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.

Price: $2.59 for two cups
Serving: 1 cup, 3oz.
Calories: 100
Fat: 3%, 2g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 6%, 150mg
Protein: <1g
Carbs: 5%, 16g
Fiber: 4%, <1g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 Points

Mrs. Smith says: Finally, a 100 calorie dessert that really satisfies your sweet cravings. Mrs. Smith’s Heavenly 100 is big on decadent flavor in 100 calorie portions. Now you can enjoy the indulgent taste you love-without the guilt!”

Jennifer says: One night, while searching for a good dessert at my local grocery store, I started thinking about Apple Crisp. I love a good Apple Crisp, with hot cinnamon apples and a crunchy, oaty topping. I searched high and low through the freezer section before I saw a line of Mrs. Smith’s Heavenly 100 Vanilla Custards. Close, but not quite apple crisp. I looked closer and noticed the shelf tag said there should have been an Apple Crisp on hand as well. Nope. All Vanilla Custards. Now I was intrigued. I was on a mission to find those missing Apple Crisp desserts.

After driving all over town, I found and purchased not only the Apple Crisp but I also bought a nice tub of Cool Whip to go along with it. I was excited to find my favorite dessert in a diet friendly way.

The instructions on the box said to microwave for 30-45 seconds. I had to ultimately microwave the damn cup for nearly three minutes. Three minutes! Lets just say that I hoped the unattractive dessert would emerge from my microwave looking like a nice, crispy, and delicious Apple Crisp. Not the case. The cup consisted of tons of sauce, maybe about 15 miniscule pieces of apple, and a teaspoon of soggy topping. I mixed it up with a little Cool Whip thinking that would make it taste even better, but now I’m surprised that I did not develop an automatic cavity from the sweetness of the dessert.

I took about 4 bites of the supposedly heavenly apple crisp and threw it in the trash. By that 4th bite I was close to vomiting from the extremely sweet taste.

This morning I decided to doctor up the second cup with a tablespoon or two of oatmeal. Can’t go wrong with oatmeal, I thought. Nope. Nothing could change this nasty cup of apples. And this time I found 4 chunks of hard apple peel and/or seed particles.

Maybe one day I will try the other desserts in this 100 Calorie line. I’ve learned that Apple Crisp in a microwave is not a good idea, though. It is certainly not “heavenly” and although just 2 Weight Watchers points, its not worth the point value. If you want Apple Crisp either make one or go buy one from a restaurant.

I’m giving Mrs. Smith’s Heavenly 100 Calorie Apple Crisp one star. Maybe it will kill someone’s sweet craving. It certainly won’t defeat anyone’s Apple Crisp craving.

Price: $1.99
Serving: 1 package, 8oz.
Calories: 150
Fat: 4%, 2.5g
Sodium: 2%, 40mg
Protein: 5g
Carbs: 9%, 27g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 Points

Trader Joe says: T.J’s Frozen Steel Cut Oatmeal brings speed and convenience to the previously time-consuming process of cooking steel cut oats. No longer do you have to slave or a hot stove, stirring and stirring just to enjoy a bowl of this wholesome, nutritious, delicious oatmeal.

Abi says: The only oatmeal I ever ate as a kid came in packets. Sure, we had old-fashioned oats up in the cupboard, but I think that we only used those for making cookies, not for actually eating for breakfast in the form of oatmeal. I didn’t even realize until a few years ago that actual, real, non-processed, steel cut oatmeal requires a rather long cooking time (nearly an hour!). In fact, I’ve never even made stove top, slow-cooked oatmeal.

Of this, I’m a bit ashamed. I love oatmeal and I should be enjoying it in all of its forms. Alas, the closest I’ll likely ever get to that (until I have a family to cook oatmeal for) will be the big, slightly suspect pots of oatmeal at Au Bon Pain (have you had oatmeal with roasted almond slices and toasted coconut and brown sugar? No? Then you have not lived!)*.

In an effort to reduce my dependence on instant oatmeal and stop paying $4.00 for the ABP stuff, I picked up a box of Trader Joe’s pre-cooked, frozen steelcut oatmeal. The box contains two individually shrink-wrapped cylinders of oatmeal. These cylinders bear more than a passing resemblance to the frozen forms of Trader Joe’s Artichoke Spinach dip and French Onion Soup. Way to reuse your industrial packaging equipment, Trader Joe’s!

Unfortunately, the bubbly nature of oatmeal requires that one selects a quite large container for heating. On the first go-round I’d fogotten this edict of breakfast porridge and managed to spend the first 20 minutes of my work day cleaning out the microwave.

On the second try I sat down to a bowl of steaming, fluffy steelcut oatmeal and instantly realized why I haven’t purchased this item in the past and why I’ll never purchase it again in the future: blandness. Steelcut oatmeal might have the upper hand when it comes to fiber, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty, taste wins ever time for me. Trader Joe’s Steelcut Oatmeal is a good idea, but the lack of the merest hint of flavor had me reaching for some strawberry jam and figuring that my earlier failure in oatmeal preparation was a sign that some things are better made at home, where there’s plenty of real maple syrup and cinnamon.

*I didn’t even know that they had oatmeal at Au Bon Pain until I read this rant on Craigslist.

Price: $3.50 on sale
Serving: 1/5 bag, 3oz.
Calories: 120 per serving
Fat: 5%, 3.5g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 12%, 270mg
Protein: 3g
Carbohydrates: 7%, 19g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 0g
Weight Watchers Points: 2

Alexia says: Alexia Oven Reds combine delicate and creamy Columbia Basin Red Potatoes, Olive Oil, robust Parmesan Cheese and Roasted Garlic to make this beautifully delicious yet trans fat free culinary creation.

Abi says: Store bought frozen potatoes: Friend or foe? Discuss.

On one hand, it is so freaking easy to chop up some potatoes, toss them with a bit of olive oil herbs and salt and call it a side dish. On the other hand chopping = ugh and who wants to wait 45 minutes for roasted potatoes when we could have potato wedges in 20?

These are the questions I ask myself whenever I consider braving the frozen potatoes section at my local supermarket. Fresh and frozen potatoes are both cheap, but frozen potatoes take half of the time and don’t involve potential over or under-seasoning. Or blood loss.

While I was at Whole Foods the other day, picking up a replacement Amy’s Cheese Pizza Pocket, I decided to go beyond Alexia’s Pesto Pizza Pockets and try out their potato wedges. After reading the backs of all 6 packages of potato wedges, I settled on the Olive Oil, Parmesan & Roasted Garlic Oven Reds. Like me, they were raised in the Columbia River Basin. Unlike me, they are encased in a plastic bag.

The package states that it contains five servings of potatoes. This is an acurate portrayal as I actually got four hearty servings out of the bag. It wasn’t so much that I planned on eating the last two servings all at once, but more that I realized there was nothing edible in my house, the more it seemed that potatoes would do just fine for a lunch.

From my willingness to eat simply these potatoes for lunch you might deduce that I enjoy them a great deal. No deerstalker for you, I’m afraid. These potatoes, which might be marginally better for the environment than the ones from Ore-Ida (or not, because ‘natural’ definitely doesn’t equal ‘organic’) have some sort of weird flavor action going on - straight from the bag. I literally found myself making funny faces when I breathed in the odor of the frozen potatoes.

“Are they rotten?” I wondered, my head whipping back from the bag in a visceral reaction borne of instinctual terror. Then I figured that I just wasn’t used to ‘All Natural’ frozen potatoes or frozen olive oil or something of that hippie ilk. While the potatoes were baking I read the ingredients label and found the item that was causing me such confusion: cheese powder. These potatoes don’t taste like parmesan cheese and rosemary. No, they taste like the child of a bag of Smartfood and a poorly maintained spice cupboard.

Fortunately, this is a problem easily solved with homemade aioli liberally seasoned with smoked paprika. Ketchup works too.