Around $3.50
420 calories
180 calories from fat
340 grams
About 8 minutes cooking time

Stouffer’s has apparently caught wind of what other frozen meals have been doing lately regarding marketing. You can see on the front of the box they’re selling this frozen ‘delight’ as a healthy choice (note their billing of: 1.‘No Preservatives.’ 2. Olive Oil and Sea Salt. 3. A fresh Carrot on the box! My response: 1. It’s frozen. 2. Rachel Ray bandwagon. 3. That carrot looks nothing like what I got in my frozen meal.). While I laud making a healthier frozen meal, I think they’re going a little overboard with the “Farmers’ Harvest” tag. If you make something that’s good you don’t need hyperbolic packaging.

The chicken is pretty good despite not resembling what’s advertised on the box. No cartilage thus far (none of the chicken wound up with that Chicken McNugget “suprise” where you take a bite of what looks like normal chicken and you get a fist-sized chunk of gristle or cartilage. Definitely one of the most unappetizing aspects of reconstituted chicken, you know, aside from the whole process of reconstituting chicken parts into the proverbial ‘chicken boot’ [of course I couldn't find a picture of the proverbial McNugget boot shape, but suffice it to say that McNuggets are shaped like little boots. Next time you have one, look for it.]), and it’s kind of moist. Their blend of herbs and spices, primarily parsley and sea salt, are satisfactory. You won’t be calling your mother telling her about your amazingly flavored frozen meal, but I have had far worse. The bowtie pasta is alright, nothing stands out positively or negatively. The vegetables (green beans, carrots, and red pepper) are actually some of the best I’ve had from a frozen meal. The veggies taste fairly fresh (considering their circumstances), retaining a bit of crispness and they’re a little bit buttery (I’d hazard to guess that’s the vegetable oil that the box lauds).

I tasted each component seperately for the purposes of this review, but as you can see above I like to get all of the pieces together in a war of textures and flavors. You can certainly eat this meal without adding anything to it, but I’m a fiend for hotsauce so after my initial impressions I added a little bit of Louisiana Hot Sauce on top. Considering this is a frozen meal, and not freshly prepared I would recommend this for anyone that needs an easy meal they can heat up in the microwave.

Stouffer’s you get a Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars for this one (based on quality of components, flavors, and cost). Neither great nor bad, but totally edible.

-Matt in Tampa

IMPORTANT UPDATE! Here are the boot nuggets:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kingpowercinema/89053032/

In these ‘Economic Times’ I feel it’s an obligation to push out a couple of pauper-esque reviews.  We have daily reminders of our recessed economy in the news, our television programs (What’s that? Dunder Mifflin is declaring bankruptcy?! Oh you sneaky writers for ‘The Office’, making your show so topical), and our daily life.  I am thankful that I do have a job and I can afford to run a semi-comical website that bitches about and praises food.  So, in that vein, a review about a meal had at home!

On a juicy Thursday in September  (it just doesn’t seem to cool down in Tampa until December), my old lady and I decided to cook a hearty homecooked meal.  We chose to create a veritable ‘smörgåsbord’ of Mexican food.  I made ‘Mexican Rice’ on the suggestion from my brother.  Sia made Carne Asada with a side of fresh lettuce, sliced avacados, tomatos, and sauteed onions/garlic/mushrooms.  We also prepared some Pinto beans dressed with finely chopped and sauteed Galric and Onions.

Here you can see a video of my idiotic-ass attempting to take a picture of the ‘Mexican Rice’, I managed to engage the video instead.

List of ingredients in the Rice:
2 cloves of Garlic (finely chopped)
1 white Onion
½ Jalapeno (I kept the seeds in)
2 cups Rice (browned in Oil prior to cooking with water)

Season to your likening with:
Ground Cumin
Salt
Fresh Tomatos
Bouillon

Preparation steps:
Sautee onions, garlic and jalapeno for 5 minutes.
Add 2 cups of rice to the mixture.
Brown the rice without burning it.
After the rice has browned, add 3 cups of water, bring to a boil, turn the heat to low and let sit for roughly 20 minutes.

I did find a recipe that follows the same guidelines and outlines exactly what to do fairly well; you can see that here.  A rule of thumb when cooking rice is typically 1:2, 1 part rice to 2 parts water.  You do need to modify this relationship as you increase the amount of rice you’re cooking.  So when I cook 2 cups of rice I use 3 cups of water.  If I’m cooking 3 cups of rice I’ll use 4 ½ cups of water.  The rice came out fairly well, but I felt it was a little too moist.  I likely needed to brown the rice more prior to introducing the water.

The Pinto beans with Onions and Garlic was fairly easy to prepare.  Sia heated up a sauce pan with a bit of Olive Oil and sauteed the Garlic and Onions.  Next, I turned the heat to low and poured a can of Pinto beans into the pan (I rinsed the beans first). You can focus on the other parts of the meal while this comes to heat.  Prior to serving, I topped the Pinto beans with a bit of Parsley and Cilantro.  The Pinto beans went very well with the Mexican Rice they had a considerable kick from the garlic.

At this point, you could stop and make this a vegetarian day.  The Pinto beans would give you enough protein (as well as flavor) and all I would introduce would be freshly cut veggies as a side.  If you are a ‘Meatatarian’ then you should gladly proceed with making the Carne Asada. I did find a much more complicated version of what Sia did here (the recipe in the link has you add Cilantro and Sugar). We only let the Flank Steak marinate for 45 minutes or so.

Ingredients:
1 or 2 packages of Flank Steak
Salt and freshly Ground Pepper
4 cloves of garlic (finely minced)
2 Jalapenos (kept the seeds in and minced)
1 tsp gound Cumin
3 Limes juiced
½ cup Olive Oil

Preperation:
Score the Steaks lightly with a fork and then put them in a ziplock bag.  Next, add the remainder of the ingredients and give it a couple of good shakes to get everything mixed together.  Make sure to try and remove any excess air in the bag before sealing.  Rest in the refridgerator for 1-2 hours if you have the time.

Cooking:
In a non-stick pan, with a splash of oil, bring the heat to medium-high and cook each side of the steak for a few minutes (until brown).  If you like your meat well down clearly let it cook a bit longer.  Cut and serve.

(you can see our terrible dog hoping for some scraps to fall through the glass to him)

As you can see, the result came out very well.  The marinade helped make the Flank Steak much tenderer as well as infused a whopping amount of flavor.  Each bite had a citrus punch that was refreshing.

Everything went very well together and I would suggest that anyone with some time and a taste for some spice try making this.  If I had a chance to do this meal over I would marinate the Flank Steak a bit longer and make the Pinto Bean dish from dried Pinto Beans.

The meal merited Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

-Matt in Tampa

I decided to review a meal I made at home.  Specifically a samich I made.  One thing to note, I love junk food.  I seriously love junk food. Pizza, burgers, tacos, wings, Thai, American influenced Chinese food… shit, you name it and chances are that I like it.  So, on a lazy Sunday I sometimes get lazy and order something or pick something greasy up from a drive through. Today, I was strong and picked up some fresh goods from the store, made a healthy meal, and arguably ended up having something tastier and likely ended up more satisfied/satiated.  The bonus of eating at home as I’m sure everyone knows, you generally get fresher products and you spend far less than you would going out.

I do most of my shopping at Publix.  Publix is a chain of grocery stores that started in Florida and is only available in the South.  According to Wikipedia, Publix can be found in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. For those of you from the North, it’s similar to a classier Kroger.  You can see a Kroger akin to Publix located in the Detroit area (Coolidge north of 14 Mile).  The only other way I can relate Publix would be to call it a less-hip Wholefoods.  It’s also considerably less expensive.  Publix does carry a decent amount of organic foods, at a premium of course.  Why am I describing Publix?  The reason is that I believe to make a great samich, you need to have great resources or components to include.  If possible I like to hit up one of the fruit/veggie stands to get my greens (as well as fruits), but Publix is a good stand-in when you can’t make it there.  A bonus of making it to the fruit/veggie stand is that you generally spend less and you generally get a larger amount of fruit or vegetables to pick from.  Here is what I used to make my samich:

First, the bread.  I love a great Rye bread or a Pumpernickel/Rye swirl. Depending on what you’re having, sourdough can also be great.  Unfortunately Publix didn’t have a great selection of fresh baked bread so I opted for Pepperidge Farm’s seeded rye.  Apparently this bread is ‘Jewish Rye’, I’m guessing it was somehow Chosen? In a literal sense I did choose the bread, and placed it in my basket so maybe that’s their angle:

The kicker for me after the bread is the primary component of the samich.  What should you slap between those 2 slices of carbs?  Why not something you love?  I happen to love pepper, thus I love Pastrami.  There is nothing better than a meat that has been brined, smoked, and then encrusted with pepper, garlic, coriander, paprika, cloves, allspice and mustard.  It lends a bit of crunch as well as some kick.  Today, I decided to go low-cal and got the Turkey Pastrami.  Publix offers their brand of lunch meats that are mediocre yet passable, but they also offer Boar’s Head.  Boar’s Head isn’t cheap but it’s worth the price… it’s like the difference between a hotdog and a good bratwurst.  The first will do if you’re in a bind for cash or it’s all you have but unless you’re 5 years old, you’ll probably want the meat that isn’t composed of tails and assholes.

Now, to take a samich worthy of putting in your mouth you need to add toppings.  I happen to love anything green and I wanted some crunch today.  I went with Alfalfa Sprouts, Cucumber, Tomato, and Baby Spinach.  The other direction I sometimes take is to add Avocado (in which case I’d skip cheese) or include pickles.  You can substitute Baby Spinach with some other leafy green like Romaine Hearts or Iceburg Lettuce, but I like the substantive taste and texture of fresh leaf-Spinach.  To note, I also added Swiss to top off the mix.

I don’t think it’s necessary to include this, but perhaps some folks don’t know… with Pastrami you always go with Mustard.  In particular, you should be using a Brown Mustard, it has a kick that normal mustard won’t deliver and will round out your samich.

For sides to my samich I included some fresh carrots, cucumber slices and stuffed Green Olives.  The olives were stuffed with Blue Cheese and tossed in some olive oil.

Now that you’ve been introduced to the components of my samich here is the assembled beast:

I love this samich because it has a little bit of kick from the meat and the brown mustard, but it also carries a diverse range of textures.  The sprouts add a somewhat earthy flavor that gets balanced by the clean flavor of the cucumber and the juiciness of the tomato.  The baby spinach added a great degree of roughage as well as added it’s own great flavor.  The olives were salty and acidic but were balanced well by the strong blue cheese. This is a samich I would highly recommend to anyone that loves a little bit of kick and is open to anything that will please the taste buds.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

-Matt in Tampa

Food Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars – It’s pasta bowl, man. It’s pretty tasty.
Service Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars – Our server was not thrilled with us. Also, I wanted food, not a breakdown of the rate structuring of DirecTV
Atmosphere Rating: 3 out of 5 stars – It’s an Olive Garden. They are all seriously the same
Price Rating: 3 out of 5 stars – Dinner for two (all you can eat), salad, bread sticks, drinks. $30 after tax/tip
Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars – It’s pasta bowl, man

When and if I (n)ever adopt a child from some horrible place where they don’t have food, I will have to make sure I time it right so that one of the first things we can do is experience true American culture at an “Italian” restaurant.

That’s right kids, you heard right. Never-ending Pasta Bowl is back. And, according to our waitress, it doubles the number of guests they have.

For those not in the know, Pasta Bowl gets you free salad, breadsticks, and as many bowls of pasta as you can feed into your horrible mouth for about $14 after drink, tax, and tip. Not bad. The only real catch is that you have to pick from the pasta on the list. The list has your basic types of pasta, and a few types of sauce, and any combination your horrible mind deems fit for your horrible mouth can be yours just as soon as they can slop it into a feed bag and bring it to your horrible face.

I keep saying “horrible” because I usually eat so much that I feel like I’m going to die.

The restaurant itself isn’t bad either. Our server acted like she could totally be doing something better. Also, we were seated next to the server station, so I am now well aware that one of the employees is switching from DirecTV to Comcast and is so happy to be doing so. See, the rate structuring for DirecTV just doesn’t make any sense, and according to another employee, it is a huge scam and they basically commit fraud every time they bill you.

One quirky thing that happened during our visit was that I arrived with 2 members of my party about 20 minutes before the other two, so I had them take my name down so they could direct the latecomers to my table. Two hostesses and my waitress made sure I did this. I’ll be damned if when they got there the hostesses had no idea what was going on. Oh well, that is why Alexander Graham Bell invented cellular communications.

I generally stick to alfredo dishes, so that is pretty much all I had (but 3 bowls). I understand the mushroom sauce was undelicious, but I can’t say from experience.

Alfredo sauce with spinach.

Some kind of noodle with regular alfredo sauce. Not a winner

Alfredo with spinach, again

Other members of my party felt like spending some more money, and got an appetizer and a dessert. They looked and tasted pretty delicious. Sorry, these pictures are after the vultures picked at them for a minute.

Delicious fried thing.

Delicious sugar dough things and chocolate dipping sauce

Basically, if when you go to the never-ending glutton bowl, tell the server to shove off when she brings you salad, and if possible go without a drink. Fill your horrible stomach with 95% pasta to get maximum value for your dollar. Or don’t.

Components of Today’s meal:
Grilled Chicken chunks
Linguini noodles
Broccoli
Red Bell Peppers
Alfredo Sauce

The nicest thing about the Healthy Choice Café Steamers (referred to as “Steamers” from here on out) is that they deliver on their packaging. The picture on the box features larger bell peppers than you actually receive and the color of the ‘alfredo’ sauce is quite muted from the almost neon-“MacNCheez” color it actually has, but other than that, the picture is fairly accurate.

The above mixture is prior to mixing. It lets you see the components of the meal a little more clearly, and frankly it looks a little more appetizing prior to it being mixed. As you can see the Broccoli sports a vibrant color and the chicken actually appears to be ‘chunks’ of tenderloin instead of reprocessed left-overs crammed into a ‘nugget’.

Post-mix doesn’t look as appetizing to me, but nor is it disgusting. The one thing that I’m not a fan of is how overly bright orange the sauce is. I really feel like I’m about to tear into a classy version of Kraft “MacNCheez”.

As the product line’s name states, the food is a fairly healthy choice. The nutritional facts don’t try any shyster non-sense by stating that there are 2 or 3 servers to the package. (Honestly, who opens a can of Coke, drinks half, and then decides that’s enough for the day and tosses it back in the fridge?) This particular meal weighs in at 250 calories and represents a moderate spread of the daily nutrients you should consume. The only negative to these meals are the actual ingredient list; there are about 70 items listed under ingredients and appear as if the makers are attempting to construct a bomb out of your food.

With the first bite I get noodles, broccoli and chicken. The ‘alfredo’ is fairly starchy without much of a flavor kick, the most apparent attribute is that it’s creamy. The broccoli holds up very well in the meal, it’s got some crispy bite to it and yet is still tender. The chicken is mediocre and there is a bit of fat in 2 of my bites. The noodles are fairly sweet but aren’t gummy or over/under-done. I don’t feel like I’m attacking Cthulu while eating, so it’s a decent experience.

After finishing the bowl, I’m fairly satisfied. The meal came in at about $2.30 and is an excellent price for a frozen meal. For what this is, the meal delivered. Steamers have held a soft-spot in my heart as they’ve been one of the few frozen meals that I can eat on a consistent basis. The best I can say about this meal is that I neither look forward to it, nor do I dread it.

On the whole the meal rates Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars stars as a frozen meal.

-Matt in the Cube.