Frozen – Page 13 – Food In Real Life

SmartOnes Strawberry Shortcake

Looks: If you took the cake pictured on the box and squashed it down with your hand before freezing it, you’d have a better representation of the food inside – it’s the same ingredients, but the appearance is nowhere near as fresh. Also, the picture I took was after the recommended 30 seconds in the microwave, but my wife decided to stick it in for another 15 seconds, and it lost its ice crystals and loosened up a bit. Nevertheless, I was disappointed when I saw it the first time. 3 out of 5

Taste: Much better than I expected. I was expecting frozen tasteless yellow cake with sickly-sweet strawberry syrup, but the cake was surprisingly warm and moist, and the topping had a nice even strawberry taste. The whipped cream peaks picture on the box still tasted more like frozen fat-free lite ice cream, but two out of three ain’t bad. 4 out of 5

Healthy Choice Fajita Steak

Looks: The meals I don’t plate properly (usually for lack of time, but sometime for lack of dishes) are a little harder to judge, but when you take each section separately, you’ll see that this meal stacks up closely to its box. Not only does it have the first apple crisp I’ve seen with substantially size apple pieces, most of the colors and portions of the other foods are right on as well. (The poor lighting in my kitchen doesn’t do the steak justice.) 4.5 out of 5

Taste: Just so I don’t have to say this again, the apple crisp that is in essentially every Healthy Choice meal is very good – +1 point by default. I really enjoyed the steak part of this meal, but I wasn’t digging the rice or corn (due to their blandness), until I had an epiphany: bland rice and vegetables plus steak with too much southwestern sauce equals a delicious Tex-Mex casserole. They should recommend that combination on the box, because it was really good. (-1 point if you don’t like mixing foods together.) 4 out of 5

Healthy Choice Sweet Asian Potstickers

Reader Dena Struchtemeyer sent in this review of Healthy Choice’s Sweet Asian Potstickers:

“I recently tried Healthy Choice’s ‘Sweet Asian Potstickers’ meal. That was a mistake. Notice how the ‘sauce’ looks like sewage? Not a coincidence. By the time the meal was cooked, the rice, carrots and potstickers had become thoroughly soaked in the sauce. As a result, the entire thing tasted like a sickly-sweet soy sauce. Except that is, for the stuffing inside the potstickers. The concoction was so dry that it seemed almost shocking compared to the other soaked parts of the meal.”

“The potstickers aren’t even the same shape or color as on the box and the potsticker casing is so chewy that I almost flung half the meal across the room trying to eat it. That nice creamy on sauce on the box? It’s nonexistent. The nicely chopped green onions? They’re nonexistent too. The large chopped pieces of bell pepper? You guessed it, nonexistent. The whole thing was awful.”

Lean Cuisine Sesame Chicken

Looks: The chicken is soggy, not crispy, and there aren’t any sesame seeds on it. Additionally (or subtractionally), there aren’t as many vegetables in the noodles as the box pictures. Everything else is pretty close, except that I couldn’t find the chopsticks in the box and had to go buy my own. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: The main detriment to this meal is the soggy chicken breading. It would be close to perfect if not for that, although I don’t think I’ve ever had crispy chicken come out of a microwave. The noodles are substantial, but they don’t have much of a flavor, and I would have liked to see (and taste) more vegetables. (The plum sauce beneath the chicken and noodles was surprisingly good though.) 3.5 out of 5