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: $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 at CVS
Serving: 1 bowl cup, 2.5oz.+water
Calories: 270
Fat: 4%, 2.8g
Cholesterol: 0%, 20mg
Sodium: 31%, 736mg
Protein: 5.1g
Carbs: 19%, 57g
Fiber: 3%, 0.6g
Sugar: 3.9g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 WW Points

Simply Asia says:Our soup bowl combines authentic 100% pure rice noodles in a delicious broth, vegetables and a traditional seasoning for a quick and satisfying meals in just 3 minutes.

Abi says: Thanks to Gluten-Free Girl, I know that if I were suddenly diagnosed with gluten intolerance I could live a life full of delicious, beautiful food. Sure, it would make writing for Heat Eat Review a bit difficult, but it wouldn’t be a hardship for home eating.

Unless, of course, I decided to purchase this soup bowl. When I dropped this into my basket at CVS (a pharmacy), I must have momentarily blanked on a previous Simply Asia meal that smelled like burnt tires. My excuse: I had a brain freeze after spending a half-hour watching the sun set from the steps of the Supreme Court (highly recommended on warm days, on cold days the bases of the marble columns will turn your bum into a block of ice) and I was on a post-Easter Cadbury Creme Egg Hunt (not for me, I think they are gross and that all of you fondant-loving fools are strange, strange people). Also, I have a website that requires me to eat (or at least heat up and taste) things that smell like burnt tires.

I followed the meal-preparation instructions closely: adding ‘vegetable’ and oil packets (should have been labeled ‘vegetable flakes’ and the oil is optional), filling to the ‘fill-line’ and microwaving for a few minutes. Then I sat down to eat some undercooked noodles. Okay, I can handle that. Another minute sitting on the counter and the ’soup’ was still hot, this time with limp, edible noodles.

Much to the chagrin of my taste buds, the noodles and the brother were both devoid of flavor, leading me to wonder in what Asian country “traditional seasoning” means “colored water”. The Spring Vegetable contingent was represented with four peas and a couple of pieces of dehydrated carrot. Okay, ten pieces of dehydrated carrot, a few kernels of corn and some shreds of green onion (I think). I wish I was kidding about this, but there is more vegetable matter in a single baby carrot than in this entire ‘Spring Vegetable’ noodle bowl. I resigned myself to finishing this flavorless, four-pea-featuring bowl of noodles, then poured the ‘broth’ down the drain.

I am now officially on the hunt for only food that looks fantastically delicious. Well, as soon as I try the 14 boxes of most likely mediocre food sitting in my freezer right now. Simply Asia might be making noodle bowls appropriate for Celiacs and college students alike, but just because you can eat these doesn’t mean that you should.

[Yes, I went overboard with the double and single quotes in this review. If you’d like to make fun of me for that, I have an even better site for your reading/wasting time at work pleasure: The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.]

Price: $2.08 + tax
Serving: 10oz.
Calories: 280
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 16%, 50mg
Sodium: 29%, 690mg
Protein: 17g
Carbohydrates: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 14%, 3g
Sugar: 6 g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Lean Cuisine says: Rice & white meat chicken mixed with crispy vegetables & eggs in a sesame sauce.

Becky says: Normally, I’m a huge fan of fried rice, and I make it from scratch quite a bit (my secret ingredient is sesame oil). So during my last lunch shopping excursion, I didn’t object to this meal when my youngest stepdaughter picked it out for me.

I think she just lost that privilege.

When I took this out of the box, I noticed that it was just plain white rice in the bowl. That’s okay – I figured that the sauce was probably at the bottom. Once it was stirred, I realized the not-so-great truth – while there was sauce at the bottom of the bowl, it was not enough to make a difference in taste. I think a little low-sodium soy sauce would’ve gone a long way here, but that’s not in high demand in our office.

On a good note, I was surprised at the quantity of chicken, egg, peas and carrots – they were plentiful, and cooked perfectly. The chicken was tender, juicy, and tasted like chicken. There was more egg than what I had expected, but that wasn’t a bad thing!

As far as the nutritionals are concerned, the only thing that surprised me was the sodium count. I could not taste the 29% of my daily allowance of the stuff – in fact, I could’ve used more! It just goes to show how much salt we take in without knowing it . . . I’m sure that homemade toffee that I’ve been nibbling on all day is packed with that stuff.

I doubt I’ll get this meal again. The sheer lack of TASTE was enough to do it for me – there’s better ways to add flavor without compromising the nutritional value. Get to it, Lean Cuisine.