Price: $3.00 on sale
Serving: 1 creation, 7.1oz.
Calories: 450
Fat: 26%, 17g
Cholesterol: 18%, 55mg
Sodium: 45%, 1090mg
Protein: 25g
Carbs: 17%, 50g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 13g
Weight Watchers Points: 10 Points

Oscar Mayer says: Oscar Mayer shaved mesquite smoked turkey breast, Kraft monterey jack cheese with jalapeno peppers, Kraft southwestern style ranch dressing, Kraft garden salsa on a country white sub roll.

Abi says: When I saw these on sale at my local Safeway I turned to the guy next to me, who happened to be a stranger, and said ‘Oh man, these things are awful.’ And then I bought two, because my mission is to confuse people at the grocery store.

So, what does cheap (but in reality, really freaking expensive for some bread and meat) get you? It starts with a super-soft roll. If you are at all familiar with Wonder Bread, you know what you’re getting here. Next, you get to top the bread yourself, getting meat juice and dressing and such all over your hands.

I have to admit that I was pleased with the amount of turkey included in this sandwich. It most closely resembled a packed of the Louis Buddig ultra-thin turkey. I love that stuff. For those of you not familiar with Louis Buddig or Land-o-Frost products, just imagine meat paper.

There was enough meat that I was able too eat a few of the slices while assembling the sandwich and still have enough to make a presentable hoagie. Next I topped it with the perfectly shaped sliced of jalapeno jack. Before topping the cheese and meat layers with the other half of the bun I did two things:

1. Decided that Kraft garden salsa resembles nothing more than tomato sauce and tossed it (sorry to those of you who wanted to know how it tastes).
2. Spread Southwestern style ranch on the bread and then realized that warm ranch dressing sounds like pretty much the grossest thing ever.

Unable to reverse my Ranch Dressing Decision, I put the sandwich in the microwave, heated if for a minute (melty cheese!) and dug in.

First impression: Goo.

When you heat ultra-processed lunchmeat, white bread, cheese and flavored ranch it all turns into a mass of gunk. Without any lettuce, sprouts, tomato, cucumbers or onion, this sandwich featured nothing crisp, nothing that indicated ‘Hey, you’re not just eating hot meat. This is a meal!’ Ugh. Separately I enjoyed the building blocks for this sandwich, but once they were put together and microwaved I found myself eating the sandwich as fast as possible just so that I wouldn’t have to deal with having it in my mouth anymore (I was hungry and running late to catch a train).

I sincerely enjoy eating hot turkey sandwiches made from freshly carved meat. I do not enjoy heated up sliced lunch meat. I also do not like paying to put together a sandwich. Sadly, there’s still another one of these in the fridge. I’m going to eat it cold or make it for George and pretend that I picked it up from the Safeway deli counter and see what he thinks.

Price: $3.50
Serving: 1/4 pizza, 5.44oz.
Calories: 410
Fat: 31%, 20g
Cholesterol: 13%, 40mg
Sodium: 47%, 1120mg
Protein: 19g
Carbohydrates: 13%, 38g
Fiber: 10%, 3g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 9 Points

Freschetta says: Inspired by traditional family recipes handed down for generations, Freschetta Brick Oven has a classic square shape, a crispy fire-baked crust and is topped with only the finest ingredients.

Abi says: My unending love affair with Freschetta pizza concluded with my consumption of this item. It is 8am the next morning and I can still taste the disappointment.

I looked forward to this pizza. It was on sale at Safeway (I bought it while filming unused shopping card footage for the Kid Cuisine video review), so I purchased this meal with the abandon I usually reserve for known products. When I finally pulled it out for a dinner, I realized that the baking time was considerably shorter than most pizzas. This needed a bake time of just 12 minutes. Score one for the new pizza.

When I pulled the amazingly baked after just 12 minutes pizza from the oven, I placed it on a cutting board and realized the genius of the brick oven pizza.

1. It is a square item in a square box. This means that while the pizza is thinner than other pizzas, it actually fills the box that it comes in.
2. Cutting a square pizza into reasonable slices is easy. Seriously, this is genius. Cutting pizza is a total pain unless you have one of those special cutter guides that they use at Costco (and they do not wash them in between uses - ew). Or, you might be a pizza-cutting pro like the folks who work at Abby’s Pizza, a place my parents used to tell me was named after me - don’t ever do that to your kids, it will totally make them think that they own a pizza parlor.
3. If your oven bakes unevenly (mine does not, the oven is the best-working thing in this apartment) this pizza will be easy to rotate.

With little difficulty, I cut the pizza into eight somewhat even slices, plated up three and took the pizza downstairs to watch the news during dinner. Each of my slices was a lovely amalgam of bright red sauce, melted cheese and pepperoni. I took a bite as was greeted by an uncomfortable burning sensation. I figured that while the crust of the pizza had cooled, perhaps the sauce was piping hot and that’s what did me in.

So I sat back for a minute to let me pizza cool. While watching the news I realized that every commercial was for products that I hope I will never need:

1. Lotion marketed to women with menopause-caused dry skin
2. Cold medicine for people with high blood pressure
3. Fiber Supplements
4. Impotence Drugs

Television news is for old people. And people who eat this pizza and end up with high blood pressure because it is so amazingly salty. You see, the sauce wasn’t hot. The pizza was so freaking salty that it burned my mouth. I like spicy, salty, mouth-burning, vindalooesque foods, so this pizza confused the bejeezus out of me. I couldn’t handle the salt? Could that be true? This pizza was so salty that I couldn’t even taste the sauce or cheese or the I-don’t-want-to-know-what-it-is meatiness of the pepperoni.

I sincerely appreciate the Schwann corporation and their dedication to making Freschetta pizza, but I wonder if I got a bum pie. A salty bum pie. Time for another glass of water.

Price: $3.19
Serving: 1/9th pan, 1.55oz.
Servings Per Package: 9
Calories: 170
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 15%, 45mg
Sodium: 2%, 55mg
Protein: 2g
Carbs: 9%, 26g
Fiber: 6%, 1g
Weight Watchers Points: 4 per serving

Trader Joe’s says: Why gather all the ingredients and dirty a bowl when Trader Joe’s “Ready to Bake” Brownies are so unbelievably easy and so consistently delicious? Simply unwrap the oven-proof tray of batter in this box and bake in a preheated oven. Whether you prefer your brownies gooey in the center or baked until almost dry, these brownies will satisfy.

Abi says: Considering how much adore Trader Joe’s Chocolate Croissants and pre-made Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, you’d think I’d be all over their ready-to-bake brownies. They even have an additional advantage over the croissants and cookies in that they come with their own baking tray. However, this dessert fills me with a disappointment tempered with confusion.

The ingredients list looks pretty standard (Sugar, flour, butter, eggs, cocoa and vanilla - simple!), so the best I can figure is that unlike cookies, brownies don’t bake well from a frozen state. This is sad because brownies are nature’s foolproof dessert: they’re easy to mix by hand, simple to bake and test for doneness, loved by mankind. Yet, these brownies from Trader Joe’s went uneaten in my house. Sure, we each sampled a square. Then they just sat on the counter for the next couple hours, mocking me with their lack of deliciousness.

At the end of the night I noticed that even George had avoided the pan of brownies. Usually he manages to eat an entire row in the course of a couple of hours, but these baked goods bads went untouched.

I hope that their spot in the Trader Joe’s freezer is soon filled with another, more palatable item.

Serving Size: 1 pizza, 7.18oz.
Calories: 440
Total Fat: 28%, 18g
Saturated Fat: 30%, 6g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 33%, 780mg
Total Carbs: 18%, 54g
Dietary Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugars: 5g
Protein: 19g
Weight Watchers Points: 10 Points

Amy’s Kitchen says: Even if you don’t ordinarily eat spinach, you’ll like this pizza. The light, tender crust made from organic wheat flour and extra virgin olive oil is first topped with our savory italian sauce made from organic tomatoes. Then we add organic spinach blended with feta and sprinkle mozzarella on top. Delicious and satisfying.

Nicole says: It’s rare that I review two meals in a day. Rarer still that I eat organic, vegetarian fare. But see, I’m hungry, and just about all the meals in the fridge are too-be-reviewed. And I like spinach. I’m just not in the mood for Pineapple Black Bean Chicken. And not just because it comes with raisins.

Amy’s pizza has “No GMOs”, or biologically engineered ingredients.

The preparation of Amy’s pizza is onerous and does not allow for the use of a microwave, so you’d better have a conventional or toaster oven. Preheat your toaster oven - okay!… remove the pizza from it’s outer wrapping - this doesn’t look too bad… and let it thaw on the counter for 15-20 minutes. Are you kidding me? I suppose if you love this thing, you’d know about the thaw time, and would plan ahead for your hunger. But being an Amy’s pizza newbie, I was disappointed, and my tummy was growling. I waited, and waited… 15 minutes. Toaster oven bake time is seven to nine minutes - my cheese browned just a bit after 7.5 minutes in - but the meal was cold again fifteen minutes later.

I should probably mention that this pizza was a tad bit freezer burnt out of the work freezer - it’s been in there at least five months [It has been there for at least 10 months - Ed]. This may have affected the quality. But that happens to all of us - you keep pushing back the toaster oven meals in favor of microwave meals so you don’t need to get your security key and enter the other side of your office and wait in a strange, small kitchen for seven to nine minutes rather than returning to your desk to work.

Amy’s pizza crust looks quite lovely, but you can see an awful lot of it - the cheese on this pizza is a hair skimpy. It did crisp up well on the edges, but was a bit soggy towards the middle of the pizza. Back to the cheese, there are two kinds - feta mixed into the spinach and mozzarella to cover. I love feta, but I couldn’t taste it at all. The spinach is about the only flavor you really get out of this pizza. When I hit a tomato, it was juicy and had great texture but it tasted of spinach. This pie is lacking a complexity of flavors that we’ve come to expect from . . . pizza with more than one topping. The spinach, feta, and tomato were concentrated in certain areas, and I liked those bites, but other bites were flat-out bland.

I’m still hungry. It’s just a hungry day. But my stomach stopped growling at me, so I suppose I’m full. I would recommend a side or snack if you wish to make a meal out of this 7.2 ounce pizza. Although it’s like the healthy, vegetarian equivalent of a Celeste pizza. Still, I wouldn’t push this one on anybody unless they had a strong spinach craving.