Looks: Well, the squash and cranberries look right. Maybe they forget to put the turkey in this one… 1.5 out of 5
Taste: The highlight of this meal was the cranberries that were mixed in with the squash. The turkey was so hard to find in the potatoes that I’m not sure it was there, and the potatoes (or possibly turkey covered in potatoes) were alternately mushy and lumpy, without hardly any flavor at all. 1.5 out of 5
Looks: I struggled mightily to free this pot pie from its cardboard baking pan so as to have it resemble the boxpie as much as possible, but I was not successful. Then, I tried to cut out a wedge from the top of the crust like on the package, but the roof caved in, and I was not successful. Finally, I tried to show the contents spilling out as on the box, but I couldn’t find any pieces big enough, and thus, I was not successful. The majority of the filling was gravy, as contrasted with the meaty chunks shown on the packaging. The color of the crust is about the only thing they got right. 1 out of 5
Taste: This pot pie was really more of a gravy sandwich, and that’s what it tasted like – crust, gravy, crust, with a few bits of meat and vegetable that got in the way. I shouldn’t have been surprised – according to the box, the main ingredient in the filling is gravy, while containing “2% or less” beef, carrots, and potatoes. Can you really call it a “Beef Pot Pie” when “beef” is an also-ran in the ingredients list? 1.5 out of 5
Looks: The turkey lurks, just below the surface, peering out like a cloudy pupil-less eye. What lies beneath? Only time will tell:
This is going to surprise you, but that was actually a picture of the food before I ate it, not after I chewed it and spit it out. To be fair, the turkey and gravy look close enough to the picture on the package, but the stuffing literally looks like canned dog food. Stay tuned for the next paragraph, where I actually put this stuff in my mouth! 1.5 out of 5
Taste: WHY DID I EVER PUT THIS IN MY MOUTH? After trying the roast beef Compleat, I never should have even opened this. The turkey was gritty, the gravy was chunky, and the stuffing was the worst excuse for a bread-based product I’ve ever tasted in my life – soggy, goopy, with no discernable texture. The benefit of this meal looking and tasting like dog food was that my dog had no problem finishing it off for me. 0 out of 5
Looks: If I had plated it like it is plated on the box, it would have matched up nicely, except for the dessert. The colors are all very similar, and the portion sizes are the same. The apple cranberry crisp, however, doesn’t look like what they show on the box at all. It doesn’t contain any cranberries (that I could find), and the apple pieces are way too small. 4 out of 5
Taste: Let me paint you a picture: You like meatloaf. You buy some meatloaf. You cook the meatloaf. You sit down to eat the meatloaf. You take a bite of the meatloaf. You chew the meatloaf. You spit out the meatloaf. Why did you spit out the meatloaf? Probably because there was a piece of what you can only hope was gristle the size of a baby’s tooth in your first bite. (The rest of the meal was ok, but this first impression made it impossible to enjoy the other food quadrants.) 1.5 out of 5
Preaching truth to packaging. Pictures of packaged food, cooked to specifications, compared to the photo on the box.
