Price: $1.50 (sale + coupon)
Serving: 1 package, 10oz.
Calories: 310 per tray
Calories from fat: 80
Fat: 15%, 9g
Cholesterol: 20%, 60mg
Sodium: 30%, 710mg
Protein: 25g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 31g
Fiber: 9%, 2g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Michael Angelo says: Our Grilled Chicken recipe is abundant in flavor with the perfect blend of garlic, Parmesan cheese, whole milk and spices in our creamy sauce - without all the calories! We add tender grilled and sliced whole breast chicken thati sperfectly seasoned, toss with our orecchiette pasta and top it all with peas and carrots for a wonderfully impeccable dining experience. Enjoy!

Abi says: I am not-so-secretly in love with Michael Angelo’s products. Michael Angelo’s Eggplant Parmesan is my item of choice for a quick, no-thinking, tired of everything else dinner. Sadly, one review that will long be missing is the one for the Baked Ziti with Meatballs. After posing for photos with it (me with a weirdly enormous head, me with a tiny head and huuuuge hands. I actually have small hands for being 5′8″, go figure.) the meal was cold and unappetizing.

Michael Angelo’s Grilled Chicken meal was not cold from the microwave, but it wasn’t the most pleasant meal, either. It isn’t bad, just that it didn’t make an impression of any sort. Later in the day I couldn’t remember if I’d had lunch. I felt full, but what did I eat? That’s not a good situation, because then you start thinking “Did I eat something without knowing it?” “Was I kidnapped by aliens?” et cetera.

Starting this tour of bland world are peas and carrot shreds looking institutional at best. Each vegetable conjured up memories of the mixed vegetables from school cafeteria lunches and prison. The orecchiette (Italian for “little ears”) are freaking adorable and one of my favorite pastas. Reasons for favoriteness:

1. Easy to stab.
2. Holds some sauce.
3. Not messy like spaghetti, which could go with ‘easy to stab’ but really needs its own item.

Too bad half of the little pastas were stuck to the sides of the tray in the form of a hardened crust. I was an utter fool for following Michael Angelo’s no-stir instructions (you will almost never go wrong by stirring halfway through the cooking process). The sauce, which should have been stirred halfway through cooking, reminds me of what happens when you make your second batch of homemade alfredo sauce. Sure the first batch was perfectly creamy and cheesey and garlicky, but you also know that it contained two sticks of butter. So for the second batch you try some untested low-fat recipe that gives you a bland roux that you muddle through on day one and then put in a Ziploc container that goes unnoticed until fridge cleaning day rolls around and you think “Really, how important is it to conserve resources?” and “I wonder if I can hold my breath for the entire time it takes to wash this dish.” and “Why don’t I own a dishwasher? WHY?!?”

Oh, yeah, and it contained about 5 thumb-size chunks of chicken. A couple had pieces of fat on them. They were natural (non-reformed from other parts of chickens like some brands (Healthy Choice, ahem) do, but they were also dry, a state that is confusing (this is a cream-sauce based meal!) and understandable (stirring, it is very important).

Price: $3.99
Serving: 1, 10oz (283g)
Calories: 410 per serving
Fat: 10%, 7g
Cholesterol: 9%, 25mg
Sodium: 35%, 830mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 22%, 66g
Fiber: 11%, 3g
Sugar: 22g
Weight Watchers Points: 8 Points

Ethnic Gourmet says: Taste of Thai Chicken Pad Thai is an elegant balance of distinct and contrasting flavors such as coconut, lemongrass, chilies, ginger, and peanut blended together to achieve “Rot Chart”, Thai for “proper harmony of flavor”. Seasoned white meat chicken with rice noodles, carrots and scallions in a peanut base sauce. All natural. No artificial ingredients, flavors, colors, or preservatives. Minimally processed.

Paige says: I really like the convenience and proportions of most frozen meals. I try a lot of them, to my great disappointment, but I forge ahead in search of the Holy Grail of frozen foods. This is my favorite frozen meal from 2008 In fact, I enjoy it so much that I no longer order Pad Thai at my local Thai restaurant. Why bother, when I can have frozen Pad Thai whenever I want?

I like spicy foods, so when I peel back the plastic film I always add some chili oil. Without the added chili oil, there is some spice to this Pad Thai, but it’s pretty mild. The chicken is real and there’s a lot of it. Sometimes I feel that there’s too much chicken. I know, I know…white meat chicken is good protein and I should consume a lot of it, but sometimes…you know, it’s enough already. Not that that’s a bad thing to be accused of having too much chicken. Some frozen meals have really scant amounts of chicken. But I digress. The rice noodles are of the flat variety (as opposed to the round spaghetti style), and they are always cooked perfectly. They only come out mushy if you overcook the meal. I’ve only done that a couple of times. Best to check your meal before the time is up, just in case your microwave doesn’t need the entire 6 minutes to cook your Pad Thai. My microwave only needs 5 minutes. It must be really advanced. There are a lot of carrots and scallions and a very generous sprinkling of chopped peanuts on top.

If you feel like making this meal closer to a dish from your local Thai restaurant, add a squeeze of fresh lime juice on top. The combination of flavors and textures really makes this a standout frozen meal. The chicken has good texture, like real chicken; not chicken parts that are cooked, chopped up, then put back together again. The noodles aren’t mushy, the carrots and scallions are the right taste and texture, and the added peanuts add a pleasant crunch. The sauce ingredients are: evaporated cane juice, water, soy sauce, tomato paste, peanut butter, red wine vinegar, carrot juice (color?), red pepper, corn starch. It tastes pretty close to the sauce at a real Thai restaurant, except I could swear it’s supposed to have tamarind in it. No matter, it’s still good.

At $4.00, this isn’t the cheapest frozen meal out there, and I know they don’t exactly skimp on the sodium, but this is really tasty and filling and I don’t feel like I need a candy bar chaser when I’ve eaten this. I tend to stock up on these when they go on sale.

Ethnic Gourmet also makes a tofu pad thai, but I don’t like it nearly as well as this chicken version. Obviously, if you have a peanut sensitivity or allergy do not eat this meal.

Every day I get notifications regarding the hundreds of items recalled in the wide-reaching Peanut Butter Product Recall of 2009. At first I tried listing them all on Heat Eat Review, along with a cute picture. I’m sure this was helpful for the 40 or so people who needed to know RIGHT NOW if they could feed their kids Uncrustables (please just play it safe for now and toss the Uncrustables). But I gave up pretty quickly because there are now well over a hundred items on the list (hundreds, actually) and quite frankly, Heat Eat Review should be a source of entertainment and deliciousness, not your one stop shop for epidemics. Granted, epidemics involving snack foods are compelling. But we have priorities around here.

However, the recall has finally affected the frozen food sector (and by frozen food I mean ‘things you heat up’ not ‘ice cream’ - ice cream’s been a part of the recall since the beginning) and so I feel compelled to once more post about it. Hain Celestial (the company that owns Ethnic Gourmet) voluntarily issued a nationwide expanded recall of certain Ethnic Gourmet® Pad Thai products because of possible health risks.

And in honor of that recall, on Wednesday we’ll give you a review of the very Pad Thai that you should not be eating.

Price: $1.00
Serving: 1 package, 2.05oz.
Calories: 220 per cup
Calories from fat: 45
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 2%, 5mg
Sodium: 24%, 580mg
Protein: 8g
Carbohydrates: 12%, 37g
Fiber: 4%, 1g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Kraft says: Ready in 3.5 minutes (which is true, that’s exactly how long it takes)

Abi says: I’m confused when quick-meal manufacturers start using ingredients that are usually found only in homemade or high end food. On one hand, I delight in items like herbed goat cheese, caramelized onions and roasted garlic. On the other hand, I’m eating noodles out of a cup. From a microwave. I’m in powdered orange cheese mode. That and I’ve personally experienced the pain of microwaving garlic. Don’t do it.

In the instance of Kraft’s EasyItalia (may or may not be one word) cup, the roasted garlic is amusing (reconstituted from dried roasted garlic! Space Age!) and problematic (sticky, unfortunately over-sweet). I love me some roasted garlic in dip or on bread, but I can do without nubs of it ruining an otherwise pleasantly cheesy cup of pasta. What’s more, if you have garlic-averse coworkers they will NOT be happy when you bring this into your poorly ventilated, CPU-heated office.

The serving size is exactly the same as the Triple Cheese Easy Mac Cup, yet seems smaller. This could be due to the shape of the noodles, which are flat and spirally. Flat, spirally noodles do not have the volume-inducing air/sauce holes of elbow macaroni. Furthermore, tiny size of this meal is alarming because it weighs in at 5 Weight Watchers Points. And that’s the same number of Points you’d find in Weight Watchers Smart Ones Thai Style Chicken and Rice Noodles. Unfortunately, Smart Ones Thai Style Chicken and Rice Noodles cannot be stored in my desk drawer for extended periods of time.

While its fun to experiment with a variety of on-sale cup-noodles, I’m sticking to my beloved Triple Cheese Easy Mac for now.