Looks: Oscar Mayer doesn’t specifically advertise the finished version of this product on the box, so you’ll just have to base the visual quality of this product on the picture in your mind when you think “Oscar Mayer Buffalo Chicken Deli Creation.” Not too far off, huh? 4 out of 5

Taste: The bread is soft and chewy, and the chicken is juicy if not a little over-processed. Those two ingredients make up the bulk of the sandwich; the cheese is just barely noticeable, and the sauce is a generic Ranch dressing. The bread really is good though, and in the end, it carries the meal. 3.5 out of 5

A few days ago, Punch Pizza was giving away free Mimis – sauceless Neopolitan-style pizzas with basil, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella. Did I get in on that action? Of course I did.

Looks: The pizza I got could very well have been photographed for the ad – except for the size of the basil leaves and normal variations in the char of the crust, it was exactly as advertised. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: When I first started eating it, I was skeptical – no sauce? What is this, Soviet Russia? Due to the lack of sauce or melted cheese to glue the toppings to the pizza, I resigned myself to eating it like a breadbowl salad – toppings, crust, toppings, crust. However, as I continue to work on it, I started to get the hang of grabbing tomato, mozzarella, and basil in each bite, and the more I ate, the better it tasted – something in the juice of the cherry tomatoes combined with the slightly salty crust to produce a delicious combination that was completely unexpected and completely awesome. (I think I would have appreciated smaller pieces of basil, but that could be because I have trouble cutting leafy food with my incisors – long story.)

While there are only six Punch Pizza locations (and they’re all in central Minnesota), their pizzas are the closest thing to authentic Neopolitan pizza I’ve had in the U.S. Definitely try them out if you have a chance. 4.5 out of 5

P.S. Punch regularly announces deals and promotions via their @PunchPizza Twitter account.

Are you tired of making a pizza but having to throw most of it away since you can only eat one piece at a time? If so, you’ll want to check out Red Baron Pizza by the Slice. It’s like a whole pizza, but not!

It cooks in its own little cardboard and silvery-colored container that you stick in your microwave; this cooking method has the benefit of leaving the cheese in the middle of the slice cold but sill overcooking the bottom of the crust so that’s it’s strangely crispy.

If you buy enough of these that you can learn how to properly get it to heat up in your microwave, you’ll find that it’s a good-enough approximation of a normal Red Baron pizza – if you left it in your fridge overnight and then reheated it in your microwave in a little paper tray.

Looks: 2 out of 5 Taste: 2.5 out of 5

Looks: The sauce doesn’t have the texture that’s depicted on the box – it’s closer to Ragu than Prego, if you know what I mean – and the lasagna didn’t quite keep its structure after being cut, even though I let it stand for the recommended 10 minutes after removing it from the oven. 4 out of 5

Taste: This lasagna tasted amazing for being boxed and covered with a thin plastic sheet, and it took literally no culinary ability to prepare, so even my wife could make it! I love my wife. The only change I would make to it would be to remove one of the five cheeses. Four is plenty, and by the end of my seventh piece, I was starting to feel a little logy. 4.5 out of 5

Soft noodles and (literally) tasteless sauce. It claims to be “homestyle,” but if my mom was making this “style” of macaroni at “home,” I’d be ordering in every night. Michelina’s is now 0 for 2 on this blog; do I dare institute a “three strikes and you’re out” rule?

Looks: 3.5 out of 5 Taste: 1 out of 5

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: The bun is overly browned (-0.5 points), the cheese is an oily orange and it curls up instead of down (-0.5 points), the sausage patty is overcooked (-0.5 points), and I want to deduct one more thing (-0.5 points). 3 out of 5

Taste: Burger King is advertising this sandwich as being blatantly stolen from McDonalds but offered for half the price, so let’s compare it to McDonald’s Sausage Egg McMuffin.

1. The McDonald’s version is so oily I needed to call in the National Guard to help with cleanup efforts after I finished it, but this is lacking any sort of grease overflow.
2. It tastes more “real” than McDonalds’ too; almost as if I made it myself in my kitchen. (That is, if I had access to pre-cooked egg-like squares and a heat lamp to leave it under for 20 minutes.)
3. The sausage is just a little bit spicy, where McDonalds’ meat is unprovocative.
4. The egg is mostly tasteless and not at all like McDonalds’ version of eggs, which aren’t too far off from the real thing.

Burger King is selling this for just $1, so it gets a favorable rating on that aspect, but for every dollar they raise the price, I’d probably take a point off of my rating. It’s good, but not $2 good. 3 out of 5

Looks: The bread is four times as thick as it is on the box, and the filling looks more like chunky diarrhea than cheesy hamburger. The colors and sizes are all accurate though, so it’s not a total loss. 2.5 out of 5

Taste: Remember how I said that the filling looks like chunky diarrhea? Care to venture a guess as to how it tastes? Wrong. It tastes like ground hamburger mixed with boiling lava hot cheese inside of a bun. Nothing too special – I wouldn’t buy it again, but at least it didn’t taste as sick as it looks. 2 out of 5

While we’re on the subject of Hot Pockets, here are two of my favorite Hot Pocket-related comedy bits.

Looks: I bet you can’t even tell which picture is the box and which is the real thing. 5 out of 5

Taste: The succulence of the ham was matched only by the deep, earthy je ne sais quoi of the Kraft American cheddar. The mayonnaise lent a savory (yet somehow fat-free) lightness to the sandwich that, together with the humble heartland flavor of the whole-grain bun, made this truly a sandwich not to be missed.

Just kidding – it was ok. Four inches of average bread combined with four inches of average ham combined with four inches of average cheese topped with four inches of average mayo wins this sandwich an average score. 2.5 out of 5