Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. ~Jim Davis

Bertolli Roasted Chicken & Linguini

August 11, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Photo of Bertolli Roasted Chicken & LinguiniPrice: $9.99
Serving: 1/2 package, 12oz.
Servings per package: 2
Calories: 410 per serving
Fat: 26%, 17g
Cholesterol: 25%, 75mg
Sodium: 70%, 1680mg
Protein: 25g
Carbohydrates: 14%, 41g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 6g
Weight Watchers Points: 9 Points

**

Bertolli says: Imported linguini pasta cooks up al dente and twirls around your fork, just like it does at a table in Tuscany. Tender roasted chicken breast filets, melted mozzarella and zucchini are perfectly married in a mellow tomato basil sauce.

Suggested wine pairing: Sauvignon Blanc

Abi says: Remember that episode of Top Chef Season 3 where Rocco DiSpirito appears and the challenge is a Bertolli-product-placement infused marathon that culminates in the lesson that pasta and sauce are best reheated when frozen separately? No? Well, here’s a refresher if you missed it.

If you didn’t miss it you know that Rocco DiSpirito is no longer a chef and is now a shill for Bertolli, the winning pasta involved truffle butter and that chefs can identify bow tie pasta by sight (wow!) but sometimes confuse peanut butter and tahini.

Even though I’ve seen that episode, viewed the Bertolli pastas in my freezer aisles for years and received coupons for free pastas (which I lost when I moved to California, so if you Bertolli people could send some more that would be great), I’d never tried one of these pastas before now. I think that part of the problem is that they cost $10.00 each and require the use of a stove and a pan. And plates. $5.00 per serving is a lot to pay for pasta, even if it does come with chicken. Plus, the time/ease gain in heating up one of these vs. cooking my own pasta, sauce and meat just aren’t enough to justify the price.

Until now. After a long day at the office for me and a trans-Atlantic and trans-continental flight for my partner, dinner was of huge importance. Unfortunately, a week of living solo and surviving on popcorn, meant that our fridge was empty. Nothing in the deli section looked both edible and affordable, and pasta with chicken and zucchini and mmmmm, mozzarella sounded pretty darn good.

In reality is was pretty darn salty.

And the mozzarella separates from the sauce, leaving a coating of cheese at the bottom of the skillet and very little actually in the pasta.

And the chicken was both meager and unappetizing, a lose-lose situation.

But back to the salt. I love salt. I buy things because they have the word ‘Salt’ on the label. I have six different kinds of salt in my house. Crazily, the saltiness of this meal was so intense that my mouth waters whenever I think about it. And this isn’t anticipatory salivation. No, this is the kind of mouth-watering that occurs to clear a noxious substance out of your body. Not that Bertolli pastas are poisonous or anything (please send me coupons so I can try more of these!). They’re just incredibly salty. As in 70% of your sodium for the day salty.

Ounce for ounce, this meal contains more sodium than all but two of the Hungry-Man meals we’ve reviewed. Yikes.

On the plus side, Rocco DiSpirito is sort of cute and the excessive salt is a great excuse to drink plenty of the suggested wine pairing - Sauvignon Blanc on the bag, Pinot Noir on the website.

Filed Under Bertolli Reviews, Chicken, Two Stars | 11 Comments 

Eating Right Sesame Chicken

August 8, 2008 | Reviewer: Guest Reviewers

Photo of Eating Right Sesame ChickenPrice: $2.00 (5/$10 @ Tom Thumb in TX)
Serving: 1, 9oz.
Calories: 370 per serving
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 19%, 450mg
Protein: 16g
Carbohydrates: 22%, 67g
Fiber: 13%, 3g
Sugar: 19g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 points

**

Eating Right says: Tender breaded white meat chicken, spaghetti, green beans and bell peppers in a tangy sesame dressing

Lee says: I have to admit the tag line doesn’t lie (much). Chicken? Check. Spaghetti? Check. Green beans and red bell peppers? Check. Tangy Sesame Dressing? Boooooooooo. It should have read, all of the above in an overly sweetened, no depth, corn syrup sauce. While good on pancakes, waffles, and French toast, it is not the right choice for noodles and chicken. The “dressing” is so overpoweringly sweet that it is almost inedible. There is a slight hint of sesame flavor although I’m not sure I would have noticed had I not known what meal this was.

The chicken (all 3, okay 4 pieces) while tender and real, is covered in a mushy, sauce-soaked breading. I’ll never understand why these people sell breaded chicken, which gets soggy, especially when they are in sauce. Give me grilled chicken bits; they are tastier and healthier.

The noodles heated up nicely and were sparsely covered by slivers of green beans and diced red bell pepper. The latter ingredients added nothing in the way of texture or flavor. One can only hope that they supplemented this garbage with some bit of nutrition. In the end, I couldn’t finish it as I didn’t want an exponential spike in my blood sugar. The only real redeeming quality about this is the price: two bucks, is two bucks, is two bucks. If you are looking to compare to Lean Cuisine version, I can confidently say having tried both that Lean Cuisine Sesame Chicken >>>>> Eating Right Sesame Chicken.

Filed Under 7 WW Points, Eating Right Reviews, Two Stars | 6 Comments 

Mr. G’s Gourmet Fries: Original Garlic

August 7, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Photo of Mr. G’s Gourmet Fries: Original GarlicPrice: $4.99
Serving: 1/7th of a bag of fries, 6.666oz.
Servings per package: 7
Calories: 180 per serving
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 15%, 350mg
Protein: 2g
Carbohydrates: 6%, 18g
Fiber: 11%, 3g
Sugar: 0g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Points

***

Mr. G says: Revolutionize your fries! Mr. G’s Original Garlic Flavored Fries are a great compliment to hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks or any time you have the urge for a truly outrageous snack.

Abi says: I considered going to the Gilroy Garlic Festival a couple of weeks ago, but realized that I didn’t really feel like hanging out in enormous crowds of people who’d been chowing down all day on garlic ice cream, garlic shrimp scampi and garlic and chocolate peanut butter cups. It is one thing to eat a garlicky meal with your partner and then cozy up in front of ‘Becoming Jane’ (the most depressing movie in existence - also, Valley of the Dolls is always checked out- is it worth a rental? I’m turning into that girl who’s always coming into the video store trying to get a title that will never ever be there.). It is quite another (er, back to the Garlic Festival) to endure sweltering heat with 100,000 other garlic stuffed human beings.

So I bought these frozen fries instead.

The G in Mr. G stands for Ghiringhelli and the company that makes these fries is located just north of San Francisco. If you live in the Bay Area and are a locavore of loose morals you could probably qualify this as a local food item. I will just say that the fries themselves contain a lot of weird things (yellow cornmeal, baking soda and guar gum?) but the actual garlic sauce is extremely basic: chopped garlic, canola oil, olive oil, parsley, salt and spices.

These are not all natural fries, but they are very easy to prepare and consume:

  1. Preheat oven
  2. Place cookie sheet of fries in oven for 20 minutes (no flipping)
  3. Put sauce packet in small bowl of warm water
  4. Take fries out of oven, toss fries with defrosted garlic sauce, eat.

I thought that these fries would require multiple sessions of flipping, but maybe that’s what the baking soda is for: no fry flipping.

For all of the ease in preparation, these fries come out of the oven perfectly crisp. This probably has something to do with them being pre-cooked and full of extaneous ingredients. Rice flour, anyone?

The garlic sauce is pungent and abundant, easily coating every fry with a greasy jacket of parsley-flecked oil. Half of the sauce would have been plenty, so if you’re making these at home restraint is your friend. Unless you’re trying to sabotage someone’s diet. Then restraint is your enemy.

The ‘7 servings per package’ concept is utter crap. More accurately there are 3-4 servings in here, which means you’ll need to double all of the nutritional information above.

Now to the promises made in the package. Are these fries revolutionary? Not if you live anywhere near a Gordon Biersch Brewery: they’ve been making garlic fries for 20 years. Do garlic fries pair well with assorted barbecue meats? I imagine so, thought I had mine with macaroni and cheese (carbtacular!). Are the fries outrageous? Only if you’re a vampire.

[Note: Not reviewed here or available at my local store are the other truly outrageous varieties of these fries. If you see them please, please purchase and review them. Please. Other fries:

  • Cheddar Bacon
  • Pepperoni Pizza
  • Smokin’ BBQ Ranch
  • Cheddar Cheese

Pepperoni Pizza French Fries! OMG!]

Filed Under 3 WW Points, HFCS Free, Mr. G's Reviews, Three Stars, Vegan, Vegetarian | 9 Comments 

Housekeeping

August 6, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi Jones

First, thanks for sending in reviews. I am still waiting for PayPal information from people who apparently do not want to be paid. If that is you, please send me your appropriate email address as soon as possible. As in, stop reading this and do it right now.

Second, I am getting a lot of emails/comments from people who are looking for a specific frozen food in a specific town. I’m sorry, I cannot help you unless you happen to live in Palo Alto, California. Or Menlo Park. Maybe even Mountain View. I’m pretty much working within a 10 mile radius of my home. I can only tell you what my own grocery stores carry and even then that might be sort of weird. I cannot tell you where in Michigan to find Ellio’s pizza. You are out of luck. Maybe you should call Ellio’s.

Third, thanks for sending in reviews. They are funny and I’m happy that it takes the pressure off of me and I can post more writing from other people. Now here’s the part where I get all mean and nitpicky (but not really that mean):