Archive for the ‘Potatoes’ Category

Healthy Choice Turkey Medallions

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Healthy Choice Turkey Medallions - Ad

Healthy Choice Turkey Medallions

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

Banquet Beef Pot Pie

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Banquet Beef Pot Pie - Ad

Banquet Beef Pot Pie

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

Healthy Choice Meat Loaf

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Healthy Choice Meat Loaf - Ad

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

Hormel Compleats Roast Beef with Gravy

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Hormel Compleats Roast Beef & Gravy - Ad

Hormel Compleats Roast Beef & 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