Looks: Apart from the cheese not spreading as judiciously as it does across the potato skins on the box, these frozen recreations could be straight out of a TGI Friday’s kitchen. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: I’ll be honest with you – I didn’t eat these. My wife was making them for a snack and I grabbed them to photograph after they came out of the oven but before she realized they were done. Sort of a potato-napping, if you will. Based on her level of displeasure at finding that her skins were missing, I’d peg their potential taste at about a 3.5. 3.5 out of 5

“Hey boss – I’m packing up these Carbonaras, but we’re low on peas and bacon. Should I order more?” “Nah, just give ‘em four peas and two little bacon scraps. They’ll never notice.”

I’ve made carbonara myself from scratch; I’ve had it in Italian restaurants; I’ve even eaten it in Italy, where they tend to make pretty decent Italian food. While this (unsurprisingly) doesn’t come close to any of those three experiences, it’s a passable approximation for a frozen box that cooks in three minutes. The sauce has the trademark eggy/cheesy taste of a carbonara sauce, but it’s way too loose. The noodles are too soft too, making this more of a carbonara soup than the thick pile of cheesy pasta that it’s supposed to be.

Looks: 2.5 out of 5 Taste: 3 out of 5

Looks: Except for the absence of melted cheese (which most likely melted into the sauce as it cooked), Lean Cuisine accurately portrayed this meal. Probably because it doesn’t look disgusting in real life, so there’s no reason to fake it. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: Nothing special, but nothing terrible. In the grand scheme of pasta, there are five levels of taste:

1. Michelina’s
2. Chef Boyardee
3. Dry pasta with canned sauce
4. Homemade pasta with homemade sauce
5. Homemade pasta with homemade sauce in Italy

This meals comes in somewhere around #3. The slight bacon taste gives it a little edge over your generic jarred spaghetti sauce, but I might not have noticed that there was bacon in this if I hadn’t already known it. 3 out of 5

Looks: Small differences: the eggs are not so cheesy in real life, and the apples lack any sort of sauce or extra moisture. If you squint, the two pictures look pretty much the same. 4 out of 5

Taste: Good, and good for you!

Just kidding. The eggs were dry and uncheesy; the potatoes were rubbery and tasteless. The sad little apple pieces were actually the best part of this meal, but that’s not saying much at all. Nothing tasted terrible, and if I was in a hurry and really needed to get my cholesterol levels up, this would be an ok choice. Other than that exact situation, I can’t see ever eating this again. 1.5 out of 5

Looks: You’d be forgiven for wondering why I took a picture of this meal after I chewed it and spit it back out, but hold onto your butts: that’s what it actually looks like immediately after cooking. The vegetables still look frozen, and the chicken and rice mixture is pale, mushy, and completely unappetizing. 1 out of 5

Taste: Worse than it looks. The vegetables were flavorless, and while the chicken and rice had a flavor, it wasn’t one I’d like to taste again anytime soon – bitter, oily, gritty, disgusting: much like my last foray into microwave chicken and rice. 0 out of 5

Looks: It’s boring to write about foods that look just like their packaging. I bet it’s boring to read about too, isn’t it? 5 out of 5

Taste: Eaten alone, it’s obvious that this bacon was not freshly cooked on a sizzling griddle: it’s kind of rubbery and pretty salty. But if you overcook it a little in order to crumble it over baked potatoes, a thick chowder, or a late-evening Pop-Tart, you won’t be able to tell the difference between this and “real” bacon. 3.5 out of 5

Looks: This picture was taken in a rush, so it’s not at the correct angle or anything, but I assure you it’s not too far off from the box. (Also, the box only depicts the standard chicken sandwich; this one had bacon added to it.) The bun is reasonably similar, and from seeing it in real life, I know that the chicken wasn’t significantly different from the packaging. 4 out of 5

Taste: Good, but not great. The chicken was juicy (which is more than I can say for the Angus burger purchased at the same visit), and the bun was nice and chewy. Neither had too much flavor, but the addition of “bacon” helped that a little bit. I’d probably buy it again, but it wouldn’t be my first choice. (For what it’s worth, my wife, whose favorite foods include chicken and bread, said she would have given this sandwich at least 4 out of 5.) 3.5 out of 5

Looks: While the food on the box appears as a golden, flaky, biscuit covered in fluffy eggs and melted cheese, the real deal is closer to a molten Pac-Man dead-set on devouring you and anyone you care about. The crust singes around the edges, the cheese doesn’t melt evenly, and the bacon cooks much darker than pictured. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: Regardless of how it looks, this thing is delicious – it’s like deep-dish pizza had a baby with an Egg McMuffin, and they named it Scrambles. The cheese and bacon are great (of course), and although the egg doesn’t really make you think “hey, this tastes like eggs,” it doesn’t detract from the flavor. There’s also a creamy sauce underneath the toppings, and it is most likely made from magic pixie deliciousness dust. My only complaint is that the outer edge of the biscuit gets too hard during cooking. 4.5 out of 5

Looks: As is normal for fast-food burgers, the sandwich was pretty squished by the time I got home. (That’s how it was given to me; I didn’t set anything on top of it or anything.) The lettuce isn’t substantial enough to hold up the tomato and bun like in the picture, but all of the colors and general proportions of the ingredients are right on. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: For the $0.99 that this burger costs, it very well may be the best value for the money in all of fast-food land. The tomato and lettuce are crisp and cool, but the burger and bacon are meaty and warm. The entire ensemble comes together for very tasty, chewy, comforting mouthfuls, and there’s nothing I would change about it (except for making it free and available everywhere). 5 out of 5

Looks: I apologize for the unflattering angle of this picture; I know I took several better ones, but somehow, they got lost in the shuffle of having a full memory card and wanting to take pictures of babies in Halloween costumes. Anyhow, the burger that I was served look as if they took the burger from the ad and let it sit out for a few days. The patty was dark and dry, nowhere near as thick as the advertised patty. (On the inside, it was so dry it was almost white and reminded me more of an overcooked porkchop than ground beef.) I only got one piece of cheese, and the vegetable toppings were scant, to say the least. 2 out of 5

Taste: The bun was the only ok thing about this burger. The meat was dry: on a scale from 1 to 10, it was a desert. The bacon tasted fake, and there weren’t enough vegetables or cheese to add moisture to the piece of cardboard masquerading as a ground beef patty. 1 out of 5

Has anyone tried the other Angus burgers? Do they fare any better than this one?