Price: $2.04 at Target
Serving: 1 Meal, 7.6oz.
Calories: 390
Fat: 17%, 11g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 19%, 460mg
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 19%, 57g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
Sugar: 16g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Kid Cuisine says: Just when you thought it was safe to finish the fish sticks -da dum, da dum - along come our fruit Gummy Shark Snacks. A whale of a meal!

Abi says: This meal wasn’t so much a lunch as an act of vengeance. If you’ve been doing some sinning lately (Fat Tuesday festivities and poor voting choices on Super Tuesday both come to mind), you could always choose this meal as part of a Friday Lenten penance. It must be worth at least 40 Hail Marys.

I am fortunate in knowing that this is probably the worst video I’ll ever make and the worst item I’ve ever consumed: it can only get better from here. Please leave comments below for future video subjects and suggestions for improvement.

Thanks,
Abi Jones

Price: $2.50 (on sale)
Serving: 1 tray, 12oz.
Calories: 450
Fat: 26%, 16g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 49%, 1,170mg
Protein: 22g
Carbs: 18%, 53g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 10 Points

Marie Callender says: At Marie Callender’s, our fish fillet is lightly dipped in a golden batter and served with seasoned rice and tender broccoli in a creamy cheese sauce

Andrew says: I'm not much for fish.

When I was a kid in rural Indiana, fishsticks were among the most vile foodstuffs I could imagine, and the McDonald's Filet-o-Fish was like a steaming patty of briny fish poo. This was how I saw most seafood for several years.

But I occasionally dip my toe in the sea and try some fish or some shrimp or clams or whatever else lives in water, just to see if my tastes have evolved. And lo and behold, they are starting to! Tilapia, for instance: I love it! And salmon! And calamari, when done right, is actually pretty tasty! A whole new world of culinary delight was beckoning to me!

But then I went and tried this Marie Callender meal. I should have known: Frozen fish product, particularly in a TV-dinner-type setting, is hardly ever representative of how fish ought to taste. And this meal is no different. We'll start with the non-fish parts, though.

The rice somehow ended up very dry, and despite the so-called "seasoning" on it, there's not much flavor to speak of, save for what it picked up from the fish product laying nearby. It's certainly not one of the better rice performances I've had in frozen fare. And the broccoli and cheese comes up short of even frozen-food expectations as well, with cheese sauce that's somehow lumpy and watery all at once, and doesn't even pack half the cheddary tang of cheese sauces in Smart Ones meals. The broccoli itself ended up rather limp and mushy, but retained a decent flavor. I never know if texture failures are on me for under- or overheating, or if they're systemic and indicative of a failure on the part of one Marie Callender. I guess I'll probably never know (like I'm ever going to buy this again).

Now back to the fish: It may be the saving grace in this sorry meal. It's not the worst frozen fish I've seen, and it keeps a somewhat "fresh" fish flavor that doesn't make me feel like I'm licking the barnacles off a schooner. I've always preferred the crispy, flaky beer-style batter to the crunchy, crumby style batter of, say, fishsticks, even though on this piece of fish, the batter was a bit soggy in spots. Who am I kidding, it was a bit soggy all over, and I'm gonna blame the microwave for that one.

But even if you heated this meal in the ol' convection oven, I doubt your taste buds could extract much joy. I can't imagine either fish-lovers or fish-haters taking pleasure this soggy, bland meal. I guess that means pretty much everyone ought to hate it.

Price: $3.29
Serving: 1 Package, 10 oz.
Calories: 240
Fat: 7%, 4.5g
Cholesterol: 18%, 55mg
Sodium: 25%, 600mg
Protein: 15g
Carbs: 12%, 35g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
WW Points: 5

Lean Cuisine says: Shrimp and angel hair pasta in a creamy seafood sauce with accents of sherry, tossed with red peppers.

Amanda says: No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO. Do not buy this meal. If it is currently in your freezer waiting to appease your next shrimp craving: THROW IT OUT. If you cannot return it to the grocery store you unfortunately bought it from and can’t stand the thought of throwing your hard earned income into the waste basket, GET OVER IT. Do not heat and serve to any unsuspecting pets. Their magical sixth sense will inform them of the trauma you are trying to inflict upon them and they will in turn become rabid and attack you viciously. And rightfully so! This meal is AWFUL.

I removed the package from the cardboard and began poking fork holes into the overwrap to vent as instructed. I then inserted the meal into the microwave for 3 minutes and 35 seconds. Lean Cuisine gave me a choice of cooking time; anywhere from 2-4 minutes. This made me nervous. Shouldn’t they know how long to cook this meal? 2-4 minutes? We have to guess? So after the 3 minute and 35 second mark, I removed the dish from the microwave, ripped off the overwrap and then stared down dissapointedly at 5 slimy, silver shrimp. SLIMY. SILVER. SHRIMP. They weren’t cooked at all! So I decided to nuke them a little longer. 2 minutes longer for a total cooking time of 5 minutes and 35 seconds.

The shrimp curled themselves and turned pink. The sauce bubbled and thickened slighty; an orange tinted variety with sticks of carrots and red pepper slivers. The noodles were thin and seemed plentiful. It didn’t look THAT BAD. So, for you review readers, I took a bite of the pasta. And I’m telling you- I wish I hadn’t. It was really, really bad. Take the scent of old, rubbery shrimp and turn that into a flavor. Then turn that flavor into the very essence of a strange sauce. Pretend to accent the strange sauce with sherry but really just add more atrocious shrimp stink. Then throw in actual old, rubbery shrimp and VOILÁ! you’ve got the worst Lean Cuisine meal I have ever had. I took one more bite of the pasta and I actually ate one of the shrimp just to see if I was being overly critical. I was not. And this is out of the mouth of a woman who unabashedly removes mold from the edges of her sharp cheddar cheese blocks and keeps on keepin’ on.

I slid the “meal” back into it’s cardboard box and tossed it into the trash. I then promptly phoned my boyfriend and asked him to please, please, PLEASE bring me something edible to eat and quickly; anything to get the taste of old shrimp boat captain’s galoshes out of my sad, sorry mouth.

SRP: $3.19
Serving: 1 meal, 9 oz.
Calories: 420
Fat: 28%, 18g
Cholesterol: 18%, 55mg
Sodium: 43%, 1030mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 15%, 45g
Fiber: 8%, 2g

Stouffer’s says: Breaded Alaskan Pollock filet annd macaroni and cheese

Nicole says: After another offering from Stouffer’s “Classic Meals” line, I’m wondering where my parents went wrong. They never, ever served fish with macaroni and cheese. Frozen fish sticks were usually accompanied by a frozen veggie. Maybe some cream corn (cream corn rocks!) I can’t recall off the top of my head what they served with fresh fish, but I know it wasn’t mac and cheese. All these years, I’ve been missing out on this classic pairing.

So my Alaskan Pollock turned into a fried blow fish while nuking. I sort of freaked, didn’t want fish innards exploding all over the work microwave (and I didn’t want to buy another lunch,) so I removed the meal a minute before I was instructed on the second half of cooking (3 minutes, stir mac, 2-3 more minutes.) Bad move, it was not yet HOT in the middle, just warm. Re-cooked for 45 seconds, all the while fearing the worst for my puffy fish. It ended alright - no explosions of hot-air filled fried skin.

And the taste? Not bad at all. Ya know, for frozen fish heated in a microwave. I’d go so far as to say it cooks up just about as well as it would in the oven. The top and sides of the breading are actually crisp, though the bottom has suffered the standard fate of nuked breading. I wish I had some ketchup. Or tartar sauce. I thought I hated tartar sauce when I was young, but I really simply refused to try it. So I’ve only discovered in my mid-twenties that it’s yummy with fried fish. But this is still A-OK without. The size of the filet is quite generous considering this is only a nine ounce meal - it is approximately the size my fist, just flattened out just a bit.

Now to the mac and cheese, the real reason for this purchase (I wouldn’t buy the fried fish if it were with peas, or green beans, or mashed potatoes). It is cheesy and it bubbled and crusted just the tiniest bit around the edges - I LOVE that. The meal didn’t involve any actual burning, but portions were a bit harder than they “should” be. The noodles are mushy, but the noodle to sauce ratio probably perfect - this is not a cheese lake with a school of soft noodles swimming about, nor a pile of noodles with a bit of cheese melted over them.

I had very low expectations for this meal, but am so pleasantly surprised that it is tasty and satisfying. Nutritionally, the sodium content is a bit high, but otherwise it’s a low dose of fat, calories and carbs for the tasty fried fish and mac side. The extra half-star is for crispiness.

Welcome to the dance, Cinderella.