorily odd and room temperature and aren’t we all a little haunted by what happened to John Franklin’s Northwest Passage expedition? Perhaps I watch too many Discovery channel shows on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions (I had a Shackleton fascination for about a year) or perhaps my brain already knew what my tastebuds had yet to learn.

Bumble Bee Prime Fillet Chicken Breast Lightly Seasoned with Garlic and Herbs is merely a mealy substitute for real chicken. The cassette-tape-sized “prime fillet” (a term I’ve never seen anywhere else in reference to chicken) tastes like the chicken version of canned tuna, plus some slightly off herbs and spices. I’d have loved to detect garlic and oregano and rosemary, but my nose could only make out ‘insanely strong herb blend’. And not in a good way.

But I couldn’t just toss the chicken. No, I had to combine it with my Pasta-roni. Just like the general improvement that occurs when sausages are sauteed and added to pizza, I thought that sauteeing the chicken first would add a bit of extra flavor and make the meal seem a bit more normal. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a good idea with my cheese pizza.

Instead, I added the sauteed pre-cooked chicken to my Pasta-roni, took a bite, and wept for the pasta I’d desecrated. The chicken was thoroughly mixed into the dish, so all I could do was eat around the chunks of chicken, carefully willing tendrils of Parmesan angel hair Pasta-Roni onto my fork.

If you can eat tuna from the can, you’d probably like this. If you’re a bit squeamish about canned meats, this isn’t the item for you. Unfortunately for George, this experience will not stop me from purchasing the ‘Southwest’ version of this item and pretending that it is chicken I’ve made myself. I’ll let y’all know how that one goes.

Product Review: Presto Pizzazz Pizza Oven

January 8, 2008 | Reviewer: Guest Reviewers

Regular Price: $70.00
On Sale at Amazon.com $39.79
Average Amazon Review: 4/5 stars

Presto says: Fresh or frozen, regular or rising crust, exclusive RotaBake(TM) technology assures great tasting pizza every time. Freezer to perfect in minutes with no preheating. Special control lets you make toppings as bubbly and crusts as crispy as you like.

Tiff says: This oven is fabulous. It does take a bit of experimenting but do not worry: no amount of experimenting will make your pizza inedible.

Getting Started

Reading the instruction booklet was necessary, because there is a special way to place the pizza pan on the rotating spindle, so it rotates and cooks correctly. There are two heating elements on this oven. One above the pizza (upper), and one that is underneath the pizza pan as it is spinning (lower). There are 3 settings on the oven. Lower, Dual and Upper.The booklet also includes a pizza dough recipe, as well as a guide that tells you how long to cook pizza depending on it’s thickness and preparation. For example:

Rising Crust Frozen Pizza: 9-12 minutes on Lower, then 9-12 minutes on Dual.

Regular Frozen Pizza: 9-12 minutes on Dual.

You’ll want to experiment to find the right times for your preferred pizza doneness.

Baking Pizzas

I have used two kinds of pizza with this oven, Freschetta PizzAmore Pepperoni Duo Pizza (a non-rising variety) and Freschetta Naturally Rising Pepperoni Pizza. Each had different cooking methods.

The Freschetta PizzAmore pizza was the first pizza I cooked with the Presto Pizzazz. I did as instructed and used the dual setting only. I found this particular pizza difficult to cook because it is already cut into slices. This made placing the pizza on the pan difficult and the end result, though thoroughly cooked, was unattractive. I won’t use the PizzAmore variety again; it tasted okay, but not great. Considering this was the first time I used the oven, it is possible I didn’t cook the pizza to my taste.

The rising crust pizza was a much, much better eating experience. The first time I cooked the rising crust pizza I cooked it exactly as the instructions suggested. The end result was great: melty, hot and tasty, but not as crispy as I would like. Luckily, you can adjust the settings for the oven as you prefer. My second round with a rising crust pizza involved 14 minutes of bake time on the lower setting (2 minutes longer than the recommended time) and 12 minutes on the dual setting. I found this was the perfect setting for this pizza! I was in heaven. It was exactly as crispy as I like, and the pepperonis were cooked as crispy as I like.

Counter Space

Since receiving the Presto Pizzazz oven as a gift, every time I go to the store I buy 2-3 frozen pizzas. I know whichever brand is on sale will turn out great. I will never again use a normal oven to cook pizza. Ovens (especially in apartments) can be shady, while this device is straight-forward and effective.

Our George Foreman Grill used to take permanent residence in the corner counter space with the only open outlet in the kitchen. The Foreman is now under the counter and the Presto now lives there. Sure, we still take old Georgie for a spin once or twice a week, but knowing that there are frozen pizzas in the freezer, and a quick snack can be made easily at any time, the Pizzazz is now our staple kitchen item.

Frozen vs. Delivery

You are probably wondering if the frozen pizzas taste as good as pizzerias. Well, yes and no. I found it especially hard to compare the two, because pizzas vary so much from place to place. If the thing that makes your pizzeria special is the sauce recipe, you can’t replicate that with this oven. I will say that I will NEVER EVER order Domino’s, Papa John’s or Pizza Hut again as long as I live and while this oven is around. There there is absolutely no reason to waste 15-20 dollars on delivery from an average place with this oven in your kitchen. Frozen pizzas on sale are 2 for 7 dollars, 3 for $10.00, etc. That is some serious cash in your pocket if you simply have this oven and some pizza on hand - and no tips required! I recommend it to people who cook frozen pizzas often. I wish I could vouch for how homemade pizza bakes - but I assume it could only taste better that store bought pizzas.

Final Thoughts

The Presto Pizzazz Pizza Oven earns 4 stars. The reason for the missing star is that one can only cook up to a 12 inch pizza (round) on this oven. This is fine for most frozen pizzas - but I am afraid to experiment with the square, brick oven style for fear I may need to use the real oven. That would be a tragedy!