Price: $2.00 (on sale)
Serving: 1/2 package, 1 cup prepared
Calories: 190
Fat: 0%, 0g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 50%, 1190mg
Protein: 8g
Carbs: 13%, 40g
Fiber: 18%, 5g
Sugar: <1g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 points

Zatarain’s says: Red Beans & Rice is a traditional Monday dinner in New Orleans and has wide appeal today. This mix has precooked beans so total preparation time is under 30 minutes. Great with sausage or pork chops as a side dish or entree, or straight as packaged for a meatless meal.

Abi says: There’s no denying my love of Zatarain’s Bean and Rice mixes. They remind me of camping in New Hampshire, dinner simmering on a camp stove, a roaring fire just waiting for marshmallows and the promise of needing to escape the tent when it floods after four straight nights of rain.

Zatarain’s isn’t every day food. It is superbly salty (50% of your daily limit in just one cup of food!), lacking significant texture, and a sludgy grey that might put off all but the colorblind. It is also really freaking delicious. Perhaps my enjoyment of this meal is irrational, but I was too was a skeptic before I had my first ravenous bite of Zatarain’s Black Beans and Rice. It is packed with such a savory, meatiness that you wouldn’t believe it is vegetarian (note: the box says ‘natural flavors’ which could mean meat), or at least, not outrightly meaty.

This food has all of the hallmarks of comfort necessary on a cold night: hearty, filling beans and rice, plenty of flavor, and quality of perfection when eaten alone or paired with sliced and sauteed hot links (or half smokes for you DC folks). On the downside, this stuff takes forever to cook. Sure, the beans are actually pre-cooked and dehydrated, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to have a meal in less than 30 minutes. No, you’ll need to give yourself something more like 45 minutes to allow time for your water to boil, for the dish to cook, and for the sauce to thicken (very important). You’ll have just enough food to feed two super-hungry people or three moderately hungry people who also enjoy side dishes.

I look forward to trying Zatarain’s frozen meals when I finally find them in stores. Until then, I’ll have to go with my once or twice a month hearty, stomach-filling, sodium-intensive dinner.

Price: $2.00 on sale
Serving: 1/2 tray, 7oz.
Calories: 160 per serving
Fat: 6%, 4g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 20%, 490mg
Protein: 10g
Carbohydrates: 8%, 23g
Fiber: 36%, 9g
Sugar: 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Per Serving

Trader Joe says: This classic Northeastern Spanish dish from the Rioja area can be enjoyed tapas style with many other savory dishes or just enjoy on its own. The lentils are slow cooked in a broth called Sofrito, made with tomatoes, oil, onion, and red and green peppers. Ole!

Andrew says: Ole! Indeed! But someone should tell this dish that spitting is unkind and frowned upon in polite society. When I opened this shelf-stable plastic pack of sloshy, soupy lentils and veggies, it spit beans and tasty-smelling sauce on my hand and the table. And then when I heated it up in the microwave, the dish proceeded to spurt more of the Sofrito all over the microwave’s turntable dish.

But even with the spillage, there was plenty of smoky, spicy, warm Sofrito for my beans and pepper bits to bathe in. In fact the dish was a lot more soupy than I was expecting. After a few brothy slurps of beans and decently flavorful peppers, I got out my Garden Salsa Sun Chips and proceeded to dip them in the soup. This was a great way to enjoy my chips and soup. I recommend doing this with any chips you like.

The soup itself, sans chips, is also fairly enjoyable, but it gets a bit boring after a while. I love beans in general, and lentils are small but robust and make me feel like I’m eating a lot even when I’m not eating that much. And there are a lot of lentils in this. And the sauce, while pleasant, kind of overwhelms everything a bit with its smoky warmth and there’s not a lot of variety in the flavors going on. It’s OK, but, you know, it’s just OK. This would be great with some other stuff, some meats and cheeses and salads and what not, but by itself it’s just a bit too homogeneous to hold my attention without delicious chips.

Price: $3.50
Serving: 1 cookie, 1oz.
Servings Per Container: 16
Calories: 120
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 16, 20mg
Sodium: 2%, 60mg
Protein: 1g
Carbohydrates: 6%, 17g
Sugar: 8g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Points

Trader Joe says: No Preservatives, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors

Abi says: I adore Consumer Reports Magazine. Not because they tell me the best car, vacuum cleaner or microwave to purchase. Or because they let me know when it makes the most sense to pay extra for organic foods, but because they completely agree with me when I state that the Trader Joe’s Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookie dough makes the best pre-made (mixed?) cookies in existence.

No, they still aren’t real homemade cookies, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that could tell the difference between these and a batch made with the recipe off the back of a package of Toll House Chocolate Chips. Well, I guess the difference would be that these all cook up to a uniform size and degree of doneness while homemade cookies have a greater element of individuality.

By using normal, non-industrial ingredients, Trader Joe’s manages to skirt all of the strange not-quite-made-with-butter pre-made cookie shortfalls. Check out this list of ingredient simplicity:

• Flour
• Chocolate
• Sweet Butter
• Sugar
• Brown Sugar
• Eggs
• Molasses
• Vanilla
• Salt
• Baking Soda

It is no coincidence that those are the exact same ingredients I use when I make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. Of course, now you’re probably thinking “If these are so simple, couldn’t I just make some regular cookies at home? From my own ingredients?” Well, you could. But then you’d be left with a pile of dirty dishes when you should be enjoying fresh from the oven caramel brown buttery chocolate chunk studded mounds of deliciousness.

And that would be a shame.

Price: $1.00 (super-low sale price)
Serving: 1 container, 10.75oz.
Calories: 190
Fat: 6%, 4g
Sodium: 39%, 940mg
Protein: 4g
Carbs: 11%, 34g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Points

Campbell’s says: Campbell’s® Soup at Hand® is a great way to eat right when you’re on the run. Our heat-and-go microwavable cups let you enjoy sippable soup… anytime, anywhere.

Abi says: On the continuum of all pre-made tomato soups I’ve ever had, Campbell’s Creamy Tomato is firmly in the 4 star spot. Sure, it is a complete salt bomb and the mouth of the container is too small for dipping drenching my grilled cheese sandwiches in the soup, but whenever I’m feeling a bit ill (which I was approximately 10 days ago), all I have to do is pull one of these cans of soup out of the cupboard, fire up the microwave, grab a box of tissues, and go downstairs to watch soaps.

Thanks to the packaging-intensive design of this container of soup, I do not need to use any other dishes or utensils to enjoy a piping hot container of tomato and high fructose goodness (23 grams of sugar, wow) and I mean it when I say piping hot. This soup will destroy your tongue if you lack the patience of a saint.

Not being saint-like, I always burn my tongue. I figure that cold soup is worse than pain. This is not an accurate depiction of my overall intelligence, but it explains how I can continue to eat microwaved food even though I know that most of it is horrid. Post-tongue-burning, this soup induces me to stretch out and fall asleep, which is why I don’t recommend eating soup for lunch at work. You’ll just want to curl up in a ball under your cubicle desk and tell your coworkers to wake you shortly before 5:30pm.