Price: $0.62 (in the Midwest)
Serving: 7oz.
Calories: 450 per serving
Fat: 42%, 27g
Cholesterol: 10%, 30mg
Sodium: 30%, 730mg
Protein: 14g
Carbohydrates: 12%, 36g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 7g
Weight Watchers Points: 11 Points

Banquet says: Must be cooked thoroughly. (Seriously! It says this in six different places on the box. It’s like they’re trying to warn me I might need to make sure it’s dead or something.)

Jessica says: First, a disclaimer: I didn’t actually buy this for myself. It was left in my freezer by my former housemate. Normally I’d steer away from an item with this much fat content, but I hate to let food go to waste, and I realized nobody had ever reviewed Banquet pot pies before, so I convinced myself to go ahead and eat it. For Science! (I did check out the date stamp first, to make sure it was in date and wasn’t one of those old recalled pies.)

The microwave directions were easy, although you’ll need a fairly sharp (i.e. metal) utensil to cut the required slit in the frozen pie crust. (I guess for 62 cents, they can’t stamp a hole in the crust for you like Mrs. Smith does.) I almost followed the directions, except I forgot to put it on a plate while cooking. Thankfully it didn’t punish me by boiling over, so no harm done. I cooked it 6 minutes (the box says 4-6) and let it stand the required 3 minutes like it told me, because it says it “completes cooking” during that time and I certainly wouldn’t want it to not be Cooked Thoroughly. On removing it from the microwave, I noticed it turned a prettier color than I was expecting. Wow, it might not be so bad after all!

The outside of the pie was cool enough to touch after the three minute standing time, so I went ahead and took a big bite. I didn’t notice a taste so much as a sensation of my tongue being seared with boiling gravy. So then I had to do that thing where you pucker up and go WHH WHH WHH trying to cool your tongue off without blowing your food all over. The second bite was smaller, cooler, and tastier. The crust managed to get fairly crisp in the microwave, the gravy was thick and rich, and the chunks of beef were tender but not mushy. (I guess there were some vegetables in there too, but I didn’t notice them.) For the price–less than the cost of two Maruchan Instant Lunches–it was downright delicious!

Now the bad: At seven ounces, it’s really quite small. I ate mine for dinner with two sides of vegetables and a slice of bread, and an hour-and-a-half later I’m getting hungry again. I normally plan a nighttime snack anyway, but it’s disappointing that 450 calories only lasted 90 minutes.

I give it five stars for the awesome taste-to-price ratio, minus one for being deceptively hot inside and burning my tongue, and minus one for not staying with me all evening. I’ll probably have it again, but it’ll mainly be due to the low, low price.

Price: $3.49
Serving: 1 Entree, 7.6oz
Calories: 560 per serving
 Calories from Fat: 270
Fat: 46%, 30g
 Saturated Fat: 50%, 10g
 Trans Fat: 3g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 44%, 1050mg
Protein: 11g
Carbohydrates: 21%, 62g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 21g
Weight Watchers Points: 13 Points

Jimmy Dean says: This new Breakfast Entrée is packed with protein and plenty of flavor. It features sausage and melted cheese on a fresh-baked, flaky croissant. Not to mention, it includes two tasty sides: warm, diced apples and specially-seasoned hash browns. Delicious, nutritious and ready in just 3 minutes.

Abi says: I prefer my breakfast sandwiches without cheese. We should get that out of the way right now. Frankly, I believe that American Cheese should a) not exist and b) not be allowed to be called cheese. I find it disturbing, greasy, gooey stuff that can ruin a sandwich. Thus, I removed the cheese from this sandwich prior to heading and was left with an adorably small sausage patty nestled inside an adorably small croissant. And while a fan of tiny, cute things (specifically, tiny, cute things balancing carbohydrates on their heads), I also want a breakfast that will leave me full.

I bought this breakfast one morning because I wanted something in the morning that was not oatmeal or deep-fried or yogurt. For some reason I didn’t connect this meal with the commercials about the Sun that goes to work. I got this meal because it wasn’t a box of breakfast sandwiches. It is a meal. Which is strange because I quite enjoy this commercial:

Get it? The moon is full! And he is full! Full of delicious breakfast. Alas, this breakfast is hefty when it comes to calories (and 13 Weight Watchers points, yow!), but left a lot to be desired in terms of actual largeness. The mini sandwich is limp, the apples are mere specks of fruit swimming in a watery sugar-sauce, and the potatoes…oh, the potatoes.

It seems that there should be some general consensus on hash brown types. My preferred style is the shredded potato, fried to a golden crisp on the outside and almost (almost) mushy inside. After that I like breakfast potatoes (cubed, non-deep-fried, seasoned, often accompanied by onion and peppers) and lastly home fries (cubes, often deep-fried), in reality these are a French fry made for breakfast.

These breakfast potatoes are none of those things. They are mealy and flavorless and generally the opposite of everything I want in potatoes. Overall, this breakfast should not be considered a reasonable breakfast by any person. If I am going to eat sausage for breakfast, I want it to be worth the unhealthiness. I should have just gone to McDonald’s and got a sausage biscuit and a hash brown. It would have been 2/3 of the price of this meal, the same weight, just 20 more calories, and a gazillion times more satisfying.

Kashi is no longer offering free meals. Now you can just get coupons for $2.00 off a frozen meal. While it isn’t free, it is a good deal for a meal that’s leaps and bounds better for you than a lot of other frozen meals out there. - Editrix

Thanks to reader Rose, you can get a free meal from Kashi. Just click on the enormous image below or click on http://www.kashi.com/picturehunt and fill out the form and you’ll get your coupon for a free entree.*

*Offer valid until March 15, 2009 or while supplies last. Available to U.S. residents only. Must be 18 or older to receive coupon. Limit one coupon per family, household, address, or email address. Please allow 2-4 weeks for delivery. Blah, blah, blah Kashi legal information.

Price: $3.00 (after a $1.00 coupon)
Serving: 2.8oz. (the package is 8.5 ounces, 12 bites, 4 bites/serving)
Calories: 220 per serving
Fat: 20%, 13g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 24%, 590mg
Protein: 6g
Carbohydrates: 7%, 21g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Pillsbury says:Bite-sized pastries stuffed with chicken in a buffalo style sauce.

Chavi says: The fact that these tiny little pastry bites are a “Product of Canada,” which is emblazoned across the box’s front, should be enough for a five-star issuing. But it took some taste-testing with a partner to really experience and evaluate this fairly new frozen food item. Sitting down to a Patriots game, we partook of this perfect snack-size food amid chips and salsa and chicken wings, and it definitely did stand out as something uniquely delicious.

The cooking time seems to be a little off, or it could have been that my boyfriend put them too close on the cooking sheet, but it took quite a long time for them to get crispy and brown on top. The dough around the innards of the bites was soft and delicious, and the insides — the buffalo chicken goodness — weren’t too spicy hot, but definitely just hit the spot. It might be too spicy for those who simply can’t handle a bit o’ spice, but those same people would probably be better suited to buy one of the other flavors: Cheese and Spinach or Mozzarella and Pepperoni. I anticipate more flavors in the future considering they’re perfect little snack-size bites.

But maybe that’s the downfall — they are so small, and a box has merely 12 little bites. I could easily eat the entire box in one sitting as a meal, but that’d be a whopping 15 points on the Weight Watchers scale. We split the box in two and paired the bites with a bunch of other food, and it worked out. But for the price and the size, I’m guessing these items will only be the kind to be purchased during a gnarly sale.