Price: $2.00 on sale
Serving: 1 package, 6oz.
Servings per package 1
Calories: 330
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 15%, 5mg
Sodium: 21%, 510mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 16%, 47g
Fiber: 4%, 1g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Eating Right says: Tender diced chicken, creamy garlic sauce, reduced fat cheese, diced garlic and onions on a brick oven crust.

Abi says: What does brick oven crust mean? Does it mean ‘in the style of a brick oven crust’? Does it mean ‘Partially cooked in a brick oven so that you can later finish cooking it in your home?” Does it mean “The words ‘brick oven’ sound cool and remind us of the Rick James song ‘Brick House’ so we use the phrase with the hope that you’ll get it stuck in your head every time you think of pizza.”

I’m going with the middle idea, which equates ‘Brick House Oven’ pizza to ‘chocolatey’ coating on Baby Ruth candy bars. It simply is in the style of chocolate, but it not chocolate itself.

This item is in the style of pizza. It has crust and sauce and cheese and toppings (maybe on the toppings), but it is not something I would actually call pizza. No, this item from Eating Right is an approximation of pizza.

First, the brick oven crust offered no hint of flavor. It was just a bread base made to hold the toppings. And the toppings? They’re awful. The picture on the box shows a moderate-to-skimpy amount of cheese, some herbs and an estimated 17 pieces of diced chicken. Reality reveals a different story: lots of cheese, tons of what I assume are herbs, 9 pieces of chicken and one cube of a completely unidentifiable substance that was probably a chunk of chicken fat.

Considering how generally accepting I am of mediocre microwavable pizzas (evidence: Stouffer’s Corner Bistro Steak Fajita Flatbread, which I should have detested and Lean Cuisine Roasted Garlic Chicken Pizza, which is multiple degrees better than this lame imitation), this pizza combined with the time of day and conditions in which I ate it (2pm lunch after having no breakfast and just 15 minutes to eat before yet another meeting) should have made it instantly accepted.

Instead I ate a third of the pizza and tossed the rest, resolving to get to 4pm with only the assistance of a Diet Coke and a granola bar. Yes, that’s all I ate until 4pm: a freaking granola bar. Okay, and a third of this pizza, which is a grand total of 110 calories.

I really wish that I could describe the taste of this pizza for you, but the problem is that it was so bland that there was only one flavor: light garlic. Now, if Eating Right has somehow managed a new method for imparting a light garlic flavor to foods, they should get on the horn with Kashi and help them rescue their Garlic Chicken Pizza. The garlic was so much in the ‘hint’ category that I didn’t worry about heading into 2 hours of meetings after such a lunch.

On the other hand, this pizza also included chicken, imaginary onions, herbs, cheese and crust and I can’t tell you a single memorable thing about any of them.

Price: $2.32
Serving: 8 oz
Calories: 180
Fat: 5% 3.5g
Cholesterol: 11%, 35mg
Sodium: 23%, 540mg
Protein: 18g
Carbohydrates: 7%, 20g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Points

Lean Cuisine says: Chicken breast and creamy herb sauce, roasted potatoes and vegetables

Becky says: I love me some chicken and ‘taters. I live in Idaho – I think that’s a prerequisite to live here. Now, I won’t mention that ‘chicken and potatoes’ really means ‘fried chicken and potato wedges. Uh, wait . . . okay, well, I won’t mention the mounds of sour cream that I dip my potatoes into. Er, so I’m feeling honest today! Yes, I need to eat healthier. I do pretty good during the day, but the minute I walk in my front door, any attempt at healthy goes out the window, all thanks to my chef husband who flips his lid anytime ANYTHING ‘low fat’ occupies space in the kitchen. They do say opposites attract.

When I picked this meal up, I had mixed feelings. It looked promising, but with less than 200 calories, how long would it be before I’m raiding the bottom of my purse for change so I could make a selection from the vending machine? I’m up for the challenge!

UGH – this is yet another one of those meals where they torture you with cooking at 50% power. Luckily, I have that cooking method down to a fine art. 10 minutes later, I peeled back the plastic and was disappointed. It looks PUNY. But, using the ‘don’t knock it until you try it’ school of thought, I dug in.

WOW. Don’t judge this book by its cover! The sauce (which contains mushrooms) in this dish is fantastic. There’s enough to stir into the potato/veggie (which consisted of broccoli and a few red pepper pieces) mixture, as well. Only mildly salty, this sauce packs a lot of taste, and for that I was grateful. The chicken was tender, although tough to cut (yes, I did break a tine on my standard-issue plastic fork before I went in search of a knife), was moist and tender. All in all, this was a great dish, much better than I expected – I just wish there had been more substance to it!

Update – Okay, so it’s 2½ hours later, and I’m hungry again. Not a good sign, especially considering the fact that it’s going to be 5 hours until dinner. I have a feeling that I’m going to succumb to the power of Cheetos. Remind me to get some healthy snacks to bring to work!

Price: $5.00 on sale (usually $7.00)
Serving: 1/3 package, 7oz.
Servings per package 3
Calories per serving: 320
Fat: 19%, 13g
Cholesterol: 22%, 65mg
Sodium: 59%, 1410mg
Protein: 24g
Carbohydrates: 9%, 26g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 7g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points per serving
Reality Points: 11 (for 1/2 the package)

Chli’s says: Two grilled chicken breasts with rib meat in barbecue sauce with smoked bacon and cheese. Includes garlic mashed potatoes.

Abi says: The Chili’s food collection is a series of products that meld restaurants and homes, capturing the least delicious parts of each environment.

We start with the main dish, the Chicken in the Chicken Monterey. This meal of 3 servings contains 2 chicken breasts (great math there, Chili’s). Each breast is the size of my hand if you cut off my fingers at the knuckle and both are sealed in a heavy-duty plastic bag along with about a cup of barbecue sauce.

The first cooking round involves venting the chicken pouch and microwaving on 1/2 power for 3-4 minutes. Or until hot. After that microwaving session, the preparer opens the pouch and dumps everything into the provided tray. This sounds easy, but really involves significant dexterity in handling a vented (read: has holes in it) package of super-hot liquid and meat. Into the tray the chicken breasts go, with a bit of time for spooning sauce over them and about 30 seconds for opening and sprinkling the cheese and bacon bits. Mmmm, cheese.

Zap they newly exposed breasts (okay, now covered with cheese and bacon) for 1 minute at 50% power (Ugh, again with the 50% power) and then set aside while you ‘cook’ the mashed potatoes.

At this point, the instructions take a turn for the worse, telling me about microwaving times and powers before saying ‘Oh yeah, remember to vent this or potatoes will explode all over your microwave.’ Fortunately, I read ahead.

Unfortunately, at some point one must take the vented potato pouch out of the microwave and get the potatoes from plastic to plate. This involves cutting open the pouch (not hard) and squeezing out the appropriate amount of piping hot potato glue onto each plate (potentially blister-inducing).

And then there’s the actual meal consumption.

The sickly-sweet barbecue sauce is thin and runny, with the consistency of hot maple syrup, but no flavor depth. The chicken breasts are edible, but not delicious or even ‘good’. There’s a reason why microwave meals rarely include whole breasts of chicken: microwaves abhor density. Things in chunk form are ideal for microwave heating, things thing size of my hand are not. Keep that in mind the next time you think about heating up a body part. The resulting chicken is something that the Cylons would make thinking that it could imitate the best of the human experience (which would be barbecue).

The included cheese and bacon bits seem like a good idea, but the cheese quickly hardens into a bland, greasy carapace. This is one of the great weaknesses of microwaved cheddar and the reason why I show no shame in using Velveeta and Ro-tel to make dip.

The potatoes are a gluey, gooey replication of good mashed potatoes. The problem is that they’re overwhipped, turning them into a vat of tightly strung starch molecules. And you know what you make with starch? Piñatas, that’s what.

I do not eat piñatas.

Price: $2.50
Serving: 1 package, 9oz.
Servings per box: 1
Calories: 310
Fat: 13%, 8g
Cholesterol: 13%, 40mg
Sodium: 20%, 490mg
Protein: 22g
Carbohydrates: 12%, 37g
Fiber: 7%, 2g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Eating Right says: Roasted tender white meat chicken and penne pasta in a flavorful poblano sauce.

Abi says: I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely feeling the effects of rising food prices. When I first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area I was stunned to see Lean Cuisine selling for nearly $5.00 a box when not on sale. That’s right, $4.89 for a Lean Cuisine - and not those dinner sized ones, these were the tiny ones. Fortunately, I can stick to shopping just the sales. But even the sales have been somewhat lackluster lately. Is $3.50 supposed to be a Red Hot Summer Deal? Seriously? (Weirdly, I just realized that Lean Cuisines generally cost the same as a gallon of gas. How strange is that?)

With Lean Cuisine at the ’sale’ price of $3.50, I’ve had to turn elsewhere for my frozen food explorations: Eating Right. Also, the only place in my town open after 10pm is the Safeway. The 24 hour Safeway. It is as though they knew I was moving to the West Coast and decided to build the type of grocery store I’ve been missing since I left Seattle 6 years ago. They also knew that I’d prize frozen meals priced at just $2.50.

This Eating Right concoction made me realize that penne is the most awesome frozen pasta variation. Be it the Trader Joe’s Penne Pepperonata or the Kashi Penne, the pasta stands up well to the freeze/thaw process, adheres nicely to sauces and is stabbable. Pasta stabbability is very important.

The other thing that is important is good sauce. And while we might want something like CityMama’s Carbonara for lunch, who brings raw eggs to the office? Not me. Instead, I pull out of the freezer a tray of noodles barely covered in cheese sauce. Hmmmf. I know this is diet food and all, but ‘Eating Right’ isn’t the same as ‘Eating Air’. Even with a skimpy bit of sauce and a tiny bit of chicken in each bite I only had enough toppings for 2/3 of the pasta. The rest of the pasta I had to eat plain. Yes, I mixed everything together from the beginning and still my sauce needs were not met.

The flavor of the smidgen of sauce was rather nice: creamy and savory without being overly spicy. The bits of poblano peppers were apparent, but didn’t dominate the dish. This will make you heat wimps happy but serve to alienate just about anyone who like flavor.The bits of chicken had less volume than the fingers on my left hand and will provide only 1/5th of the protein I need for the day. Ouch.

If this meal had twice as much going on in the chicken & sauce department and included a vegetable, then it would probably earn close to 5 stars. As it stands I can only say that I’d eat it as a free option if I had neither a frozen meal nor money at lunch and a coworker was being nice, but I’ll certainly not buy Eating Right’s Chicken Poblano again.