Culinary Circle Five Cheese Lasagna

Culinary Circle Five Cheese Lasagna - Ad

Culinary Circle Five Cheese Lasagna

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

Michelina’s Budget Gourmet Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese

Michelina's Budget Gourmet Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese - Ad

Michelina's Budget Gourmet Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese

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

T.G.I. Friday’s Potato Skins

T.G.I. Friday's Potato Skins - Ad

T.G.I. Friday's Potato Skins

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

Healthy Choice Balsamic Garlic Chicken Cafe Steamer

Healthy Choice Balsamic Garlic Chicken Cafe Steamer - Ad

Healthy Choice Balsamic Garlic Chicken Cafe Steamer

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.