Price: $2.00 (on sale 5 for $10 at Shoprite)
Serving:1 pocket, 4 oz
Calories: 240 per serving
Fat: 10%, 7 g
Cholesterol: 5%, 15mg
Sodium: 23% 560mg
Protein: 12g
Carbohydrates: 11%, 33 g
Fiber: 17%, 4 g
Sugar: 6 g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Lean Pockets says:Ham With Turkey Added & Low Fat Cheese With Sauce In A Crust

Karen says: Your review: Why are you so sneaky and deceitful Lean Pockets? In giant letters you say you are just ham and cheese, then the fine print reveals that you are made of turkey with sauce too!

What is this mysterious sauce? I taste a blandish Velveta cousin with the essence of cured meat in a yes flakey, but not so terribly crispy crust. I guess the title should really be Turkham and Bionic Cheese Sauce. Being that the main cheese ingredient is mozzarella cheese, I’m a little confused by it’s bright orange resemblance to yellow American cheese. Oh Nestle, why must you confuse me so? I can’t say the ol’ pocket is terrible, but it’s not winning any frozen food award either. These two per package puppies weigh in at 4 oz each, and I don’t know about you folks, but 1/4 of a pound does not constitute meal to me. This is more of a midday snack.

This ‘Ham’ and Low Fat Cheese pocket earns one star for its nifty little hand held size, and another for that essence of cured meat flavor. Who doesn’t love cured meat? Everyone! Well, except vegetarians, vegans and raw foodists.

Price: $2.40 regular price; on sale for $2.00 at King Sooper’s (Kroger)
Serving: I sandwich; 4oz.
Calories: 240 per serving
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 24%, 580mg
Protein: 16g
Carbohydrates: 9%, 28g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Smart Ones says: With Egg Whites, Cheese, Turkey Bacon and Vegetables

Liza says: Boy, that Gratuitous Caps disease is spreading like wildfire, isn’t it? I’m going to start knocking off a point every time the box blurb capitalizes the first letter in everything, just to be a snooty-snoot. I swear to God, it’s only a matter of time before products start incorporating text-message abbreviations and LOL-speak: “OMFG! DIS A RILLY GUD SANWCH!1! U SHUD BY IT KTHXBAI!”

Nah, I’m going to leave my rating at a three, which for me means “I would not go out of my way to eat this again, nor would I go out of my way to avoid eating this again. It was what it said it was–nothing more; possibly a wee bit less. It was, in short, oh-kay.”

So moving right along to the product, let me first say that this item is a pocket sandwich of sorts; the filling is completely enclosed by a crust, which strives to be more of a pastry-type crust and is lighter in texture than your typical Hot Pocket. The crisping sleeve actually seemed to have some effect on this product and resulted in a relatively flaky crust. Enough so, that should you choose to eat this little breakfast bundle on your way to work, you might want to check yourself for errant flecks of crust before making your grand entrance to that morning meeting.

Unlike the Lean Pockets breakfast sandwiches–which I’ll be getting to at some point in the not-too-distant-future– the Smart Ones Stuffed Breakfast Sandwich purports to have vegetables in addition to eggs and bacon. I was able to immediately discern bits of both green and red peppers in the mix, giving the filling a vaguely jaunty Denver Omelet-ish flavor. The egg whites and chopped turkey bacon were not voluminous enough to warrant the title of “stuffed” for this sandwich, though. It was more like a “Eh…Mostly Filled Breakfast Sandwich”, if you ask me.

Honestly, all they need to do is add another few tablespoons of filling OR stop calling it “Stuffed”. In the meantime, if I were choosing a frozen breakfast product, I’d probably stick with their English muffin sandwich for now. Still–the eggs, turkey bacon and cheese all tasted real enough, and not chemically or lethally salty. Let’s put it this way: if you can’t face another bowl of Kashi in the morning, or if you’ve have had it up to here with fat-free yogurt and granola, this would be a quick, hot, savory alternative. It may be nothing to write home about, but add a little hot sauce and it’s really pretty oh-kay.

Price: $1.99 (on sale)
Serving: 1 tray, 10.0 oz.
Calories: 290 per serving
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 9%, 25mg
Sodium: 36%, 870mg
Protein: 17g
Carbohydrates: 14%, 42g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 5g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 points

Smart Ones says: Savory slices of all-white meat turkey, drizzled with gravy and served over herb stuffing, with buttery grean beans, carrots and potatoes.

Tara says: First off, I think it is important to note that the name of this meal is misleading. The turkey is not “stuffed” with anything, it is merely resting atop some stuffing. Just because there is some stuffing in the mix does not mean you can get away with calling this meal “Stuffed Turkey Breast”. I think “Weird Fused-together Turkey Parts Resting on Soggy Stuffing” would have been a better name. Second, Smart Ones describes this as one of its “Bistro Selections”. This did not remind me of any bistro that I have ever been to. They could have gotten away with categorizing this meal as “home-style favorites” perhaps, or maybe even “riddled with enough salt to bloat you for days”, but not Bistro Selections.

Upon inspecting my meal after heating (which was, as always with Smart Ones, a simple process), I noticed two things. First, there were a lot of veggies. This is good. Second, the turkey was strangely shaped into perfect little meat pancakes. Really thin, anemic looking pancakes, but much more pancake-like than turkey-slice like.

I started off my meal by tasting the potato/veggie medley. The potatoes were dry, much like most frozen red potatoes turn out to be. They were much tastier when dipped into the gravy, but I’ll come back to that later. The green beans and carrots were actually quite delicious, and the green beans felt more like I was eating fresh-cooked green beans than anything that was frozen/canned. The veggies were also a bit shiny, so I would conclude that they were indeed buttery as described on the package.

Next, I moved on to the stuffing (I was trying to avoid the turkey pancakes for as long as possible). I lifted up the turkey slices and saw, to my disappointment, that there was only gravy on the very outer edges of the stuffing. Anything that was covered up by the meat was shielded by the gravy that had once rained down upon this dish. The stuffing on the outer edges of the stuffing pile was crispy, while the stuffing in the center of the pile was much soggier. I liked the crunchy parts because the texture was better, and I’m sure the added gravy helped as well. In general, the flavor was decent, similar to any pre-packaged stuffing you might encounter (ex: StoveTop), but it was very salty. The picture on the box shows large pieces of celery mixed in with the stuffing, but I found a hefty portion of zero pieces included with my meal. The inclusion of celery chunks or even some onion would vastly improve this stuffing. The crispness of either vegetable would have countered the sogginess, making for a much more pleasurable experience.

The gravy that I skipped over a ways back is brown, a feature (to my disappointment) due to our good friend caramel color. The gravy was thick and tasted pleasantly meaty, probably because of the inclusion of “chicken fat” which made an appearance 3 times on the ingredients list. As stated previously, there was not enough gravy to go around, but my arteries are thanking Smart Ones for skimping on it.

After trying every other item on the try, I finally got around to the turkey. I made a mistake of lifting up one thin, flappy slice to come eye to eye with a horrible beast. The top slice was masked by the brown gravy, but the bottom slice was pure white and had weird swirl marks in it, which I believe started to spin in an attempt to hypnotize me into thinking that a human should eat this crap. I used my plastic fork & knife to cut a small piece of the turkey. Fortunately for me, it tasted like gravy. The texture is a bit bouncy, but after a few seconds my teeth were able to break the surface of the meat-cake. It could have been worse, I guess. I continued to mask the pale white processed flesh with some caramel coloring and stuffed my face because I was really, really hungry. And even now, I am still hungry, and am thinking about getting something out of the vending machine.

So much for eating something “low calorie” for lunch.

Price: $2.00 CAD on sale
Serving: 1 tray, 248 g
Calories: 250
Fat: 14%, 9 g
Cholesterol: 20 mg
Sodium: 38%, 920 mg
Protein: 12 g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 31 g
Fiber: 8%, 2 g
Sugar: 2 g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Stouffer’s says: This Stouffer’s entree is made with oven-roasted turkey and real mashed potatoes and contains no artificial colours.

Katie L. says: “Croutons,” I remarked out loud the moment I pulled off the film on the tray of Stouffer’s Turkey & Stuffing dinner. What I mistook for croutons was actually stuffing, surrounded by gelatinous unidentifiable brown sludge with a side of mashed potatoes that actually, did in fact, look like mashed potatoes.

But let me back up a moment. I missed Canadian Thanksgiving this year in mid-October because I was traveling and no, I do not understand why we have different Thanksgiving dates. Pretty sure it has something to do with the harvest, but it could be because we’re weird.

I digress. I was in the grocery store the other day, lurking about looking for something to crush my hankering for turkey, stuffing and some potatoes and picked up this dinner. I had high hopes.

I stabbed my plastic film on the tray a few times with a fork, popped it in and 5 minutes later checked. Still a bit cold, so in it went for another minute, and then I had to let it sit for two minutes. By that time I was ready to start gnawing off my own arm, was increasingly grouchy and though to myself “this had better be amazing.”

Too bad it wasn’t. The mashed potatoes has developed some strange sort of skin over-top of them and had been sprinkled with paprika. The texture was gummy and gross but the flavour wasn’t bad. The turkey side of the tray held better results. The turkey, cooked in the gravy, was actually really tender and the sauce was pretty tasty. But I kept eating strange brown sludge things that I knew were neither turkey nor gravy and it started to scare me a bit.

The croutons, ahem, stuffing, actually was the best part. The part that was under the gravy was kinda gross, all gloopy and such but the stuffing that hadn’t been touched by gravy tasted exactly like… well… croutons. And I love croutons. The crunch was a nice contrast to the rest of the meal, which bordered more on the sloppy, soggy side. Yay croutons!

There were no veggies either, which I thought was poor form. But it filled me up better than a lot of meals and despite some questionable textures, the flavours in this meal were all pretty darn good. This was no earth-shattering turkey dinner but it did curb my hankering (for about 20 minutes, mind you) and is good in a pinch.

That being said, I would only buy it on sale.

[Even though this is a product of the United States, it is sold it Canada (as evidenced by the bilingual packaging and the review by Katie L., the Canadian Katie at Heat Eat Review. Also, she spells if 'flavours'. The most similar (but not identical) product on the US side of the border is Stouffer's Roast Turkey. The Stouffer's Roast Turkey Breast is a different beast featuring cornbread stuffing. - Editrix]