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

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.

“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

Sydney’s picture:

My picture:

Looks: As it lacks the thick brown sauce pictured on the box and the long pieces of chicken with discernibly browned skin but white meat, I do believe that this box has seen a little photoshopping in its day. 3 out of 5

Taste: You may remember that Sydney called this bowl of food “the worst thing I have ever eaten.” I think it’s fair to say that I had a different experience. It’s certainly not the best thing I’ve ever eaten, but it’s a mildy pleasing combination of the noodles + chicken + sauce trio that comprises essentially every Healthy Choice meal out there. 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: 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: Hallelujah, it’s the same as the meal on the box! Well, it’s a little more watery, but that’s it. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: I really like – wait, let me start over. I love macaroni and cheese. It’s possibly my favorite food. So when I saw that this macaroni and cheese looked quite appetizing after cooking, I got excited. I may have danced a little in my kitchen in anticipation. However, my glee was short-lived. Although it looks good, it has only slight cheese flavor, and the noodles themselves are somehow watery. (As in they squish out water when you bite into them.) Don’t make the same mistake I did – don’t get excited over this macaroni. 2.5 out of 5

Reader Sydney Hamilton has stepped up to ensure that you don’t have to go another day without a FoodIRL post:

Looks: It doesn’t look terrible, but it doesn’t look great. The chicken looks so dry in comparison to the pictured ones. The sauce is wayyy thicker than shown and the tomatoes in the picture are much more vibrant than the ones in the actual dish. It’s not too far off though. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: This is the worst thing I have ever eaten. The “angel hair” pasta is basically thicker than linguine, and they are so overcooked and mushy. The tomatoes are so hard and crispy, I thought they were peppers until I realized they weren’t. The chicken is dry and the sauce is way too thick and super bland. 1.5 out of 5

Personally, if something was the worst thing I had ever eaten, it would be lucky to get 0 out of 5, much less 1.5 out of 5.

If you want to see your food on the Internet, send it to food@foodirl.com.

Looks: Looks like a big tub o’ goo, as if the spaghetti in the picture was stepped on by a wet boot. 2 out of 5

Taste: Looks are deceiving in this case; it’s actually very tasty. Most microwave spaghetti tends to become either over-dry and crunchy or overcooked and mushy. However, this pasta was neither too dry nor too soft, and the sauce tasted fresher than it should be allowed. 4 out of 5

Looks: Instead of a thick juicy tomato sauce, I see a dry brown bowl of noodles and meat. 3 out of 5

Taste: Bland. The sausage coins were ok, but everything else was just bleh – gritty meatballs, lackluster sauce, overcooked noodles. 2 out of 5