Andrew Taylor

From a young age, Andrew subsisted on mostly artificial foods: McDonald's, Fruit Roll-Ups, Soylent Green. It is thanks to his hummingbird-calibrated metabolism, however, that he has not only survived, but somehow thrived on the finest food-like substances scientific progress has to offer.

Now that he's all grown-up and working nights at a small-town newspaper, he's eating five frozen meals a week and finding, thankfully, that man has made significant strides in frozen food technology since he ate Kid Cuisine monstrosities in the late 1980s. He even enjoys a lot of what he eats! And some of it is kind of good for him! Also, he's a Leo.

Andrew also reviews video games, music and underwear (among other things) at Andrew Taylor Recommends.

Latest Reviews by Andrew Taylor:

Thai Tom Yum Soup FreshPak Noodle Bowl

April 24, 2008 | Reviewer: Andrew

Thai Tom Yum Soup FreshPak Noodle Bowl Price: $2.50 on sale (Free from supplier)
Serving: 1/2 bowl, 3oz. plus water
Who eats a half bowl of microwaved soup? Nobody. That’s why the information below is for the entire bowl.
Calories: 300
Fat: 4%, 3g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 60%, 1460mg
Protein: 10g
Carbohydrates: 20%, 60g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Per Serving, 6 Per Bowl

Annie Chun says: I love Thai food and one of my favorite dishes is Tom Yum Soup. I make Tom Yum Soup for myself and have wanted to share it with my customers, but it has taken me a while to perfect. Now I am excited to have a recipe that I can share with you. Tom Yum is the main soup in Thailand - light, fragrant and calming, wonderful on either warm or cold days. This Tom Yum Soup Bowl is super convenient and great tasting, ready in just one minute.

Andrew says: This is the tale of the four-star soup that shouldn’t have been. This soup tried so hard to turn me back, to make me hate it, and yet it was still pretty awesome.

In the beginning, I followed the package’s instructions to submerge Annie Chun’s famous FreshPak noodles (read: pre-cooked noodles vacuum sealed in a plastic chamber) in hot water to break them apart a bit. Upon attempting to pull the noodles apart, though, I was met with a most familiar odor. Could it be … yes, it was Play-Doh, the childhood modeling clay that smelled unsettlingly like bread dough and melted crayons. Was I really about to eat Play-Doh-smelling noodles? Yes. For science.

Then, after draining away that water, I was to add the soup’s flavor essence and toppings. I started with the package of sauce, the heart of the Tom Yum experience. I wrung it from its packet and was met with yet another pungent odor, this one too foreign to describe. After looking at the ingredients I decided that fish sauce, ginger, chilis and lime could well account for the odd spiciness of the scent penetrating my brain. Moving on to the little briquette of toppings, I decided to bust it apart a little before depositing a stone of dehydrated veggies onto my odoriferous concoction. This helped, as I was able to identify individual flecks of red pepper and wild onion.

Next, I added water to the bowl and put it in the microwave for 65 seconds. After I removed the bowl, I recognized that, miraculously, the flecks of veggies and other toppings had indeed reconstituted in the broth to look like actual food! And even though the aroma was still fairly foreign (I’ve never had Tom Yum before), it did smell somewhat appetizing! I spent a minute or so stirring and breaking apart chunks of Play-Doh noodles and then … it was time to eat.

I’ve only ever had one other Annie Chun’s bowl before (Abi: I believe I have you to thank for that as well), and I recall being amazed at the tenderness and utter edibility of these pre-cooked, shelf-stable noodles. This held true again for these Play-Doh-scented noodles. I couldn’t believe how perfectly al dente they ended up being (even if they stuck to each other a bit much).

And all those crazy, fishy, spicy scents from before melded to make a very enjoyable flavor on my tongue. I’ve had other corporate attempts at fusing chilies and lime before and it generally ends up being either too limey or too chili-y. In this soup, those two flavors, along with the fish sauce (as gross as that sounds) and ginger presence combine to bring a satisfying, tangy heat. Even the little flecks of onion, red pepper and — holy crap is that a mushroom? — other veggies added a little something to the experience. It’s not a five-star soup because, well, the veggies are still dehydrated and as much as I’m surprised at the successful flavor integration, I feel that if they could manage to make the broth mixture more hearty, they could squeeze another star out of me. As far as shelf-stable meals go it’s amazing, but I feel as though technology may yield us a more perfect Tom Yum soup before the next decade is out.

All in all, this soup tried really hard to gross me out with its fish sauce and putty noodles, but Annie Chun wins again with an interesting and hearty soup that somehow survives months on end in a pantry. The fish sauce will unfortunately disqualify this for vegetarians and vegans, but the rest of us can marvel at this wholly-natural wonder of modern food science.

[This meal was provided by Annie Chun’s PR people. -Ed.]

Filed Under 6 WW Points, Annie Chun Meal Reviews, Cholesterol Free, Four Stars, Pasta | 8 Comments

Gits Dal Makhani

March 11, 2008 | Reviewer: Andrew

Gits Dal Makhani Price: Free from Gits*
Serving: 1/2 pouch, 5.3oz.
Calories: 234 per serving
Fat: 19.4%, 12.6g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 23.1%, 554mg
Protein: 8.6g
Carbohydrates: 7.2%, 21.5g
Fiber: 2.8%, 0.7g
Sugar: 0g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Per Serving, 12 Per Pouch

Gits says: During the days of British rule in India, Dal Makhani found favor with the connoisseurs of food — the Mughals and the Nawabs. A blend of black gram, Bengal gram and red kidney beans are cooked on a slow charcoal fire for up to 16 hours and then delicately tempered and seasoned with exotic spices and light cream.

Andrew says: I love lentil soups and I love kidney beans and I love Indian food. So here’s an Indian lentil soup with kidney beans. Is there any chance I won’t love this?

Well, if there was a chance, it was a tiny one. This is a fantastic dish executed excellently by Gits. It’s like regular lentil soup if lentil soup had a lot more spice and life to it. There are little strands of ginger, onions, a touch of garlic, chilies, coriander, cumin and Fenugreek leaves all dancing together in a dark reddish, creamy ballroom of flavor.

And it really is surprisingly creamy. The third ingredient listed is cream and it really provides a nice, smooth, almost cheesy base for the spice and beans. It helps bring all the flavors together on the palate rather than having them hit at different times. I really enjoy that effect. The packaging says Dal Makhani is India’s favorite lentil dish and I must say it’s already mine as well.

But because I’m white, I rarely have flatbread on hand to enjoy a soup like this with (not that it NEEDS the bread, but it always helps), so I got out my bag of Santitos white corn tortilla chips and dunked away. It was delightful! The fusion of Mexican and Indian cuisine … sounds like a recipe for a long stay on the toilet, but I think this works anyway. Wait until they hear about this in Mumbai!

*When I sent Andrew food he did not know which items were free from producers and which were ones I’d purchased. -Ed.

Filed Under Five Stars, Gits Indian Food Reviews, Product of India, Vegetarian | 10 Comments

Trader Joe's Spanish Lentils with Vegetables

January 1, 2008 | Reviewer: Andrew

Trader Joe Price: $2.00 on sale
Serving: 1/2 tray, 7oz.
Calories: 160 per serving
Fat: 6%, 4g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 20%, 490mg
Protein: 10g
Carbohydrates: 8%, 23g
Fiber: 36%, 9g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Per Serving

Trader Joe says: This classic Northeastern Spanish dish from the Rioja area can be enjoyed tapas style with many other savory dishes or just enjoy on its own. The lentils are slow cooked in a broth called Sofrito, made with tomatoes, oil, onion, and red and green peppers. Ole!

Andrew says: Ole! Indeed! But someone should tell this dish that spitting is unkind and frowned upon in polite society. When I opened this shelf-stable plastic pack of sloshy, soupy lentils and veggies, it spit beans and tasty-smelling sauce on my hand and the table. And then when I heated it up in the microwave, the dish proceeded to spurt more of the Sofrito all over the microwave’s turntable dish.

But even with the spillage, there was plenty of smoky, spicy, warm Sofrito for my beans and pepper bits to bathe in. In fact the dish was a lot more soupy than I was expecting. After a few brothy slurps of beans and decently flavorful peppers, I got out my Garden Salsa Sun Chips and proceeded to dip them in the soup. This was a great way to enjoy my chips and soup. I recommend doing this with any chips you like.

The soup itself, sans chips, is also fairly enjoyable, but it gets a bit boring after a while. I love beans in general, and lentils are small but robust and make me feel like I’m eating a lot even when I’m not eating that much. And there are a lot of lentils in this. And the sauce, while pleasant, kind of overwhelms everything a bit with its smoky warmth and there’s not a lot of variety in the flavors going on. It’s OK, but, you know, it’s just OK. This would be great with some other stuff, some meats and cheeses and salads and what not, but by itself it’s just a bit too homogeneous to hold my attention without delicious chips.

Filed Under 3 WW Points, Cholesterol Free, Three Stars, Trader Joe's Reviews | Leave a Comment

Tombstone Light Vegetable Pizza

December 17, 2007 | Reviewer: Andrew

Tombstone Light Vegetable Pizza Price: $3.00 on sale
Serving: 1/5 Pizza, 4.6oz.
Calories: 230 per serving
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 3%, 10mg
Sodium: 21%, 510mg
Protein: 13g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 31g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 4 Points

Tombstone says: Nothing, really, but it makes a point of pointing out that this pizza has half the fat of other meatless frozen pizzas. And apparently it’s a good source of calcium (20% DV, not shabby).

Andrew says: The only pizzas this site has reviewed before, I believe, are Kashi pizzas and Amy’s Kitchen pizzas, so rather than shock the system with some cheese bomb pizza, I thought I’d give Tombstone’s light pizza option a try. Also, it was on sale.

When I was a tot, I abhored Tombstone and other frozen pizzas. Back in my day (the late 80s), Pizza Hut had yet to become crap pizza with far too much oil, and thus was a wonderful dining experience. Compared to the old hand-tossed or pan pizzas at Pizza Hut, frozen pizzas had no flavor and no body.

But then, in the last several years (read: college), I acquired a taste for frozen pizzas. Thin-crust, rising crust, stuffed crust, it was all good, and it was relatively cheap. Among the “cheap” brands, Tombstone took the top spot in my heart for its wide variety of toppings and crust styles. To this day, the Tombstone BBQ Chicken is one of my favorite frozen foods of all time.

I’d never bothered to try the light ones because I’m already pretty svelte, but the toppings on this vegetable pizza (including broccoli! green onions! red bell peppers! black olives!) struck me as a potentially interesting and different pizza experience.

And it was! I’m not exactly sure what they did to the traditional Tombstone pizza to make it qualify as Light, but I did notice the crust was a bit more crackery, which is no big deal to me. Other than that, the onions and olives played nicely with the peppers and mushrooms and … whatever else was in there. I especially liked the fresh onion flavor of the green onions. It wasn’t an overpowering onion flavor like some other onions I’ve had on pizza. And the cheese was plentiful enough to cover the pizza and didn’t peel off in one sheet like some cheap pizzas.

My main complaint with the pizza is that, other than the onions, it is a bit light on the flavor. I generally sprinkle my frozen pizzas with crushed red pepper stuff to spice it up, and this pizza benefited greatly from that. You can get pizza-style spices at any grocery store for cheap, so if you’re not already augmenting your frozen pizzas with sprinkled spices, you should be soon. And if you’re counting calories, you can start with this pizza.

Filed Under 4 WW Points, Frozen Pizza Reviews, Three Stars, Tombstone Pizza | 6 Comments