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: $1.50
Serving: 1 package, 8 7/8oz.
Calories: 360
Fat: 27%, 18g
Cholesterol: 14%, 45mg
Sodium: 36%, 880mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 30g
Fiber: 7%, 2g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Stouffer’s says: Tender boneless chicken breast with rib meat in a seasoned crispy coating with mashed potatoes and gravy

Kelly says: I am adapting to the South. When I lived in the Great White North I used to be embarrassed about how much time I spent on my hair. The only reason my excessive blow-drying was acceptable was that if my hair wasn’t completely dry when I left the house it would freeze onto my head in curly icicles. But now I live in the suburbs of the ATL, a place where my own personal vanities are nothing compared to those of the women who were born in the South. They have other people to blow dry their hair for them.

Other things I like about the South: Fried Chicken. I never knew anyone with a deep-fryer, let alone people who had their own family fried chicken recipes. I feel compelled to make my coworkers get into arguments about whose fried chicken is better just so that they’ll have a fry-off and I’ll get to reap the greasy rewards.

By now, my boyfriend knows not to get between a born-again Southern girl and her fried chicken. He also knows that fried chicken is awful for both of us so even though he is a great cook, he never makes it. Ladies: don’t get involved with a professional cook because while you’ll feast when you first start dating one day you will get to work and realize that you are looking forward to your frozen meal because you get to review it.

Stouffer’s Fried Chicken Breast Meal is not a worthy substitute for Fried Chicken. Buying this was just dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Because I live in the South. South, South, South. So I will not give you this review as a Southerner. I will put on my staid, commonsense Lutheran cap and let you know just what you’ll get from Stouffer’s.

Visual inspection of the meal reveals a bigger than my hand and slightly thicker than an iPod piece of chicken. The chicken is covered with an orange breading that I assume will be seasoned because orange = seasoned. See Curly Fries and Cheez Whiz for proof of orange/flavor correlation. The chicken rests next to a clementine-orange sized pile of mashed potatoes. They are white. They are gravied. The gravy looks like the water that gathers everywhere during the Spring thaw: thickly beige and speckled with dirt. Or spices in the gravy’s case. I am sure that Stouffer’s is not trying to make me eat dirt.

The meat is nice white stuff that I can cut with the side of my fork. It exhibits chew and flavor, but the breading is soggy. If I hadn’t been repeatedly exposed to the delicious virus known as Fried Chicken then I would probably think this is not too bad. As it happens, anyone who is familiar with the fried will be really disappointed in this breading.

The mashed potatoes are fluffy and come in too small of a portion for such a big piece of chicken. I like to chop up my chicken into bite size chunks and then mix it in with my gravied mashed potatoes and pretend that I’m back home eating a hot dish. I guess the people at Stouffer’s don’t take the potato as seriously as the people at the United Nations.

I love gravy and I am happy that both of my homelands are also places of gravy love. Is there a part of the United States that doesn’t like gravy? If so, I do not want to live there. This is a light gravy and I really appreciate that there’s enough of it for both my chicken and my mashed potatoes. But if I had my way and there were more mashed potatoes then I would need more gravy.

As an almost Southerner, I wouldn’t be able to stomach this meal. But if I was at home, visiting my parents in the dead of winter, I would pick up one or two of these at Coburn’s to tide me over until I re-entered the republic of the South.

P.S. I’m sorry about the long intro on the review, but nobody here seems to understand that the rest of the country just does not take blow-drying that seriously. They would be aghast if they ever visited Brooklyn. But man, I would pay money (premium cable money) to see a show about a bunch of Southern Ladies dropped in the middle of New York City. “Oh my goodness, Louise! That young man failed to open a door for me! What ever shall I do?”

P.P.S. I’m sorry about the weird picture. There was stuff from work in it (Kelly is not my real name) so I had to edit out a bunch of stuff with MS Paint.

Price: $6.00 (on sale)
Serving: 1/3 pizza, 4.78 oz.
Calories: 360
Fat: 20%, 13g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 28%, 660mg
Protein: 17g
Carbs: 15%, 45g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 13g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 points

Wolfgang Puck says: Mozzarella, seasoned chicken, roasted red onions

Abi says: Recently enamored of the six-word memoir, I challenged myself to write a six word review of this pizza. While that may be enough for a life, it was too brief a description for pizza. Sure, I tried:

But in the end, I decided to write a real review. I had one of those nights where I didn’t want to have a side salad or steamed vegetables or even carrots drowned in ranch. No, I wanted to eat an entire pizza by myself.

I did not accomplish this task. Instead, I ate 3/4 of this pizza, accepting defeat when I finally got to the pool of watery cheese and too-soft crust at the center. Now, this watery center problem may just be an issue with the ovens of friends in Southeast DC. Here in my Northern California oven (and previously in my Northwest DC oven) I never had this watery-center issue.

Examining this pizza from the top down, the chunks of chicken were plentiful and peppery, with just one featuring the gristle that we’ve all come to know and love from animals made into foodstuffs. The cheese is one-note mozzarella. There’s plenty of it, but it is also boring. I’d really like to see a more interesting set of flavor profiles from a pizza that claims to be designed by Wolfgang Puck. Just a little nutty gruyere or a tangy cheddar could make a world of difference. I’m sure that Wolfgang could figure out something fun. The red onion was largely absent, a lack I overlooked because I was so pleased about the amount of chicken on this pizza. A well-balanced meal this is not.

The barbecue sauce here was fantastically light, hinting at the essence of barbecue sauce rather than gumming up the works with loads of sugary goo. I thought I’d be disappointed with the absence of thick sauce, but this version definitely has me rethinking my ideas on barbecue pizzas. The crust is right up there with the magnificently crisp and light (but not crackery or dry) crusts from Amy’s Kitchen.

The wet center and lack of onions aside (issue 1 was my fault, issue 2 was Mr. Puck’s), this is a solid contender for frozen BBQ chicken pizza. The chicken is miles ahead of similar store-brand offerings, but I still need to try the California Pizza Kitchen version. At $6.00 on sale, this pizza is selling for a whole lot more than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $5.99. But considering that this pizza with a side salad could easily satisfy two adults, I’d rate this a good buy so long as it was on sale.

Price: $2.04 at Target
Serving: 1 Meal, 7.6oz.
Calories: 390
Fat: 17%, 11g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 19%, 460mg
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 19%, 57g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
Sugar: 16g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Kid Cuisine says: Just when you thought it was safe to finish the fish sticks -da dum, da dum - along come our fruit Gummy Shark Snacks. A whale of a meal!

Abi says: This meal wasn’t so much a lunch as an act of vengeance. If you’ve been doing some sinning lately (Fat Tuesday festivities and poor voting choices on Super Tuesday both come to mind), you could always choose this meal as part of a Friday Lenten penance. It must be worth at least 40 Hail Marys.

I am fortunate in knowing that this is probably the worst video I’ll ever make and the worst item I’ve ever consumed: it can only get better from here. Please leave comments below for future video subjects and suggestions for improvement.

Thanks,
Abi Jones