Price: $2.50 on sale (Free from supplier)
Serving: 1/2 bowl, 3oz. plus water
Who eats a half bowl of microwaved soup? Nobody. That’s why the information below is for the entire bowl.
Calories: 300
Fat: 4%, 3g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 60%, 1460mg
Protein: 10g
Carbohydrates: 20%, 60g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Per Serving, 6 Per Bowl

Annie Chun says: I love Thai food and one of my favorite dishes is Tom Yum Soup. I make Tom Yum Soup for myself and have wanted to share it with my customers, but it has taken me a while to perfect. Now I am excited to have a recipe that I can share with you. Tom Yum is the main soup in Thailand - light, fragrant and calming, wonderful on either warm or cold days. This Tom Yum Soup Bowl is super convenient and great tasting, ready in just one minute.

Andrew says: This is the tale of the four-star soup that shouldn’t have been. This soup tried so hard to turn me back, to make me hate it, and yet it was still pretty awesome.

In the beginning, I followed the package’s instructions to submerge Annie Chun’s famous FreshPak noodles (read: pre-cooked noodles vacuum sealed in a plastic chamber) in hot water to break them apart a bit. Upon attempting to pull the noodles apart, though, I was met with a most familiar odor. Could it be … yes, it was Play-Doh, the childhood modeling clay that smelled unsettlingly like bread dough and melted crayons. Was I really about to eat Play-Doh-smelling noodles? Yes. For science.

Then, after draining away that water, I was to add the soup’s flavor essence and toppings. I started with the package of sauce, the heart of the Tom Yum experience. I wrung it from its packet and was met with yet another pungent odor, this one too foreign to describe. After looking at the ingredients I decided that fish sauce, ginger, chilis and lime could well account for the odd spiciness of the scent penetrating my brain. Moving on to the little briquette of toppings, I decided to bust it apart a little before depositing a stone of dehydrated veggies onto my odoriferous concoction. This helped, as I was able to identify individual flecks of red pepper and wild onion.

Next, I added water to the bowl and put it in the microwave for 65 seconds. After I removed the bowl, I recognized that, miraculously, the flecks of veggies and other toppings had indeed reconstituted in the broth to look like actual food! And even though the aroma was still fairly foreign (I’ve never had Tom Yum before), it did smell somewhat appetizing! I spent a minute or so stirring and breaking apart chunks of Play-Doh noodles and then … it was time to eat.

I’ve only ever had one other Annie Chun’s bowl before (Abi: I believe I have you to thank for that as well), and I recall being amazed at the tenderness and utter edibility of these pre-cooked, shelf-stable noodles. This held true again for these Play-Doh-scented noodles. I couldn’t believe how perfectly al dente they ended up being (even if they stuck to each other a bit much).

And all those crazy, fishy, spicy scents from before melded to make a very enjoyable flavor on my tongue. I’ve had other corporate attempts at fusing chilies and lime before and it generally ends up being either too limey or too chili-y. In this soup, those two flavors, along with the fish sauce (as gross as that sounds) and ginger presence combine to bring a satisfying, tangy heat. Even the little flecks of onion, red pepper and — holy crap is that a mushroom? — other veggies added a little something to the experience. It’s not a five-star soup because, well, the veggies are still dehydrated and as much as I’m surprised at the successful flavor integration, I feel that if they could manage to make the broth mixture more hearty, they could squeeze another star out of me. As far as shelf-stable meals go it’s amazing, but I feel as though technology may yield us a more perfect Tom Yum soup before the next decade is out.

All in all, this soup tried really hard to gross me out with its fish sauce and putty noodles, but Annie Chun wins again with an interesting and hearty soup that somehow survives months on end in a pantry. The fish sauce will unfortunately disqualify this for vegetarians and vegans, but the rest of us can marvel at this wholly-natural wonder of modern food science.

[This meal was provided by Annie Chun’s PR people. -Ed.]

Price: $1.50 (on sale)
Serving: 1/3 box, 1 cup prepared
Calories: 220
Fat: 7%, 5g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 24%, 570mg
Protein: 8g
Carbohydrates: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 10%, 2g
Sugar: 8g
Weight Watchers Points: 4 points

Near East says: A delicate and flavorful dish consisting of 100% semolina wheat couscous combined with savory roasted garlic, onion and olive oil.

Abi says: Dear readers, please allow me to completely revolutionize your dinner time. If your are unfamiliar with couscous, don’t be scared. If you are familiar with couscous you’re nodding your head right now thinking ‘Dang, why don’t I make couscous all of the time?!?!’ I am appalled that I haven’t written about couscous before now.

For the uninitiated, couscous is basically tiny pasta balls. It is not a grain, like rice or bulgar, but essentially super-chopped spaghetti. But it is 18 times better than spaghetti because it is the easiest pasta ever invented. Also, it will not get marinara sauce on your white shirt. Oh, you are saying ‘What is easier than boiling water, putting in pasta and then draining it?’

Consider this couscous workflow:

• Measure 1 1/4 cups of water into a pot. Add a glug of olive oil and the seasoning packet, bring to a boil.
• Stir in couscous, cover and remove from heat.
• After five minutes lift lid from pot, fluff couscous and serve

How insanely easy is that? You can’t even think of anything easier! Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is more difficult! Okay, faster - but you have to use a knife!

Now, this couscous from Near East is ‘instant’ couscous, which accounts for its super-speedy cooking time. Near East carries a wide variety of instant couscouses, but I have to say that the Roasted Garlic and Olive Oil variety holds a very special place in my heart. I like it because each box comes with enough seasoning that I don’t have to flavor the other ingredients I add to the dish. Shown here are chicken and peas. I’m also enamored of the serving size. Sure, 1 cup of food doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but once you add a chicken breast and a cup of vegetables you’ve got a remarkably filling, colorful, delicious meal for three.

Or if there are two of you, you can put the 3rd serving in a refrigerator box (anyone want to buy these for me so that I can stop using Ziploc containers?) and one of you can have it for lunch the next day. Couscous reheats beautifully.

You might be confused by my enthusiasm now, but once you give yourself over to the cult of couscous you’ll finally understand what fueled the Islamic Golden Age.*

*This statement is speculation based on a combination of claims in two Wikipedia articles. It should in no way be construed as a definitive statement on the existence of couscous in 7th century Arabia.

Price: $2.59
Serving: 1 corn dog, 2.5oz.
Calories: 160
Fat: 5%, 3.5g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 23%, 560mg
Protein: 9g
Carbs: 7%, 22g
Fiber: 4%, 1g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Points

Trader Joe says: Low Fat, 4 grams of Soy Protein per Serving

Abi says: Yes, I’m still on the eternal quest for the perfect corn dog. I want something that reminds me of a carnival, complete with funnel cakes, rickety ferris wheels and goldfish that meet unfortunate deaths via ping-pong ball games.

Trader Joe’s meatless version comes nowhere near the actuality of a corn dog. I find this confusing because the meat in corn dogs is so far away from actual animal muscle that I’m surprised it can’t be replicated with vegetable products. I suspect that my Morningstar Sausage-related hypothesis of the need for connective tissue comes into play here as well.

The first problem with these corn dogs is the lack of snap. I know, that sounds disgusting. It is disgusting. And there’s no way to describe ’snap’ better than the resistance a hot dog has to being eaten. Yes, I judge food based on how much it doesn’t want to be consumed. The second problem with these corn dogs is the batter. Even after being baked in a real oven the interior of the cornbread breading was wet rather than fluffy. Considering that I base a large portion of my food judgments on texture it wasn’t surprising that I only took a couple of bites of the corn dog.

The box of three leftover corn dogs then sat in my freezer for a month before I decided to toss them in favor or newer, more exciting frozen items.

I don’t buy fake meats for my own amusement. I buy them because I think there’s a chance they’ll make plausible substitutes for real, less-healthy meats. I buy them hoping that I can lower the amount of fossil fuels used to create my meals (and yet I run this website). And I buy them with the hope that someday cloned, cultured meat will exist and I won’t have to make these choices anymore.

Further information on meat:

1. Hot Dog Reviews at Slate.com
2. Cloned/Cultured meat
3. Reviews of healthy food at the new Nationals stadium

Price: $2.59
Serving: 1 pattie, 1.34oz.
Calories: 80
Fat:5%, 3g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 11%, 260mg
Protein: 10g
Carbs: 1%, 3g
Fiber: 6%, 1g
Sugar: <1g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 Points

Morningstar Farms says: Savory, sizzling veggie patties seasoned with herbs and spices.

Abi says: I hesitate to write about these vegetarian sausage patties. It isn’t that I think you’ll all run to your nearest Trader Joe’s to buy them (though you should because at TJ’s they’re half the regular grocery store price). No, I’m worried that my fiance will read this review and finally learn that the breakfast sausage we ate throughout the winter was actually made of soy. This is why I don’t have a photo of the cooked sausage, though it looks exactly the same as the photo on the box.

I know that the Morningstar Farms veggie sausage, which is prone to overcooking, could never be confused with the truly amazing housemade sausage patties at Austin’s Kerby Lane Cafe. But if you’re worried about the amount of Jimmy Dean in your shopping cart, I implore you to try this breakfast item.

Each pattie is already brown, so all you need to do is heat them in the microwave and then crisp them a bit on each side. Burning the patties is easier than you’d think, especially if you’re used to cooking real made-with-meat sausage. Additionally, they have a confusing texture, much like real, slightly overcooked sausage, except they achieve granularity much more quickly than real sausage. I believe this is because vegetarian sausage lacks the connective tissue products one might find in standard sausage products. In addition to lacking tendons and such, each pattie has 1/2 the calories and 1/5 the fat of the same amount of pork sausage.

These ’sausage’ patties, when served alongside a suitably dramatic item (I recommend French Toast Casserole with Pecan-Brown Sugar Streusel), will potentially be mistaken for real sausage. But if you’d like to just make your own homestyle sausage, you can’t go wrong with Homesick Texan’s Sausage Recipe. A warning before you click that link: if you’re a displaced Texas you’ll spend the rest of the afternoon wishing you were back home in the Lone Star State.