Preaching truth to packaging. Pictures of packaged food, cooked to specifications, compared to the photo on the box.
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: You’d be forgiven for wondering why I took a picture of this meal after I chewed it and spit it back out, but hold onto your butts: that’s what it actually looks like immediately after cooking. The vegetables still look frozen, and the chicken and rice mixture is pale, mushy, and completely unappetizing. 1 out of 5
Taste: Worse than it looks. The vegetables were flavorless, and while the chicken and rice had a flavor, it wasn’t one I’d like to taste again anytime soon – bitter, oily, gritty, disgusting: much like my last foray into microwave chicken and rice. 0 out of 5
Looks: The entire dish lacks the shininess of the meal on the box; the ravioli look dry, and the vegetables appear mushy and overcooked. The sizing is right, but the ravioli filling isn’t as substantial as it should be. 3 out of 5
Taste: Meh. The ravioli are too chewy, and the filling has a bitter aftertaste. I did enjoy the sauce though – kind of sweet, but buttery. The cooked apples are a nice touch too, but there aren’t enough of them to make up for the lackluster pasta. 2 out of 5
Looks: See those shrimp? Yeah, neither do I – they’re, at best, 50% of the size of the shrimp on the box. The noodles and peas though (which are in there; they just sunk to the bottom) match up pretty closely with the packaging. 4 out of 5
Taste: Respectable. The shrimp were a little rubbery, and for being a “lobster cream,” I didn’t taste anything special in the sauce. The noodles were fine, but the peas, as all peas are, were inedible. 3 out of 5