Chicken – Page 7 – Food In Real Life

Healthy Choice Orange Zest Chicken Cafe Steamer

Looks: Surprisingly accurate for a dish containing chicken, vegetables, and sauce. A few small differences though cause this meal to miss a perfect 5-out-of-5 score: The sauce (pictured as being poured over the dish) is obviously mixed in, the greens are a little wilted, and the green onions are MIA (or just very small). 4.5 out of 5

Taste: After seeing how close it looked to the box, I expected it to taste as good as it looked too, but I ended up disappointed. The chicken has a strange texture and taste that I wouldn’t have independently classified as chicken; it’s more like a meatball made of poultry. The vegetables don’t have much of a taste either, and they’re a bit too soft to have their texture make up for tastelessness. The sauce-and-rice mixture I had left towards the end of the dish did turn out to be quite tasty – if this meal had been “Sweet & Spicy Orange Zest Rice”, it would have scored higher. 3 out of 5

Healthy Choice Sweet & Sour Chicken

Looks: The vegetables in the chicken mixture don’t have nearly the lustrous sheen that the box depicts, and the peach “crisp” looks more like peach-applesauce. However, all the ingredients pictured on the packaging are there, and they’re mostly the correct color. 3 out of 5

Taste: Depending on which piece of chicken you try, the chicken is either crispy, chewy, soggy, or bland. The vegetables (broccoli included) add nothing, but the rice + sauce mixture is pretty tasty. The peach crisp didn’t do much for me, although it made me forget about the broccoli. I wouldn’t buy this again. 2 out of 5

Marie Callender’s Chicken Pot Pie

Clerkerist sends in this week’s reader submission and does a pretty good job of emulating the photo on the box:

This one is pretty much on target. The pie is browned and flaky. The only deviance from the package cooking directions was a little cooking spray in the pan before microwaving. Otherwise you pretty much have to serve the pie upside-down. Very tasty with crisp peas and carrots, all-white-meat chicken, and rib-sticking gravy. 5 out of 5

Wait a minute… “crisp peas and carrots, all-white-meat chicken, and rib-sticking gravy”? Clerkerist, are you an undercover Marie Callender’s rep sent here to counter the effects of my post on your disgusting cheesy chicken and rice? For shame, Marie Callender, for shame.

Healthy Choice Country Breaded Chicken

Looks: Once you account for plating the meal the way they have it on the box, the food looks pretty close to the packaging. The cherry dessert isn’t as thick as its representation, and the carrots are underrepresented in the vegetable triangle, but the rest stacks up pretty well. 4 out of 5

Taste: Disappointing. The potatoes were gluey, and the chicken tasteless (and soggy where it touched the potatoes). The cherry dessert was sickly sweet, and I certainly didn’t find any “vanilla crisp.” The vegetables sure did taste like vegetables though! (Note that scores of 1 out of 5 or lower are mainly reserved for meals I couldn’t finish or wouldn’t finish. I finished this, but wasn’t very happy about wasting an eating opportunity on it.) 2 out of 5