Dena’s potstickers:

My potstickers:

Looks: Not as vibrant or as fresh as the box depicts, but much moreso than Dena’s. The portion sizes are accurate though. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: The potstickers were chewy (the way I like them), but the filling was mostly tasteless – tofu is not known for its flavor. On the other hand, the rice surrounding the potstickers was terrible; gritty and dry, completely unpalatable. I’d eat the potstickers again if I was able to get them for free, but I’d still throw the rice away. 2 out of 5

Looks: The only difference from box to bowl is that the sauce is thicker in real life, and this gives the entire dish less of a “shiny” appearance and more of a “mucky” appearance, to use a technical term. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: Have you ever made a bowl of chicken, noodles, and vegetables, and then just for the heck of it, mixed in a few tablespoons of peanut butter? No? Because that would taste weird? Yeah, it would taste weird, wouldn’t it. If this meal came without the peanut sauce, it would probably rate a 3.5, but the thick peanut sauce was just too much like peanut butter. 2 out of 5

Looks: Everything’s on the up-and-up, except for the usual problem that the directions instruct you to stir the meal, but the meal on the box is obviously not stirred. Come on! 4.5 out of 5

Taste: When I saw “five-spice” on the box, I expected something spicy. (Five-spicy, to be exact.) But the sauce had no spice, only sweetness – it tasted and smelled like gingerbread cookies. Also, the beef was dry, as most microwave beef is, and the rest of the ingredients had no taste except for the overwhelming sauce. (Note: the ingredients list does not list “beef”; it lists “cooked beef and binder product.” Take that for what you will.) 2.5 out of 5

Looks: The chicken pieces aren’t as large or as plentiful as pictured, and the sauce is much more prominent. The vegetables and overall portion size are close enough. 4 out of 5

Taste: I liked this one a lot – the rice was cooked just so, and the chicken was juicy. The vegetables were just the right amount of crunchy, but he sauce was maybe a little too sweet. (Although, in all my years, I’ve never tasted the “sour” of “sweet and sour” chicken. Is there something wrong with me?) 4.5 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: I struggled mightily to free this pot pie from its cardboard baking pan so as to have it resemble the boxpie as much as possible, but I was not successful. Then, I tried to cut out a wedge from the top of the crust like on the package, but the roof caved in, and I was not successful. Finally, I tried to show the contents spilling out as on the box, but I couldn’t find any pieces big enough, and thus, I was not successful. The majority of the filling was gravy, as contrasted with the meaty chunks shown on the packaging. The color of the crust is about the only thing they got right. 1 out of 5

Taste: This pot pie was really more of a gravy sandwich, and that’s what it tasted like – crust, gravy, crust, with a few bits of meat and vegetable that got in the way. I shouldn’t have been surprised – according to the box, the main ingredient in the filling is gravy, while containing “2% or less” beef, carrots, and potatoes. Can you really call it a “Beef Pot Pie” when “beef” is an also-ran in the ingredients list? 1.5 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: This one does ok, with a few caveats: the beef/noodles ratio depicted on the box is backwards (the noodles by far outnumber of beef strips), the big chunks of zucchini pictured are missing, and the dessert consists more of gingersnap topping than peaches. On the plus side, look at those vegetables! Vibrant colors that match the advertisement. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: The vegetables ended up being the high point again: fresh-tasting with a good bite. I had never had edamame (baby soy beans) before, and I liked their clean green taste. In other news, the dessert triangle was overly sweet, with too much crumbled topping, and while the beef/noodle combination started out well enough with ok noodles, the beef was stringy and the sauce was quite gritty and not pleasant-tasting at all. 2 out of 5

Looks: Much flatter than the noodles on the box, and where are the carrots? The sauce too is lacking, making the whole dish stick together rather than fluff up like on the package. 3 out of 5

Taste: It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. It had a nice subtle chicken flavor, and while most of the noodles cooked nicely, the hard bits of uncooked pasta that somehow didn’t cook at all almost ruined it. As I was eating it, I was thinking about how I would score its taste. I would take a couple bites, enjoy them, and think, “It’s maybe a 4.” Then I would get a bite that had a hard piece of pasta that managed not to cook, and I’d think “Not so fast, 4.” If the pasta had all been cooked, it might have ended up with a 3.5. 2.5 out of 5

“I recently tried Healthy Choice’s ‘Sweet Asian Potstickers’ meal. That was a mistake. Notice how the ‘sauce’ looks like sewage? Not a coincidence. By the time the meal was cooked, the rice, carrots and potstickers had become thoroughly soaked in the sauce. As a result, the entire thing tasted like a sickly-sweet soy sauce. Except that is, for the stuffing inside the potstickers. The concoction was so dry that it seemed almost shocking compared to the other soaked parts of the meal.”

“The potstickers aren’t even the same shape or color as on the box and the potsticker casing is so chewy that I almost flung half the meal across the room trying to eat it. That nice creamy on sauce on the box? It’s nonexistent. The nicely chopped green onions? They’re nonexistent too. The large chopped pieces of bell pepper? You guessed it, nonexistent. The whole thing was awful.”