SRP: $5.99
Serving: 1/3 pizza, 4.15oz.
Calories: 290
Fat: 14%, 9g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 24%, 570mg
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 12%, 37g
Fiber: 18%, 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 6

Kashi says: Tomatoes & five signature cheeses including asiago and parmesan with tomato basil sauce on stone-fired Kashi 7 whole grains and sesame with flax seed crust

Abi says: If there was a competition for Most Boring Pizza Ever, this one from Kashi would win hands down. I know, I complained about the Kashi Garlic Chicken Pizza having too much garlic, but this one exists at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Hello, blandosity.

Originally, George and I were excited about sharing this pizza. It appeared to have plenty of cheese and herbs. We like cheeses and herbs on our pizza, which is one reason why the Freschetta brand is such a hit in our household. When I say household, I mean me and George. We don’t have any dependents, though if we did I’m sure that they’d probably like Freschetta pizza too. Who doesn’t enjoy a nice slice of pizza? Uh, probably the people who just heated up the Kashi Five Cheese Tomato Pizza, that’s who.

After pulling this baby from the oven, George and I selected our preferred slices. I am not a tomato fan, so I opted for slices on the right side of the pizza while George went for the more tomato-intensive slices. We sat down to eat our pizza and after a couple of minutes of silent chewing an intense paying attention to Law and Order: SVU, I turned to George and said “This pizza isn’t very good.” His response was in the affirmative and we decided that we’d consumed a couple of slices of the most deceptive pizza ever and then we tossed the rest in the trash.

Have you ever thrown away part of a pizza? A freshly baked frozen pizza? I’ve only done it once, when I had the awful CPK Thai Chicken Pizza. Even when people at last year’s NCAA pizza party said specifically that they did not like the Amy’s Kitchen Mediterranean Pizza with Cornmeal Crust, they still consumed the entire thing.

Because it is pizza and pizza (in general) is terrific.

So why did this pizza from Kashi look so good, but have a flavor less appealing than the pizzas produced by Lean Cuisine and Tombstone? I supposed it will always remain a mystery. If you’re looking for a simple pizza, consider the Amy’s Kitchen Cheese Pizza instead. It isn’t that spicy either, but at least it has some fresh flavor.

On a note unrelated to taste, why does this pizza, with its 4 grams of fiber provide for 18% of your daily fiber needs, while the Kashi Garlic Chicken Pizza, also with 4 grams of fiber provides for only 16% of your daily fiber needs? I don’t get that.

[This pizza was free from Kashi. At the rate these reviews are going, the Kellogg’s company might never send us another frozen meal again.]

SRP: $5.99
Serving: 1/3 pizza, 4.3oz.
Servings Per Container: 3
Calories: 300
Fat: 14%, 9g
Cholesterol: 10%, 30mg
Sodium: 27%, 650mg
Protein: 16g
Carbohydrates: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 per serving

Kashi says: Roasted chicken with a trio of roasted sweet peppers and four signature cheese including asiago with roasted garlic sauce on stone-fired 7 whole grains & sesame with flax seed crust

Abi says: There’s a lot of Kashi love at HeatEatReview.com. We pretty much adore their healthy, filling, flavorful frozen meals. I think that their cereal completely sucks (twigs anyone?) and I’d rather get fiber and protein from about 19 gazillion other sources than a bowl of GoLean. Fortunately for them, this isn’t a cereal blog.

This is a frozen food review site.

And so, looking to once again show that they’re in our good graces, Kashi sent along three frozen pizzas: Mediterranean, Cheese and Tomato, and Roasted Garlic Chicken. Roasted garlic is one of my favorite things. I was a food snob in college, buying fresh-baked bread from La Panzanella and roasting my own garlic in the dorm oven. And I’m still a garlic lover. In fact, last night my favorite part of dinner was a sublimely pillowy and crispy garlic naan at Indique.

I never thought there could be such a thing as too much garlic. I was wrong.

Kashi’s Roasted Garlic Chicken Pizza is smothered in a garlic sauce that slaps you upside the head and says ‘This is what real garlic tastes like, mofo.” But it isn’t a lusciously decadent roasted garlic. No, it is the type of garlic that you get when someone was too impatient to roast and just decided that minced garlic mixed with butter is a perfectly acceptable spread. FYI, it isn’t.

Kashi heaps on more misery with miserly portions of chicken and peppers. I’m sorry, but if this is supposed to be three servings, I don’t want to fight with other people to see who gets three bits of chicken and who gets four. This is luxury pizza with flax and sesame, not a microwave pie from DiGiorno. The cheese makes a healthy (as in large, not good for you), if bland, showing but it isn’t to save the pizza from my high expectations.

And the ultra-healthy, 7 grain, sesame and flax crust? Well, it tastes like it could cure cancer. And maybe Kashi pizza does cure cancer and that’s how they’ll get people to buy this pizza.

I hope I don’t get cancer.

Price: Free to us, $5,00
Serving: 1 package, 10oz.
Calories: 300
Fat: 14%, 9g
Cholesterol: 15%, 45mg
Sodium: 26%, 620mg
Protein: 19g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 29g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

for taste
for chastity

Kashi says: Grilled chicken breast with spinach, sweet red peppers and baby portobello mushrooms. Kashi 7 whole grains and sesame with orzo pilaf. Garlic Wine sauce topped with shredded parmesan cheese.

Jess says: Do you sense the oncoming trouble of a budding office romance? Does someone get a little too close in the Xerox line? Is this someone being a little too generous with emoticons in email exchanges? Does this someone tell you when the coffee has been brewed so you get a fresh cup? Abort! Abort! This spells nothing but trouble. Animals don’t masticate where they defecate, you shouldn’t grind at the grind. So get thee this meal (once it’s for sale, which I don’t think it is yet). Essentially this is an oral chastity belt. Eating this meal is like drinking a garlic milkshake with garlic powder garnish. No one is making out with you after you’ve eaten this. It is three days later and I’m still not sure I’m fit for the bars. Abi claimed, upon receiving a taste, that it burned her mouth.

This is not to say that the meal is bad. Au contrare mon frere! Garlic adds a punch of taste to any food concoction. And as other Kashi meals have proven, that mix of fiberrific grains is recipe for microwave magic. The cream sauce is kind of nasty pre-microwave, sitting all globularly condensed in the center. But once you mix it in mid-heating cycle, it looks more than edible and that’s when you get the first whiff and start to realize, crapola!, I’m about to set off a garlic firecracker in the office kitchen! The portion is smaller in this meal than the other meals, but the spinach abounds. We all know spinach=power (or E. coli). Most also know that spinach and cream sauce are a great pair (like Popeye and Olive Oyl). Also, Kashi gives you some quality chicken strips in their meals. No fatty cubes here. Thanks, Kashi. That extra effort is almost worth the $3 extra I’ll have to spend on your meals (except not really - for $6 I can get a chicken sandwich, from, like, a real grill). In conclusion, this is great treat if your goal is to stop office temptations and it’s surely tasty, but this is not Kashi’s best production.

SRP: $4-5.00
Serving: 1 tray, 10 oz.
Calories: 330
Fat: 17%, 11g
Cholesterol: 2%, 5mg
Sodium: 33%, 790mg
Protein: 12g
Carbs: 31%, 93g
Fiber: 28%, 7g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Kashi says: Yellow carrots, sweet red peppers and peas, multigrain penne pasta, basil pesto sauce with shredded parmesan cheese

Rebecca says: There are three things I always enjoy: (1) Pasta (2) Pesto and (3) Free food. When Abi offered me the opportunity to review Kashi’s new Pesto Pasta Primavera, I quickly agreed.

The most important part of pesto pasta is the pesto sauce itself-here, the sauce was a bright friendly green and had decently mellow pesto flavor. I usually enjoy my pesto with a more of a fresh garlic kick and a burst of basil; this version was a bit less flavorful than I would have liked. The garlic and basil were identifiable, but not particularly distinctive. With most pesto sauces, I just want to slather it on everything (crackers, pita, veggies, pasta, etc.) but I wasn’t so hooked on this one that I wanted to keep eating it with a variety of starches.

When I first removed the tray from the microwave, the Kashi’s pesto seemed a bit soupy. However, more thorough mixing distributed the sauce to the pasta as a whole and decreased the soupiness. As a result of soaking in soupy sauce, the pasta was quite soggy. Kashi’s pasta is a special multigrain penne, but I could not taste the extra multigrain-ness (not that I really missed it). Maybe the multigrain taste was missing because the pasta was just a bit overcooked—more like regular American-style we-don’t-know-what-al-dente-means pasta than hearty, chewy multigrain pasta.

By far, my favorite part was the vegetables (a.k.a. primavera). The peppers and peas were bright, nicely cooked, firm and actually tasted (and resembled) real peppers and peas. Plus, there were enough vegetable bits to have some veggie in every bit. I was surprised that the vegetables were perfectly cooked because the pasta was a little overdone. By overdone I mean mushy.

If you like a mellow pesto sauce and your pasta ‘well done’, then you should try this meal for the tasty vegetables too. If you like pesto with sharper flavors and pasta al dente, you might want to find that combo somewhere else. Just remember to add some vegetables, they were so delicious.