Guest Reviewers

The guest reviewers at HeatEatReview.com are usually one-time review volunteers.

Latest Reviews by Guest Reviewers:

Hormel Compleats Homestyle Beef with Mashed Potatoes & Gravy

June 17, 2008 | Reviewer: Guest Reviewers

Photo of Hormel Compleats Homestyle Beef with Mashed Potatoes & Gravy Price: Free from Hormel
Serving: 1 Container, 10 oz.
Calories: 220
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 5%, 15mg
Sodium: 25%, 600mg
Protein: 11g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 30g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 4 Points

Hormel says: Homestyle Beef with Mashed Potatoes & Gravy. Created for a healthy lifestyle. Ready in 90 seconds!

Matt says: It took me a little while to gather the courage to delve into another Hormel Compleats meal. It is just plain weird to eat a prepared meat dish that was not frozen. Similar to the military issued MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat); peeling off the rubbery plastic cover is akin to opening something made by the Alpo corporation. At that point it is difficult to get excited.

Removing the cover reveals a cafeteria scoop of mashed potatoes viewable under a deep pool of gravy. The actual meal looks a lot different than the cover of the package! Per the cover image the idea is to stir the potatoes into the gravy. I tried this but there is just so much gravy. The gravy is thin in texture. Conversely, the potatoes are thick to the point of being dry. This is good, nevertheless, or else the potatoes would dissolve in the murky brown liquid.

The potatoes are a mild surprise. They are not nearly as good of the TV dinners of my youth but better than the current Swanson offerings. I like that they are on the dry side.

The meat and mushroom content leaves a lot to be desired, however. The mushrooms have the taste and texture of regular canned mushrooms. I counted only four pieces, and I seriously mean pieces, of mushroom in the container. The meat, like in the Compleats Steak & Peppers variety, is tender. That said there is not much of it. Unlike the ample meat pictured on the cover, there was only one rather large piece of beef and then a series of beef bits. “Beef bits” – what a horrible concept. Wait, doesn’t Hormel make bacon bits? There you go.

Ultimately the gravy flavor dominates the dish. Rather than gravy it is more like beef stew broth, or a prepared pot roast broth. It’s everywhere. If one wants to combine this with bread there will be plenty of gravy for sopping. I would be on board for this if the gravy was actually good. There seems to be a dominant spice that I cannot put my finger on. I looked on the package to only find a lot of “flavorings” and preservatives. Wine is an ingredient, which probably accounts for the pot roast echoes. Regardless, everything tastes like gravy.

While it is definitely better than the Steak & Peppers variety, I tasted that gravy for an hour afterward. It is definitely filling, but would be a lot better with a vegetable of some sort. The pot roast parallels call for carrots I think. There’s not enough good here to make me buy this. The shelf life is a plus but the meal just okay. I can see bringing one of these to work for lunch and at noon deciding to get take out instead. It would stay in my desk for months.

Filed Under 4 WW Points, Beef, Hormel Reviews, Two Stars | 14 Comments

Eating Right Thin Crust Lean Pepperoni Pizza

June 5, 2008 | Reviewer: Guest Reviewers

Picture of Eating Right Thin Crust Lean Pepperoni Pizza Price: $2.00
Serving: 6 oz.
Calories: 360 per serving
Fat: 15%, 10g
Cholesterol: 5%, 5mg
Sodium: 28%, 680mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 16%, 48g
Fiber: 4%, 1g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Eating Right says: Reduced fat pepperoni and reduced fat cheese on a brick oven crust.

Denise says: Oh, Eating Right. I keep trusting you, I keep thinking maybe this time you’ll not disappoint. ‘Why!’ I ask myself ‘Why do you keep falling for this?’ And the answer, as it has been before, is that Safeway consistently offers me frozen lunch on sale for two bucks. I’m a sucker for cheap.

Let’s deconstruct this loser of a lunch.

The Crust: The box promised me a brick oven crust. The box even came with a shiny surfaced cooking platform to achieve such a crust. What I got instead was a very chewy superbland piece of flatbread. If I was eating some awesome folded sandwich I might be sorta okay with it, but I’m not so I’m not.

The Sauce: My school used to serve pizza a good 8 times per week. I may be exaggerating here, but they served it for breakfast too. A lot of the kids LOVED that crap. I don’t know what kind of cave their parents had them living in, but if they had been exposed to carry-out with the same frequency as my family they would know that 1 parts tomato paste and 1 parts ketchup water (this would not be actual ketchup, but the watery stuff that collects on top when you haven’t used it in a while) do not a passable pizza sauce make. Eating Right didn’t get this memo either.

The Cheese: When I placed the frozen pizza atop its little platform I was a little concerned about the cheese ration I was given. The sauce was clearly visible on any square centimeter of the pizza that I chose to inspect. However, once I sent it dancing through the microwave for two and a half minutes, I was surprised to see my cheese cascading down the side of the box, taking an ill-fated pepperoni slice with it. The cheese I peeled off the side of the box was pretty tasty (I have no shame, a fact I’m sure to prove over time) for reduced fat cheese which I generally regard as the enemy.

The Pepperoni: The pepperoni is the only thing making this worthy of two whole stars. I’ve had better low-fat pepperonis in my life, but these were pretty flavorful and surprisingly meaty. I mean - I expected them to be meat, of course, but only little shavings of meat. This were on the thicker side for a meal trying to keep things lean and that was okay by me.

The…Green Goobers Blobbed All Over The Pizza: I’m really not sure what these were. I assume they were intended as seasonings of some sort, but as I couldn’t get a real flavor from them at all, I’ll further assume that they were actually green tinted pencil shavings. Stick with me here. See, I imagine last time the folks at Eating Right got together with the lunch ladies from my elementary school they traded ingredients as well as techniques. No? Well whatever they were, they weren’t flavor, that’s for certain.

Next time Safeway puts these and their Eating Right brethren on sale I’m sure the the siren song of a two dollar lunch will call to me. When that happens I’ll be sure to torture myself with something less reminiscent of public elementary school breakfasts.

Filed Under 8 WW Points, Eating Right Reviews, Two Stars | 6 Comments

Pacific Natural Foods Buttery Sweet Corn Soup

June 3, 2008 | Reviewer: Guest Reviewers

Photo of Pacific Natural Foods Buttery Sweet Corn Soup Price: $3.29
Serving: 8 fl. oz.
Calories: 120 per serving
Fat: 2%, 2g
Cholesterol: 2%, 5mg
Sodium: 31%, 750mg
Protein: 3g
Carbohydrates: 7%, 20g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 6g
Weight Watchers Points: 2

Pacific Natural Foods says: The delicious taste of fresh picked sweet corn is blended together with black pepper and butter for a mouthwatering creamy new soup. Tastes like fresh corn right off the cob.

Davie says: Rhetorical question time! What vegetable says “summer” better than sweet corn? None, of course, especially if you’re from New York, like I am. Long Island sweet corn is some of the best you’ll taste in America. It is actually one of the few stomach-friendly things to sprout from Long Island during the summer—I mean, are you familiar with Ira Rennert and his Hamptons monstrosity?

In spite of it not actually being high season for the stuff yet, I’m starting to crave corn. Perhaps it’s my way of dealing with the impending temperature increase. (Gotta find SOMETHING about summer that makes me happy, after all.) And so today I pulled Pacific Natural Foods’ Buttery Sweet Corn Soup out of my pantry and got about snacking. I heated this up on the stove, but microwave directions are available as well (you have to heat it up in a nuking-appropriate bowl, not the box itself).

There are three major flavors working in this soup: sweet corn, “butter,” and pepper. The corn flavor is strong and tasty, and the pepper is more prominent than I expected it to be (not a problem for me personally). As for the butter flavor: it works, but according to the ingredients list, it comes from butter as well as “natural butter flavor.” The more I think about that “natural butter flavor,” the more I start to feel cheated by this “natural” soup. There are some other seemingly extraneous ingredients in it—nothing terribly offensive, mind you, but Imagine Organics makes a competitive product of more virtuous constitution that I’m inclined to try next. Too bad Imagine doesn’t package their soups with a convenient plastic flip-top the way Pacific does. I’m all about the flip-top making it easier to store your leftovers.

Anyway, what we have here is a solid B- of a soup that is creamy but not exactly thick. I’m not sure I would buy it again, but if you see it magically on sale, go for it. It would make a decent snack or buddy for a main dish—I’m thinking something like Trader Joe’s dee-lish vegan black bean & corn enchiladas.

Filed Under 2 WW Points, Pacific Natural Foods, Three Stars, Vegetarian | 4 Comments

Eating Right Vegetarian Masala

May 29, 2008 | Reviewer: Guest Reviewers

Picture of Eating Right Vegetarian Masala Price: $2.00 (on sale)
Serving: 10 oz.
Calories: 340 per serving
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 31%, 740mg
Protein: 11g
Carbohydrates: 19%, 57g
Fiber: 34%, 8g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Eating Right says: Indian-style vegetables, spices, and basmati rice in a flavorful masala sauce.

Alex says: This review comes with a bit of back-story. Let it be known that I am a huge fan of Amy’s Mattar Paneer. Imagine my shock and glee when I found a four-pack of Amy’s Palak Paneer and Mattar Paneer meals at Costco for a mere ten dollars. Cut to later that day when I come across this meal at Safeway. I thought it was my lucky day! Not only had I found a cheap source for some of my favorite frozen food, but I had also found a potential, economic alternative (sort of) for when Costco eventually stopped carrying them.

Later, I pulled out the meal to cook it and perused the ingredients list, seeing how it compares to Amy’s. The list looked dauntingly long at first, but closer inspection revealed that the ingredients are mostly spices, and that there’s nothing terribly questionable inside. My hopes soared further!

Boy, were those hopes crushed, stomped upon, and totally broken quickly enough. As I pulled back the sheath of plastic that covered the top, I unearthed some of the grossest looking food I’ve seen in a while. I can only describe it as pasty, an adjective that conjures up images of wallpaper paste, library paste, and the paste that kindergarteners consider highly appetizing, and worse yet, it was dried and crusty in some parts.

The meal consists of chana masala (garbanzo beans in a spicy sauce), cumin-studded “basmati” rice, and some kind of unidentifiable cannellini bean (Cannellini bean?! Come on.) product in a similarly spicy sauce that I’m pretty sure was supposed to be different from the chana masala. The chana masala was mostly that pasty sauce with fewer garbanzo beans than I expected. Sadly, all I could really taste was cinnamon, cinnamon, and more cinnamon. It way overpowered the rest of the myriad spices in the sauce/paste. The rice, though topped with cumin seeds and mysterious carrot pieces, only disappointed further. Other companies have figured out how to make rice for the freezer, but not Safeway (who makes all their products). This rice was overly bland and oddly watery and certainly didn’t have the wonderful aromatic qualities that real basmati rice has. The cumin helped a bit, but it was a lost cause. The carrots had a texture unlike any I’ve ever encountered in a frozen meal, floating somewhere between crunchy and soggy and not in a good way. The mysterious cannellini beans had little flavor to them except a mild heat.

Overall, this meal proved to be one of the saddest and most disappointing frozen food experiences I’ve had in a long time. Maybe it was the fact that it was crappy, or maybe it was my poor, shattered hopes begging me not to torture them further, but I could only manage a few bites of strange bean paste and watery rice. Instead, I heated up my second Amy’s Mattar Paneer and reminded my taste buds that there is worthwhile frozen Indian food out there.

Filed Under 7 WW Points, Eating Right Reviews, One Star, Vegetarian | 8 Comments