Abi Jones, Editrix

Hi, my name is Abi Jones and I created HeatEatReview.com to showcase the best and worst in microwavable meals. I’ve been called the “Robert Parker of Hot Pockets” and HeatEatReview.com has been featured in Real Simple magazine and on FoodCandy.com.

I wasn’t born an expert frozen meal critic. First, I earned a rather handy degree in Art History from Seattle University. While in Seattle, I led gallery programs at the Frye Art Museum and drank a lot of coffee.

My original aim of becoming ridiculously rich and famous upon graduation was supplanted by the Jesuit call to social justice. In the Spring of 2002 I joined Teach For America, for a two-year hands-on experience in improving education in a single classroom in one of America’s most impoverished communities. It was an empowering and humbling time in my life. If you’re thinking about applying for or giving money to Teach For America, I’d be more than happy to have a conversation with you about my time in Texas. Summary: I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Now I’m an Information Architect and User Experience Designer in Palo Alto, California. I love being a professional designer and I express that love in websites, administrative systems, process workflows, and eCommerce paths. Who else gets to have their ideas turned into products, and then refine those products to help other people achieve their dreams? Not too many people.

If you’d like to contact me for an interview, feature HeatEatEatReview.com on your food show, or ask me to be a guest on your History channel retrospective on frozen food, just use the contact form or send an email to abi-at-heateatreviewdotcom. If you’d like to see your product featured on HeatEatReview.com, please check out the review policy.

Latest Reviews by Abi:

Trader Joe’s Roasted Potatoes

August 18, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Photo of Trader Joe’s Roasted Potatoes Price: $2.99
Serving: 3/4 cup, 3oz.
Servings per package: 8
Calories: 90 per serving
Fat: 2%, 1.5g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 18%, 440mg
Protein: 2g
Carbohydrates: 5%, 16g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 Points

Trader Joe says: Trader Joe’s Roasted Potatoes with Roasted Peppers and Onions will be a savory addition to any meal. Our potatoes can be served as a side for many dishes, like filet mignon, herbed chicken breasts or a polska kielbasa. They offer the sightly sweet flavor of a roasted pepper and onion medley blended with the mellow taste of red potatoes. They’re wonderful served with salsa, or with some sharp cheddar cheese melted over the top. For breakfast, lunch or dinner simply bake or skillet fry this wonderful potato medley for a quick and easy compliment to your favorite entree.

Abi says: When it comes to breakfast potatoes, I stick with Simply Potato items. They contain potatoes and some sort of powder that keeps the potatoes from turning brown. And that’s it. However, Simply Potatoes are a) not cheap and b) not for the freezer, meaning that they will go bad after a certain time period. I am not the kind of girl who knows if she’s going to be making hash browns in the next four days, which is why I opted for Trader Joe’s Roasted Potatoes this time around.

In conception these seem brilliant: roasted red potatoes, onions and red bell peppers combine to create a breakfast potato medley that requires neither salt nor ketchup. Nor the assistance of that Lipton’s Onion Powder Stuff (I am addicted to it - so amazingly delicious - and bad).

The cooking process is simple: heat a bit of oil in a skillet (you could even use Pam), dump in potatoes, heat for 10 minutes, dump in onion/red pepper pouch, heat for 8 minutes, serve. Unfortunately, the potatoes leave something to be desired. Each little roasted starch cube is akin to a packing peanut: styrofoamy. Red potatoes don’t freeze well and it shows in the reheating process. I know, red potatoes are just lovely and easy to prepare (try this recipe, but with fresh herbs instead of dried - easy and mouth-watering), but they aren’t hardy the way Russets are. Additionally, the supposed 8 servings in the bag are actually 4 servings. I don’t know when Trader Joe’s made the 3/4 of a cup measurement, but it is not accurate when it comes to these potatoes. If you’re planning on serving eight people, buy two bags of potatoes.

Yes, the peppers and onions make these potatoes a decent breakfast item, but my overall feeling was ‘Meh.’ There’s nothing offensive about them, but nothing great either. Looks like I’ll be sticking with Simply Potatoes for the foreseeable future.

Filed Under 2 WW Points, Three Stars, Trader Joe's Reviews | 12 Comments

Jones All Natural Golden Brown Maple Sausage Links

August 13, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Photo of Jones All Natural* Golden Brown Maple Sausage Links Price: $2.99
Serving: 3 links, 2oz.
Servings per package: ~3.5 (10 links)
Calories: 240 per serving
Fat: 34%, 22g
Cholesterol: 15%, 45mg
Sodium: 18%, 420mg
Protein: 7g
Carbohydrates: 1%, 2g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: 1g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Jones Dairy Farm says: Jones Dairy Farm products offer you the old-fashioned quality and flavor you’d expect from a family farm. Made with natural ingredients and six generations of Jones family pride, our products are prepared fro you with the wholesome simplicity of recipes passed down through the generations.

No MSG Added - No Artificial Ingredients - No Preservatives - No Gluten Added

Abi says: Oh dear Lord in heaven, now I know why I never read the nutrition label on any sort of sausage. Well, except artisan chicken and/or turkey sausage which I already know is low in fat and high in virtuousness/animal parts.

The asterisk in the on Jones (no relation) Maple Sausage box means ‘No artificial ingredients and only minimally processed.’ The ingredients list is impressively simple:

Pork
Water
Maple Sugar
Sea Salt
Spices
Raw Sugar
Maple Flavor (carmelized sugar syrup, flavorings, maple syrup, brown sugar)

I like knowing what’s in my sausage, though I’m definitely confused when one of the ingredients of a ‘Flavor’ is ‘flavorings’. How do they get away with that? And how happy are you to see that the term ‘mechanically-separated‘ isn’t included in that list?

Taste-wise, these little guys (each is the size of Pretty darn good for some pre-cooked brown-and-serve sausages and considerably juicier than Morningstar Farms Sausage Patties. There’s no casing, so they exhibit about as much snap as a meat-free corn dog. Fortunately, the my preferred cooking method involves microwaving them for 30 seconds first, then browning for a crisp exterior.

In restaurants, I like dipping regular sausages in syrup. At home, I ran out of affordable maple syrup (a fellow food writer from Montreal says that the only acceptable maple syrup comes in a can), so I opted for these sausages between visits to Trader Joe’s. Those of you who prefer savory sausages might be a little put off by the combo, but I suggest trying it before you knock it.

Filed Under 7 WW Points, Four Stars, Jones Dairy Farm Reviews, Pork | 7 Comments

Bertolli Roasted Chicken & Linguini

August 11, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Photo of Bertolli Roasted Chicken & Linguini Price: $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

Mr. G’s Gourmet Fries: Original Garlic

August 7, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Photo of Mr. G’s Gourmet Fries: Original Garlic Price: $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:

Preheat oven
Place cookie sheet of fries in oven for 20 minutes (no flipping)
Put sauce packet in small bowl of warm water
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: