Cheese – Page 7 – Food In Real Life

El Monterey Chicken Club Tornados

Looks: The taquitos on the box looks more like they’re breaded and baked, but the real-life product is obviously more likely battered and fried. The filling doesn’t come off as “appetizing” like it almost does on the box either. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: What you see is what you get. By that, I mean that you barely see the filling, and you barely taste it too. I tried both this chicken ranch flavor as well as a pepperoni variant, and I couldn’t tell them apart – the shell is the only taste that stands out. The tortilla wrapping is satisfying though – crunchy and crispy, with definite layers, so I can’t give it too low a score. 2.5 out of 5

Red Baron 4-Cheese Pizza

Looks: I still can’t get these pizzas to brown properly, even after following different advice I’ve gotten from readers: “Move it under the broiler”; “don’t preheat the oven”; “use a blow-torch.” None of it works. 4 out of 5

Taste: There is a definite quality scale of frozen pizzas: it starts with your Lunchables mini pizzas (ketchup and bread), then you have your Jack’s/Jeno’s/Totino’s, then up on the high end, you have your Digiorno’s and Freschettas – the “pizzeria-style” pizzas (if you believe their commercials). I would place this Red Baron above Digiorno, but below Freschetta. The cheese is thick, the sauce is zesty, and the crust is nice and chewy, but not as nice as Freschetta’s. This pizza has a good collection of herbs mixed in the cheese as well, and I think that is what really sets it apart from the Jack’s and Jeno’s. 4 out of 5

Kraft White Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese

Looks: The sauce isn’t quite thick enough to fill in the holes in the ends of the noodles, and the noodles aren’t long enough to curve like the noodles on the box; both are minor nitpicks though. 4 out of 5

Taste: It’s very similar to the normal Kraft Macaroni & Cheese that everyone has had at least once in their life, except without the sharp bite of the yellow cheddar cheese mix. I definitely preferred the more mild taste of the white cheddar, but like most Kraft Mac & Cheese, every subsequent bite was a little worse than the one before it, and by the end, I felt a little queasy. My body must immediately start building immunity against whatever chemicals Kraft is using to make this dish taste so good. 4 out of 5

Marie Callender’s Old World Rigatoni Bolognese

Looks: The noodles are right, but the sauce is all wrong. Instead of being a thick and hearty tomato sauce with chunks of beef, it consists of some dried-up pieces of meat and a scant amount of liquid. It really makes the difference in how edible the dish looks, wouldn’t you agree? 2 out of 5

Taste: The taste mirrors the looks: the noodles are ok, but the sauce is just meh. The different parts of the sauce never seemed to coalesce, but rather just separated into tomato and beef and liquid. Not only did the sauce not form one mixture, but the different parts of the sauce didn’t stick to the pasta, further separating the dish into “noodles and tomato and beef and liquid” instead of Rigatoni Bolognese. 2 out of 5