Garlic and Caesar... who wants more?

Today for lunch I had Grilled Chicken Caeser by Lean Cuisine. It is described as "white meat chicken, broccoli& garlic flavored radiatore pasta in a parmesan caesar sauce" and it did not disappoint. The chicken picked up a lot of the garlic and caesar flavor making every bite delicious. There was plenty of radiatore, once of my personal favorite pasta shapes to cook with, that was perfectly cooked. The pasta didn't have a "dry" taste that I have run into in the last couple weeks. The broccoli seemed a little overcooked, but then again when is it any better in any other meal. I think someone should invest in broccoli microwave technology... or make some sort of broccoli hybrid that can withstand microwave radiation. My fear is if the powers that be did something like that there would be all of these failed experiments, one of them resulting in giant-man eating broccoli that levels cities. On that thought, I guess I will stick to soggy broccoli for now.

The cooking instructions where standard with one exception, the timing of the instructions were perfect. Since I follow the instructions every time to a T I sometimes find that when the instructions tell me to stir the food it is still mostly frozen, but not in this case. When I lifted the plastic to stir the pasta the room filled with the garlic caesar aroma and made my mouth water. Imagine my dismay when one of the radiatore pastas tried to escape onto the counter top... I ate him for his insolence. (I had to set an example for the others) Each bite that I had was better than the last, I just about licked the countainer that it was cooked in it was that good. I think I would have if I wasn't wearing such a nice shirt too. :) This was so good I just thought to myself "garlic... caesar... who wants more?" What a great flavor profile to combine and it made an amazing frozen meal.

I know this review is so silly and wonky but I was so excited after eating this it put me in a great mood. They really outdid themselves with this one, and it is "diet". I suggest any fan of garlic or caesar to try this food, it was so delicious.

In a word this meal was very delightful!

Cook time: 3 minutes, stir then 1 minute

Stand Time: 1-2 Minutes

Nutritional information found here.

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.

Go Sawx!

"This kind of inspiration is always good for my blog" i said as I ate bite after bite of Ben & Jerry's Boston Cream Pie ice cream.

"what? let me try that..." my wife says as i interupt her with "it says it is Boston cream pie icecream with yellow cake pieces, fudge flakes, and swirls of pastry cream". I didnt realize that by the time I was done reading the lid she is enjoying her first bite of it.

"wow, what is this" she says as she is gesturing to the pastry cream with her spoon.

"I guess that is the pastry cream...can I have that back" I plea with her.

"Do you wanna trade?" she offers.

Needless to say, I loose out on the trade, and more out on that later, but I really really enjoyed this flavor. I don't think I have ever seen this flavor on the shelves before or a "new" anywhere on the container.

The flavor almost starts out pretty errie because the icecream itself tastes like boston cream pie. The other elements of the ice cream like the chocolate flakes, pastry cream, and yellow cake just reinforce that flavor and bring the whole experience together.

I highly suggest all bostonians and cake lovers to give it a shot. The flavor was so good it had this yankees fan saying "go sawx"

In a word, this icecream was very delightful!

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).

An ode to Pizza

Pizza is pizza. You can make pizza a million different ways and it still tastes great. You really cant mess up a pizza in my opinion, there is no one right way for sure. Look at businesses like CiCi's. By no means are places like CiCi's, Domino's, or even Pizza Hut the best and yet they are still in business. I think the reason they are still around is because Pizza is more than a meal, it is a bonding ritual. Everytime I eat pizza, especially the bad kind, I am reminded of my childhood. I remember having terrible school made pizza that was shipped in from other schools. The dough was this thick spongey mass that had no crust around its edges. Just imagine that crust with a sweet style marinara sauce, and terrible plasticy cheese and you have Parley Coburn's pizza. God, I miss that pizza. It is true, probably the worst pizza I have ever had and yet I get nostalgic for it like an old girlfriend. I remember eating Pizza in first grade and up with my best friends Joey Maynard, Paul Osteen, Mike Malone, Andy Peirce, and the list goes on and on. Friday's meant pizza and ninja turtles to me then, now it means a whole lot of good memories before life was complicated.

So when I say that today's review was good cause it reminded me of that pizza don't think I am silly. It doesn't really even taste like it or look like it at all, believe me it is a thousand times better. I was pretty hungry, waiting for my micro-waved pizza and I got a little giddy. The smell was filling the room, even overpowering the previously cooked meal by my coworker. I thought to myself "ah, it is pizza day, like so many Friday's way back when." Then for no reason at all I just thought of all of the pizza's that I had before this. Going to my oldest friends house, Joe Maynard, having pizza with him and playing nintendo games (back before it mattered what kind of graphics games had.) Playing roleplaying games with my friends and ordering two sheet pizza's from Pudgies and breaking the game only long enough to get our fingers greasy with some delicious pizza grease. (my wife hates pizza grease, she must be some kind of communist, lol) Then now as an adult going to Pizza Hut with my wife and two children it all makes sense to me. Pizza is pizza and it doesn't matter what it tastes like, just as long as if you have fun eating it.

In a word, I had pizza… it doesn't matter, it was worth the memories.

Cook time: 2:45 minutes

Stand time: 0:30 minutes

Nutritional information found here.

Leave a comment, write a favorite pizza story, or just say hi… thanks for reading and God Bless.

I love my Pizza, thanks for all the great Pizza memories!