Chef Inspired!

So what can I say about Hot Pockets that Jim Gaffigan hasn't already said? They are pretty much the lowest rung on the "microwaved-food food-chain". I figured that there are certain staples out there that everyone has had, and that I could take for granted that they have tried. I think Hot Pockets have had thier day in the spotlight between constant comericials in the 90's to Jim Gaffigan's entire 2 hour rant about them on HBO. Regardless, I knew that if I did a Hot Pocket review the product would have to really stand out for me, and then one day it hit me. I was walking down the frozen food isle in Wal-Mart and at the frozen food encap, and I saw a new Lean Pocket variety of Hot Pockets, it said "Simply Delicious" on its packaging. Delicious happening to be one of my many favorite words I knew I had to pick these up.

The preperation of these were simple like they always are. When you cook them just put the hotpocket in the microwave sleave and presto! You will than have boiling hot lava in the center of your hot pocket. The particular flavor was the Spinach Artichoke flavor that promised that it was "chef inspired". Is being chef inspired anything like being a couch potato and claiming to be the quarterback for the New York Jets because that gives you an idea how closely related they are. If a chef made hot pockets it would be called strombolli, if a quarter back ran 50 yards it'd be a touchdown and not cardiac arrest. I guess what I am trying to say is that this meal is no more "chef inspired" than I am by looking at a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree that reads "hang in there".

The meal was pretty tasteless overall. Every once in a while I would get a string of mystery cheese that would bridge between my mouth and the hot pocket (which is always fun, it makes me feel like I am in a commercial.) The "grilled chicken" was closer to chicken than the Hungry Man meal that I ate yesterday so that is always a plus. Overall it was still pretty disappointing, even for a hot pocket.

There was so many things that pissed me off about this meal. The fact that the instructions called the hot pocket a sandwich being the main one. The silly sleave that you cook your hot pocket also doubles as a holder now.. wahoo. What I always wanted. The final thing being that the description of the product is "Grilled white meat chicken, artichoke and low fat cheese with spinach in a crust" After reading that I decided that the Hot Pocket marketing team outsourced that description to India. Here is what I would have written, had I actually cared... "Grilled white meat chicken, with fresh artichokes and spinach in a creamy low fat cheese sauce served in a flaky pastry crust" Bam! If you need help let me know... jackasses

In a word this meal was simply tasteless.

Cook Time: 2 minutes 15 Seconds

Nutritional Information found here.

XXL

Intimidating, fierce, and aggresive... no I am not describing a datewith Kobe Byrant. I am describing Hungry Man's Southern Fried Chicken Dinner. This meal was a mans man meal, it practically says so right there in the title... "Hungry, no pussys allowed, Man Dinner" This meal is just straight meat and potatoes, the only two requirements every man wants out of a meal when they are hungry. I actually had bought the Hungry Man meal to try out Sunday,and I had not ate all day. When I set aside time to eat it the time was 3pm, and I looked at these huge portions I thought "I am not even THIS hungry"

To describe the meal a bit, it is over a pound and a half of food... that is three times larger than a frozen meal that I typically would review. I didnt like the preperations instructions at all either, having multiple phases for cooking a meal always makes me grumpy because it takes away my quality facebook time, lol. I realize they were probably pretty neccisary considering the portion size of the potatoes and that there is about a pound of

proccessed chicken to eat. The actual meal was satisfactory, had I been as ravenous as one would have to be to eat this much food I am sure it would be delicious. My first impression of the potatoes was that they were earthy, like they had been made hastely by someone that didn't bother to clean the potato skins before they made "skin-on" mashed potatoes. No such luck for me though, these were certainly instant mashed potatoes with a brown gravy. I suppose it didnt matter that there was a brown gravy with a poultry dish, considering I wasn't actually eating chicken, but three over-sized chicken nuggets. They breading was a spicey southern style c

oating that was very paletable, but the actual chicken was certainly more processed than I would like it to have been. I just imagine it being made out of chicken beaks, feet, or whatever they had laying around... isn't that what chicken nuggets are? Chicken nuggets are the hot dog of the poultry world, and these patties were its foot-longs. I gave it my best shot at eating the meal, I think I started to loose self respect at about one of the nuggets to begin with anyway... I could only manage to eat two of the three mega sized nuggets and about a third of the potatoes before I completely started to hate myself. I actually offered my coworkers the remainder of my meal because I felt so guilty for waisting so much food. Even as I write this I am ashamed that I am not man enough to eat an XXL portion of a Hungry Man dinner. I guess I am just not cut out for it.

The meal itself wasnt that bad, I can look past the processed chicken

to some extent... if I can eat a hotdog I can eat this. There was simply too much food. The actual cook time is 10 minutes long with a 2 to 3 minute wait time because of the sheer amount of it. I didn't even eat my whole meal and I had realized I went over my lunch break by a half an hour just to eat what I did. As a word of caution I wouldn't attempt to eat this unless you are a trained professional... or if arent a pussy like I am apparently.

In a word this meal was unessicarily large and mediocre.

Cook Time: 3 minutes with chicken removed then 7 minutes more with chicken.

Stand Time: 2-3 Minutes

Nutrional Information: Dont do it! Unless you are splitting this amongst your family of four.

I feel like I should be Morgan Spurlock and eat one of these every day over a 30 day period just to see how much these mess me up.

Good News!

Hello everyone! It has been a little while since I have done a blog post so I figured I would let you know what I have been up to lately. The last couple weeks have been really fun and exciting traveling all over the United States on my very successful book tour. I have been busy signing autographs, photos, and my New York Times Best Selling book that just made it into Oprah's Book of the Month Club.

Having all of that said, this week I really wanted to do something really daring for a review week so I decided to go with a theme. The theme for this week is Microwave Seafood Meals! Specifically fish because I think everyone is a little aprehensive to try microwaved fish, and rightfully so. I have two reviews already underway and I am just waiting to upload them in the morning, complete with pictures and all. The reviews so far are surprisingly good. I guess they would have to be for as low as my expectations are for them, but I will let each individual meal speak for itself.

I would like to thank everyone again for taking time to read my blog and purchasing my book!

(Hey, a man can dream can't he)

So, if anyone would like to contribute a review or suggest different products I will be working on adding those sections this week as well. Thanks again for reading :)

The Emperor’s New Food

I really wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something that was out of the box for me because that is what I ask my blog readers to do everyday. I ask them to try a food that they may not have normally tried, based solely on my opinion and description of the food that I eat. So today I went out of the realm of what was normal for me and tried a meal by Kashi… yes Kashi. Friends said that I would be surprised how good the food was and boy were they right. I was very surprised how good it was to say the least. So surprised in fact that I think I actually over estimated how good that it was going to be. The food was not nearly as good as one would expect from a company that prides themselves like Kashi does. Their pompous, better than everyone else commercials, we care about the environment, blah blah blah crap doesn't cut it when it comes down to actual taste. I really feel like this was a case of "the emperors new clothes". Let me explain… Kashi is overpriced and it gives the consumer a higher perceived value, and their marketing would lead you to believe that as well. People want it to taste good because it is all natural and good for you. Well, I am not falling for it! This was crap! If I were at a restaurant I would tell them to take it back and give me something that had flavor in it. The pasta sauce was pretty flavorless, the actual food was watery. This was so bad in fact that I had to go and make another meal. I know it is more entertaining when I rip apart a meal for tasting like sawdust , or being soggy, but once in a while I would like something to taste good. :o)

This meal was completely gross. It was downright unedible! I was trying to eat the wheat noodles and tasteless sauce when I bit into some "mystery vegetable". I had no idea what it was… it looked like a branch from a Birch tree, lol. The funny thing was that the mystery vegetable at least had flavor, it wasn't good flavor, but it was flavor nonetheless. The meal itself needed one of the steamer baskets from the Healthy choice meals, but I am sure that would be to rough on the planet… boo hoo. That'd be too much plastic, *cry*. It was too much on my stomach, that food was grool. I will probably never give them another chance in the micro-wave ring again. :o)

I will upload the pictures tomorrow, I am going home with an upset stomach. (jk, that'd be the ultimate eff you to kashi).

Bad Decision

Have you ever seen or done something that made you a little gun shy to do the same thing again? Like if you take a sexual harassment class you will be hesitant to say something off color for at least a couple days after the class. I hope you can relate to that analogy because I know that it is that way for me and I certainly say a lot of off color remarks, but I am working on that. Well, I will be a lot more hesitant to try Asian Inspired frozen food by almost any brand now. Yesterday I had the Thai-something-something by Never-try-this-crap-again, or was it Smart Ones… It was, now I am sure of it. It was weight Watcher's Smart Ones: Thai Style Chicken & Rice Noodles from their Bistro Selections.

This has been the only meal I think I have had where the picture on the box didn't look nearly as good as the food inside. I was really surprised by their lack of effort on their packaging for this product. When I micro-waved the meal it smelled all right so every early indication of my meal was that it was going to be pretty good. After the initial stand time of the meal I stirred everything together and looked pretty good like I mentioned. Fortunately for the reader I took pictures on my journey as I ate what would be considered a bad decision at the end of the day.
I really went against my better judgment when I bought this because I did think "how good can Asian diet food be?" After my first bite I wasnt so uphauled by the taste as the texture. The food left a filmy residue in my mouth. I have never had that from rice noodles or any microwave food.

At this point I didn't want to eat anymore, but my momma didn't raise no food waisting fool.

After a long meal, and much regret I managed to almost clean my plate.

I took a deep breath and inhaled the rest of my food so I could say that I had ate the entire meal.

I wasnt very happy with myself after eating all of that and my stomach let me know he wasn't happy. That brings me to wonder, if my stomach had a voice who's voice would it sound like. I would like to think it would sound like Mr. T when it was angry at me, but realistically it would sound more like Mort Goldman from Family Guy. For now I am just going to pretend my stomach's voice is Christopher Walken, the greatest actor of all time!

So in short, todays meal was without a doubt not a bit delightful.

Cook Time: 3 Minutes... (or something just dont eat this)

Stand Time: 2 minutes (I remember that at least)

Time til I had to rush to the bathroom: 2 Minutes

Nutritional information on the Weight Watchers website, and it was 5 points for those counting.

Voodoo Magic!

Lunch today was so a.maz.ing! I decided that for the rest of this week I would eat "diet" frozen foods that appeal to a growing boy like myself. I really like doing these reviews but the nutrional information sometimes is a little bit scary so I took the initiative and went the diet route. So for today's lunch I had a chicken, spinach, and mushroom Panini that had red peppers and a (non descript) cheese sauce on Italian bread. I always have to point out when a cheese is non descript because they can get away with any flavor they want. I would rather thing I was eating a poorly made swiss than a cheese food (like Valveta… yuck). Other than a poorly worded description of cheese there was nothing at all wrong with this meal. I absolutely loved it!

I had no intentions of this being a good meal at all. When I looked at the packaging it showed that the Panini had grill marks on it and I laughed a little. So when I setup the Panini to grill my curiosity had me looking at the under side of the bread to make sure there was the pre-made grill marks on the package… none? "What is this, I got ripped… no premade grill marks?" I thought to myself. I know these grill marks are all fake and all but why did I get rooked out of my fake grill marks? A little disappointed, and with a heavy heart I put the meal in the microwave and let it cook for 3 minutes. After the suggested, and incredibly short stand time of 30 seconds I took the Panini out of the microwave. I flipped over one half of the sandwich onto the other to make my delicious smelling sandwich complete and what do I see… GRILL MARKS. What kind of voodoo magic is this?!?! Where did these grill marks come from? Where in the world did these grill marks come from… someone answer me! I looked around the break room and checked to see if someone secretly put a Panini grill in there, and switched out my meal. No such luck.

I had to take pictures of the completed meal and I just kept shaking my head, I was so impressed with the "revolutionary grilling tray". I wasn't even going to mention every stupid promise that these meals offer, but they really delivered on this one. I am so shocked! Imagine my surprise when I took my first bite into my very toasty Panini. You think I was excited just to see that it looked grilled. It was grilled and it was delicious! It was so tastey and warm! The spinach and mushrooms were incredible tasting and the chicken was spot on. I can't believe that this was that good! It was so good in fact it made me wonder why people couldn't stick to diets (like myself)! I know that is aweful, but now I want to eat one of these things for 4 meals a day… wait 3. L (maybe that is why I have a weight problem.) I don't think I can review anything else for lunch from now on these were that good.

I guess I could review these everyday: "Lean Cuisine Panini… STILL AWESOME!"

I highly recommend this product to anyone that has a taste for mushrooms and spinach, or if you just want to check out its cool "revolutionary grilling technology"

In a word, my meals was amazingly delightful!

Cook time: 2:45 minutes to 3:15 minutes

Stand time: 30 seconds!

Nutritional Information found here.

Looks can be deceiving

Today for lunch I had another Marie Callender Meal that I really wanted to try. It was thier Country Fried Pork Chop, and do I love country fried anything! Too bad this is not another love story like the Rigatoni was unfortunately. I had really high expectations for this meal. Why shouldn't I, the picture on the box is really good looking. The packaging is a bit weird once I opened it but other than that I didn't have a clue that it wasn't going to be good.

The cooking instructions were intriguing when I first read them. The instructions called for the preparer to puncture the gravy bag that is stuck to the top of the microwave trays film covering. After doing the usual puncturing of this and that you have to take the lava-hot gravy bag off the top of the tray and stir the potatoes. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the potatoes, they had seemed like the major selling point when I saw the packaging, and they were just a shadow of what was promised.

Once I was done with the familiar song and dance of microwaved meal preparation and letting it stand I sat down with my disappointing looking potatoes… I mean meal. I shouldn't put all of the focus on the potatoes, but looking at the
picture you have to admit they look awesome on the packaging. I sit down to start eating and put the gravy on the meal like it is illustrated. Wow, this gravy is tasteless, and I am a "gravy man" if there ever was one. I love to slather any potato dish with gravy and this was as tasteless as it gets. Good for my reading audience I can identify all of the ingredients of any meal just on taste alone.

To give you an idea how the gravy tasted I will give you what my interpretation of the gravy recipe was:

2 parts water

1 Dash of black pepper to taste

1 part Saw dust (either pine or maple will do)

So if you want the great Marie Callendar Gravy taste for your meal stop by your local Lowes Hardware store and ask for a bag of their finest saw dust, I am sure they will be happy to oblige.

Overall the most disappointing this was pretty much the mashed potatoes and gravy. The breaded pork cutlet wasn't bad at all, but it was overshadowed by the tasteless sides of the meal. I wasn't a huge fan of the vegetables either; they tasted more like boiled vegetables than micro-waved. I expect sub par vegetables from Banquet but not from Marie Callendar at all.

Maybe I will chalk up today's review to false advertising. There is no way that this meal could look as good as it does on the packaging and I was really disappointed as a result of this (well, that and the really bad gravy…shame shame shame.) I guess with this long of cooking time and preparations that had to be made I expect a much better meal.

Overall, this meal was not very delightful.

Cooking time: 4 minutes, then 4 minutes

Stand Time: 2 minutes

 

Where is the Banquet?

Today for lunch I had Banquet's Pork Barbeque patty with corn and mashed potatoes. To be honest, you would be shot in St Louis if you did a taste test between these and real ribs. Heck, you should be shot in South Carolina for even thinking that! Whether or not you like a dry rub or a liquid smoked pork bbq rib will not matter when it comes to these ribs, they are about as much a rib as I am Jamaican. I have had Banquet's Micro-waved "meals" plenty of times, most of those times I was broke and a bachelor too. They are like one step above eating Raman Noodles in my book and just a few steps below eating a burger off Burger King's dollar menu. I never really thought of the irony of the brand name Banquet until I started writing this review. There is a bit of false advertising with their brand name in my opinion, in order to better reflect their name they should be called "school cafeteria" or "Airplane Food". (I tried to come up with something better believe me, I am just not that clever)

Just look up what a banquet is on google image search here. The general populace has a different idea of what a banquet is and what they are selling for $0.88 a pop at Wal-Mart. I know, it is terrible that I am reviewing this product to begin with but when I think of bad, inedible food I think of Banquet. I used to eat the hell out of these things, I won't lie about that, but I was young and naive. You can't blame me for being young and broke. J

The one redeeming factor of this meal is that they barbeque sauce isn't as bad as one might imagine. The downside is everything else, literally. The packaging seems to be like every other microwave meal, except for the fact that the food compartments don't really hold the food as much as they kind of just have an idea of where they should go. The corn will be in the potatoes and visa versa, and there is always something from both sides in the main entrée section. I don't know why they even bother dividing the food, they clearly fall short with this in every Banquet meal I have EVER had. The sad thing is that none of that was an exaggeration. The "pork" was more soy than meat in my opinion. If you look at the ingredients it says that the pork bbq rib is pork and soy proteins. I think I could fool a vegetarian into eating this and they wouldn't even notice it was pork. On a side note too the potatoes looked like potatoes this time and not potato soup which is always an improvement. The corn was terrible, it tasted like corn but had the texture of raisins (just imagine that for a minute for me.)

Also, I tried to make this meal look good. I tried to make it as awesome as it is on the packaging and I failed miserably. There is no way that you can make it look that good, given the same plates and props you would find out that you are 4 oz of potatoes short and you would need real corn (not the corn-raisin hybrid I had to endure earlier.) I found that once I had the whole meal on the paper plate that I had way less than the promised 10 oz of food on the packaging. Looking at my abandoned sauce filled container I realized how they got the 10 oz mark that they promised… with about 2 to 3 oz of sauce. The sauce filled plastic container was not a surprise to me, it is the same tricks that canned vegetables have doing to us for years with added water content.

I really can't believe how many bad things I have to say about this meal, but then again I am not surprised.

In a word, this meal was not at all delightful.

Cooking time: 3 minutes, stir then 2:30 minutes
Stand time: 1-2 minutes

I am not going to list the nutritional information because you should not be eating this, but if you want to know who to blame click here.

Can you tell what one of these is the microwaved meal?