Price: $2.25
Serving: 10.5 oz.
Calories: 300
Fat: 18%, 12g
Cholesterol: 17%, 50mg
Sodium: 32%, 760mg
Protein: 25g
Carbohydrates: 9%, 27g
Fiber: 32%, 8g
Sugar: 6g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Smart Ones says: Breast strips with rib meat and penne in a creamy red pepper sauce with broccoli.

Sarah says: In comparison to my review of Smart Ones Roast Beef, where I was pleasantly surprised by a meal that I expected not to love, this meal was a sharp turn for the worse. I think that my expectations were simply way too high - this is yet another case of a horribly misleading and delicious-looking cover gone wrong. Everything about this little frozen meal called out to me. Whole grain wheat pasta? Check! Broccoli, my favorite frozen vegetable? Check! Some sort of sauce that’s sorta-creamy-and-sorta-spicy? CHECK! In addition to all of that, South Beach is apparently not eco-friendly, as their meal comes in a box that takes up approximately double the space that my Smart Ones takes, even though the meal is just 1.5 ounces heavier. This was yet another factor in my high expectations, as I extremely hungry when I selected the gargantuan parcel out of my freezer at lunchtime. Big box = big taste, right?

Not so much. The first let-down of the meal was the broccoli. I always eat the veggies first, because I’m a slightly OCD weirdo who likes to separate their foods and eat them in order from “least favorite” to “favorite.” It’s pretty hard to mess up broccoli, but somehow South Beach has managed it. I can’t even tell you what it was, either. The broccoli just tasted slightly off. Like maybe it had been frozen and thawed and re-frozen one too many times.

Then there was the pasta, which I had hoped would redeem my rather pathetic vegetable experience. I think the biggest disappointment was with the “Red Pepper Sauce,” which I had expected to taste . . . oh, I don’t know . . . peppery? Instead, it just tasted like sauce. Just generic sauce, that you might find in a big plastic container located in an underground hatch on a mysterious island in the South Pacific. The pasta has a strange texture, but that’s par for the course when you’re dealing with whole wheat pasta, and I really felt like it might have been enjoyable (the chicken was just fine, too) if there had been non-Dharma sauce on top of it.

Oh well, I guess that’s what you get for buying any meal with the word “diet” on the front of the package. Too bad I have two other South Beach items left in the freezer to try.

[The South Beach Diet is now known as South Beach Living. Also, if you’re into Lost but you’re never sure if this week’s episode will be new or a rerun, I recommend you check out Is Lost a Repeat?, a highly accurate, superbly informational website. -Ed.]

Price: $6.00 (on sale)
Serving: 1/3 pizza, 4.78 oz.
Calories: 360
Fat: 23%, 15g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 33%, 780mg
Protein: 17g
Carbs: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 10%, 2g
Sugar: 8g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 points

Wolfgang Puck says: All natural cheese pizza with mozzarella, fontina and parmesan cheeses

Abi says: If you prefer astringent, watery chopped tomatoes to mellow, slow-cooked pizza sauce, then you’ll like Wolfgang Puck’s All Natural Cheese Pizza.

You’ll enjoy it if you adore pleasantly airy crust topped with light pink tomato water. If you’re also a cheese lover, you’ll be happy because this pizza comes topped with luscious cheese, all floating atop a lake of tart tomato juice.

I am none of those things and I do not prefer this new style of pizza. Biting in to that awful surprise, I realized that I’d have to take drastic measures. I lifted the cheese off of my pizza and scraped out the offending tomato water. This did not make it better. Instead it cooled the cheese into a single unappetizing mass. Left with little recourse, I reheated the pizza under the broiler, resliced it, and resolved to never go near this pizza again.

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.