Frozen – Food In Real Life

Marie Callender’s Shrimp Mac and Cheese Bowl

Looks: Using the shrimps as a measuring guide, the bowl they used on the packaging is only about 4″ (four shrimps) wide, and every shrimp in the meal is pictured on top of the noodles, implying the unkept promise of more shrimp below. (To be fair, the package clearly states “Shrimp Over Pasta,” not “Shrimp Uniformly Intermingled With Pasta.”) 3 out of 5

Taste: Small rubbery shrimp, soft overcooked noodles, bland watery sauce. Just like Mom used to make. 2 out of 5

Red Baron Pizza by the Slice

Are you tired of making a pizza but having to throw most of it away since you can only eat one piece at a time? If so, you’ll want to check out Red Baron Pizza by the Slice. It’s like a whole pizza, but not!

It cooks in its own little cardboard and silvery-colored container that you stick in your microwave; this cooking method has the benefit of leaving the cheese in the middle of the slice cold but sill overcooking the bottom of the crust so that’s it’s strangely crispy.

If you buy enough of these that you can learn how to properly get it to heat up in your microwave, you’ll find that it’s a good-enough approximation of a normal Red Baron pizza – if you left it in your fridge overnight and then reheated it in your microwave in a little paper tray.

Looks: 2 out of 5 Taste: 2.5 out of 5

T.G.I. Friday’s Onion Rings

Looks: The image on the packaging conveniently omits all of the hat-shaped onion end-pieces which seemed to comprise my entire box, but the color and texture are appropriately represented. 4 out of 5

Taste: The onion is sweet, the breading is crunchy, and they taste great dipped in ketchup, catsup, or Generic Tomato-Based Dipping Sauce. To more adequately describe these rings, allow me to draw upon personal experience: in my life, I have encountered three types of onion rings:

“Onion” rings, which are essentially deep-fried breading with the faintest bit of onion inside – these are what Burger King sells.
Onion “rings”, which are more onion than anything else, with not enough breading to adequately cover and give structure to the onion. These are found at 2nd-tier concession stands and poorly-run restaurants.
“Onion rings” – healthy slices of white onion with healthy amounts of breading. Both components have their own flavors, and both textures are detectable in your mouth.

These rings are definitely a variant of #3. They have enough breading to make you feel bad about yourself for eating the entire box, but enough onion to make you feel good about yourself for eating an entire vegetable. 4 out of 5

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