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: 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