Microwave – Page 10 – Food In Real Life

Lean Cuisine Sesame Stir Fry with Chicken

Looks: Besides the chicken pieces lacking grill marks and the noodles being just a little too thick, I don’t see anything wrong with this meal’s looks. I’m particularly struck by how accurate the colors are. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: It’s pretty good; the vegetables aren’t soggy, the chicken isn’t dry, and the noodles are substantial. I especially liked the sauce – sweet, but with a meaty undertone. I don’t have much else to say except that this is one of the few “noodles plus vegetables” frozen meals that I’d buy again. 3.5 out of 5

Birds Eye Steamfresh Shrimp Alfredo

Looks: It was hard to get a good picture of this due to the reflectiveness of the sauce (any photographers out there have tips for me?), but besides the prominence of the shrimp, it looked very much the same in real life as it did on the package. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: Anyone who has visited this site for a while knows how much I love meals from Bertolli like the Chicken Florentine or Fettucini Alfredo. They’re great frozen pasta meals that you just toss in a skillet for 10 minutes. This meal is like the poor man’s Bertolli. You don’t have to use a skillet (just microwave the entire bag), and the quality is about 75% of that of a comparable Bertolli meal – the noodles are a little softer, the sauce isn’t as rich, and the peas just get in the way, but it’s still a very good meal for how easy it is to prepare. 4 out of 5

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

Hormel Compleats Turkey & Dressing with Gravy

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