Microwave – Page 12 – Food In Real Life

Digiorno Steak and Fire Roasted Vegetables Flatbread Melt

Looks: While it’s not as bad as the TGIFriday’s Quesadillas, it’s still pretty far from what the box pictures. (Although, with this product, you can actually tell that it’s the same food.) The bread is much thicker and doesn’t brown the same, the filling is not as extensive, and the cheese is nowhere to be seen, at least not without unfolding the melt. 2.5 out of 5

Taste: Very good flatbread for being frozen and microwaved. It was soft, chewy, and not soggy or cold at all. The filling, although not as bulbous as the filling on the packaging, was very good as well. It would have been nice to have as much steak and vegetables as the box promised, and the discrepancy might be a deal breaker for some people. 4 out of 5

Healthy Choice Meat Loaf

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

T.G.I. Friday’s Turkey & Bacon Melt Quesadillas

Looks: I would love to see how they were able to take the picture for the packaging. It’s not possible that they even used the same quesadillas that they put in the box, because they don’t come out looking anything like the ad. There isn’t as much filling, the tortillas are much flimsier, and I’m not certain that all of the ingredients shown coming out of the quesadilla are even in there. 1.5 out of 5

Taste: Even though they don’t look like the quesadillas on the box, I think you’ll agree with me that they still look tasty, in an “it’s-really-late-and-i’m-starving-oh-don’t-these-look-good” kind of way. They were pretty good: cheesy filling, meaty pieces of chicken, and soft tortillas. I couldn’t taste any bacon, and the cheese was slightly greasy (which might have been from the MIA bacon), but not too bad overall. 3.5 out of 5

Hormel Compleats Roast Beef with Gravy

Looks: Nothing about the way this looks makes me want to eat it. The gravy is translucent (not thick like on the cover), yet there’s so much of it that you can’t see through it to the potatoes below. The potatoes appear to be a single solid mass, rather than fluffy mounds, and the roast beef slab lurks near the surface like the carcass of a dead Loch Ness monster. None of these things are depicted on the box. 1.5 out of 5

Taste: Craptacular. Even with all that gravy, the beef is so dry that I needed to continually drink bottles of water while I chewed it to avoid dehydration. The potatoes are nasty (closer to modeling clay than vegetable), and the gravy wouldn’t stick to them. I managed three bites of this “Compleat” meal before throwing it away – I didn’t feel comfortable feeding it to my dog. I suppose I should have known it would be terrible; it’s roast beef that you store in your pantry… That’s just not right. 0 out of 5