I stumbled upon an interesting discovery while eating this Healthy Choice Balsamic Garlic Chicken Cafe Steamer: all Healthy Choice meals are actually just different arrangements of the same chicken, noodles, and sauce. Take a look at some: #1, #2, #3, and #4. Healthy Choice has just packaged the same meal in many different boxes and then filled in the blanks in the name of the meal. In that spirit, here is my review of the Healthy Choice Balsamic Garlic Chicken Cafe Steamer; you can fill in the blanks yourself, or you can play along with a friend!

The Healthy Choice Balsamic Garlic Chicken Cafe Steamer tastes ___(adjective)___. There are definite hints of ___(noun)___ in each bite, and the ___(property)___ of the chicken is ___(adjective)___. I didn’t expect this meal to be so ___(adjective)___, but it surprised me and made me say to my wife, “Honey, this meal is so ___(adjective)___.” The vegetables were ___(adjective)___, but the pasta was predictably ___(adjective)___. Based on the picture on the box, it should have had more ___(noun)___, but the ___(noun)___ was close enough.

Fill out this Mad Lib in the comments, and the best one will win a special surprise. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but it definitely is not not a box of Strawberry Pop-tarts.

Ah, lunchtime. Those thirty magical minutes when you can forget about the troubles of your job, the upcoming credit card bills, and your soul-crushing loneliness. All food brings comfort, but there’s nothing in the world that will lift your spirit like a bowl full of vegetables. Yes sirree, with their fresh taste unlocked by the magic of steam, this meal of “Grilled (but actually steamed) Mediterranean (but also found in America) Vegetables” is just what you need to turn that frown upside-down. (Note: Upside-down frown may not be experienced by all customers.)

The best part of this meal is the obvious lack of meat. You won’t have to waste time on tender marinated chicken or juicy slow-cooked beef just to get to the delicious vegetable side dishes, like in most meals. When you open this box, you’ll feel like you died and went to heaven… vegetable heaven, that is! The broccoli tastes like broccoli. The eggplant tastes like eggplant. And the snozzberries — don’t get me started on the snozzberries!

Who cares if you’ve been taking cold showers for a week because you’re late on the gas bill? So what if your wife left you and took your dog with her? You’ve still managed to keep the lights on, and that’s worth a reward. So set your microwave for two and a half minutes, and let your cares drift away – you’ve got some eating to do.

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

These photos and descriptions come courtesy of reader Amy Hill.

Looks: “There’s some room for variation here, since you have packets of sauce/rice/chicken/vegetables and have to put them together yourself, so if the chicken doesn’t get as brown as on the package that might just be your fault for not following directions. Still, it looks almost exactly like the package (note that the IRL photo shows only one serving, while the package shows two).” 5 out of 5

Taste: “Sweet and spicy sauce; good amount of vegetables; not greasy at all. Better than a lot of Chinese takeout, even. My one complaint is that the servings are a bit small for the price.” 4.5 out of 5

If you, like Amy, want to read about your own food on the Internet, send your photos to food@foodirl.com. On the other hand, if you like Amy, that is something I cannot help you with.

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: Besides the chicken pieces lacking grill marks and the noodles being just a little too thick, I don’t see anything wrong with this meal’s looks. I’m particularly struck by how accurate the colors are. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: It’s pretty good; the vegetables aren’t soggy, the chicken isn’t dry, and the noodles are substantial. I especially liked the sauce – sweet, but with a meaty undertone. I don’t have much else to say except that this is one of the few “noodles plus vegetables” frozen meals that I’d buy again. 3.5 out of 5

Looks: Are those even the same meals? The chicken pieces are deformed, the broccoli looks weak, the cheese is missing, and the sauce (which got mixed into the meal, by direction) was not the right color. 1 out of 5

Taste: It tastes about how it looks. Weak, without any standout flavors. The chicken tasted strange, like it was really ground chicken formed back into nuggets – not at all like “Grilled Chicken Marinara.” Very disappointing for what I’ve always seen as an upper-level brand. 2 out of 5

Looks: The vegetables in the chicken mixture don’t have nearly the lustrous sheen that the box depicts, and the peach “crisp” looks more like peach-applesauce. However, all the ingredients pictured on the packaging are there, and they’re mostly the correct color. 3 out of 5

Taste: Depending on which piece of chicken you try, the chicken is either crispy, chewy, soggy, or bland. The vegetables (broccoli included) add nothing, but the rice + sauce mixture is pretty tasty. The peach crisp didn’t do much for me, although it made me forget about the broccoli. I wouldn’t buy this again. 2 out of 5

Looks: The beef looks much dryer (drier?) than pictured, and the mushrooms in the sauce are practically non-existent. The vegetables looks like shrunken versions of themselves, but the potatoes and caramel apple dessert aren’t too far off. I’m feeling generous today, so I’ll give it… 3 out of 5

Taste: The beef turned out to be just as dry as it looked – stringy and tasteless. The potatoes were gummy, and the broccoli was watery. (The carrots were surprisingly ok, with just a little hardness left in them.) The gold-medal winner of this meal was the caramel apple dessert – quite possibly the best tv-dinner-corner-pocket dessert I’ve ever had. It almost redeemed the stringy beef and bland potatoes. 2 out of 5

Looks: Like someone had already chewed it and spit it back into the bowl. Where are the nice big strips of chicken? Where are the fresh broccoli florets? Where is the creamy cheese sauce? Nowhere to be found. The biggest piece of chicken was perhaps a third the size of the pieces pictured on the box, and even before cooking, the cheese sauce was mixed into the rice. I almost didn’t eat it because of how it looked. 1 out of 5

Taste: Even worse than it looks. I was able to stomach four bites before I threw the rest out; because of the way that the cheese sauce gums up the rice and traps the chicken and vegetables in a web of disgusting cheeserice, the entire dish tastes and feels the same – like crap. 0 out of 5

Pre-Stir:

Looks: Better luck next time. The vegetables are more of a cafeteria-green-bean green than a summer-meadow green, and the cherry tomatoes didn’t even survive being stirred into the noodles. The consistency of the entire dish is closer to a casserole than the light mixture of pasta and vegetables depicted on the box. 2 out of 5

Taste: While it didn’t make me cry, I wasn’t happy to be eating it either. The chicken was very dry, the noodles were cooked about 50% past al-dente, and the vegetables didn’t have a taste (or texture) at all. The painted-on grill marks on the chicken were convincing though. 2 out of 5