Food In Real Life

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

Healthy Choice Beef Lo Mein

Looks: This one does ok, with a few caveats: the beef/noodles ratio depicted on the box is backwards (the noodles by far outnumber of beef strips), the big chunks of zucchini pictured are missing, and the dessert consists more of gingersnap topping than peaches. On the plus side, look at those vegetables! Vibrant colors that match the advertisement. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: The vegetables ended up being the high point again: fresh-tasting with a good bite. I had never had edamame (baby soy beans) before, and I liked their clean green taste. In other news, the dessert triangle was overly sweet, with too much crumbled topping, and while the beef/noodle combination started out well enough with ok noodles, the beef was stringy and the sauce was quite gritty and not pleasant-tasting at all. 2 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

Knorr Creamy Chicken Pasta Sides

Looks: Much flatter than the noodles on the box, and where are the carrots? The sauce too is lacking, making the whole dish stick together rather than fluff up like on the package. 3 out of 5

Taste: It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. It had a nice subtle chicken flavor, and while most of the noodles cooked nicely, the hard bits of uncooked pasta that somehow didn’t cook at all almost ruined it. As I was eating it, I was thinking about how I would score its taste. I would take a couple bites, enjoy them, and think, “It’s maybe a 4.” Then I would get a bite that had a hard piece of pasta that managed not to cook, and I’d think “Not so fast, 4.” If the pasta had all been cooked, it might have ended up with a 3.5. 2.5 out of 5