In my quest to clean up the freezer, I made these leftover Amazon cheese ravioli yesterday. They were $4.10 for the 24 oz package when we last bought them, but they’re currently unavailable.
The ravioli are filled with a mixture of ricotta, bread crumbs, Romano cheese and water, seasoned with salt, calcium carbonate, corn starch, parsley and black pepper – a pretty standard filling for cheese ravioli. It’s not particularly flavorful, however. The pasta is a little on the thick side.
In all, the ravioli are just OK – but that can be said of most frozen cheese ravioli. They are cheaper than most and they serve as a vehicle for whatever sauce you put on it.
I absolutely love Indian food, it’s my favorite in the world, but it is the most challenging to be able to eat at home. I have always found preparing Indian food difficult – even when recipes succeed, it’s usually a lot of work to get there. Takeout has become expensive, and my last experiences with Shef (which I can no longer afford anyway), were less than brilliant. So we are left with commercial Indian food which, IMHO, sucks.
Take this Sukhi’s Butter Chicken, which my husband insists in buying at Costco when he goes shopping by himself ($16 for 2 pouches, or 4 meals if you add rice). It’s OK, but it tastes nothing like actual butter chicken.
You make it by emptying the included pouch into a bowl and microwaving for 3 minutes. As you take your first bite, the smell/taste of tikka is strong, but it manages to dissipate fairly quickly. You are left with a curry which, as most commercial tikka masala/butter chicken sauces, is way too acidic – probably from the added citric acid. The acid overwhelms any other flavor the sauce might have, hiding most spices. It is slightly spicy, so if all you want is a bit of heat, this might satisfy. For this reason, my husband actually likes it. I will add that it has a hint of sweetness, but I don’t think that improves it.
Sukhi’s is a family owned Bay Area business, so that, at least, is a plus.
with Ball Park Burger Buns & Kraft American Cheese
I’m in the process of cleaning out my fridge & freezer and came about one last frozen ground beef burger patty from Amazon Grocery which my daughter left in the freezer before she went away to college. I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a try.
I ate the burger patties in a bun with a slice of American cheese, mayo, Dijon mustard and ketchup. I had a small taste of the patty itself and I can’t say I liked it, it just tasted weird. As part of the burger, it tasted like your run-of-the-mill normal burger, the type you’ve had a thousand times. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing to complain about either.
The patties can be cooked from frozen and are made of just beef, with 15% fat content. Amazon Grocery also sells 20% fat patties, which might be tastier.
The 2 lb package of 8 burgers which was $9.60 a month ago, is now $11.20 – each 4oz burger patty is thus ~$1.50. At $5.60/lb these patties are about the same price of fresh 20% fat ground beef when it goes on sale at Safeway – but they do offer the convenience of being pre-made and frozen so you can use them whenever you need them. All in all, I don’t think I’d buy them again myself, but then again, I never bought them in the first place.
Amazon is, of course, one of the most evil corporations in the world as well.
I served the burger with a slice of Kraft singlesAmerican cheese. American cheese is a “cheese product” which takes cheddar and processes it into a more meltable substance. It has a pretty distinct flavor, with a metallic/bitter undertone, and it’s not something anyone would munch on. But it works on burgers and even grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s regularly sold in individually wrapped slices as the cheese is pretty sticky and it’s otherwise hard to separate from each other. These are also easy to pack in a lunch box. Kraft singles have long been the most popular brand for single serve slices, probably due to decades of intense advertising.
American cheese is so ubiquitous on burgers at burger joints and restaurants, that it becomes an acquired and familiar taste. It’s not something I particularly like, it has a strange bitter artificial taste, probably from the chemicals in it, so it’s not a cheese I normally use. Still, we have a huge package of it in the fridge as we use it to wrap the dog’s medicine in it, and I figure I’d give a try here as well. It went perfectly fine with the patty, giving it that familiar burger flavor and melting beautifully (I put it on the patty when I flip it). It’s really perfect for a no frills burger like this one. Do note that they are not vegetarian, as they include rennet.
Costco sells a 4lb package of American singles for $13, so each slice is 14 cents. On the other hand, Safeway sells the 24-oz package for $9, or 28 cents a slice.
Finally, I put it in a plain Ball Park burger bun, which I’d gotten at Grocery Outlet ($3.30, the regular price elsewhere). Ball Park is best known for its cheap hotdogs, and their buns are exactly what you’d expect: completely generic. There is nothing remarkable about them, but they were still fresh-ish a few days after I’d bought them and allowed the burger to taste like a burger, adding no off flavors.
In all, if you’re looking for an easy, generic burger, all these items worked well.
Ballpark buns are manufactured by Mexican based multinational Bimbo Bakeries.
American breakfasts are weird. Ideally, it consists of a cornucopia of savory and sweet items, both healthy and coma inducing. In reality, they are often hurried and toast-based. I’m not a breakfast eater myself, but I get hungry mid-morning and then I want something. And that something is a pastry of some type, shelf-stabled or refrigerated, than can be readied in minutes. Often enough this is a Pillsbury toaster strudel.
Toaster strudels are a frozen flaky pastry filled, most commonly, with a fruit spread. You toast them directly from the freezer and top them with a sugar icing, as in the package picture (though you have to have skills to not make it look like a mess). I don’t need the extra sugar, so I don’t bother with that last step. They come in a variety of flavors, but the fillings are not distinctive enough to bother with different reviews.
I see them as a less dry alternative to Pop-Tarts. The flaky pastry is moister and if you can get it at the exact right temperature, so the pastry is warm but the filling is not burning hot, it can be quite pleasant to eat. Alas, it’s hard to get there.
My favorite flavor is strawberry cream cheese, followed by the cinnamon roll. I don’t even bother looking at the nutritional label or I wouldn’t eat it. I will note that they do contain palm oil and are not vegan.
I got this box of 6 for $2.50, out of $5 regular price.
I continue my cooking strike (which is now only set to last until I empty out my refrigerator), so when I saw this Rana Chicken Marsala Linguinemeal kit on sale at the supermarket for $, I thought I’d give it a try. Rana usually has good products, but I’ll say they really missed the mark here.
The kit comes with a bag of semi-cooked pasta and a bag of sauce. You mix the pasta and sauce in the plastic bowl provided and then you microwave. Each kit serves one person, and the portion was generous (or it felt that way due to how unappetizing it was).
The results weren’t good. First, the pasta was too salty and a bit undercooked, but that’s relatively minor. The real problem was the strange and off taste of the sauce. I can’t quite identify it, but it brought me five decades back to when we visited friends of my parents for dinner and they served us ravioli with a similarly horrible taste. They tasted hollow, as if flavor had been replaced by a vacuum, but they also reminded me of chlorine. Ultimately, I thought it might be dirt – perhaps the off note was really from the mushrooms. There were, don’t get me wrong, some hints of marsala sauce – when putting a bite in my mouth I could feel the delicious umami taste of chicken marsala coming, only for the hope to disappear at the first bite and become saltiness and dearth.
The chicken, meanwhile, was also unpleasant. It was tough, having that weird chewy consistency of microwaved and/or texturized chicken, and just being unplesant to bite.
All in all, this was a failure. I’d be curious to see if other flavors are just as bad, but not enough to risk biting into that chicken again.
Refrigerated, ready-to-heat prepared meats, are great to keep in the refrigerator (their expiration date is usually months after you buy them) for when you need a last-minute meal. You can add some tortilla and salsa to this one and make some quick tacos, or use them as a filling in a sandwich. Of all the ready-to-heat meats out there, I think Del Real carnitas might be my favorite.
The carnitas are pretty flavorful, though I’d characterized the marinade as mild. They are a bit on the dry side, but I do appreciate the lack of big chunks of fat (at least in this package). They do work better if you add some moisture to them, either through condiments in a sandwich or salsa/sour cream/guacamole in a taco or burrito. They do not have charred/roasted pieces, which I sort of miss, but there are overall a good product.
They are pretty quick to ready. They come in a pouch which you microwave for a few minutes before opening into the provided plastic bowl.
I usually buy them when Safeway has them on sale for $5 (off the $13 regular price). At that price they are a bargain, even though the package suffers from shrinkflation and only offers 15 oz.
What exactly is it about Pocky snacks that makes us love them so much? The cookies dipped in cream icings are not the most delicious thing in the world, they are silly to eat if you’re an adult, and they’re fairly expensive. I got these Peanut Butter Pocky on sale for $1.50 (off $2.50 regular price), and it’s just 1 1/4 oz worth of product. Yet, they are irresistible.
I wasn’t particularly fond of these peanut butter pockys, though. The sweet icing did not taste like peanut butter at all. I’m not sure what they tasted like, but it was somewhat off putting. Not enough to prevent me from eating them all, however – though at least not all at once. I wouldn’t get them again, but you know I’d eat them if I had them.
Carnitas, basic but good. there isn’t much flavor beyond that of the pork, if there is a marinade, I can’t really taste it. It also lacked parts that are crispy and overly roasted. But the fundamental flavor is nice, the carnitas are pretty lean and a bit dry, but they would work to mix with a sauce or dressing.
As you might have noticed, I’ve been both in a cooking strike and grocery review writing frenzy. I go through cooking strikes frequently, particularly after periods of intense cooking. Still, I’ve promised myself that as soon as we eat out everything in the fridge, I’m back to cooking.
Meanwhile, I got a couple of Boston Market frozen entrees at the supermarket because they were just $3 on sale. As it turned out, that’s really all they are worth, even nowadays. But I’d remembered Boston Market as some of the better frozen meals and I thought I’d give them a chance again.
I hadn’t had this “Market Marry Me Chicken Pasta” before and it was quite disappointing. It consists ofcavatappi in a tomato sauce with pieces of what I’d call a chicken product. The pasta is pasta, cooked al dente. The sauce lacks flavor, though it has a kick. The frozen spinach adds bitterness but nothing else. It was in all, even less appetizing than your run of the mill frozen pasta. It was much improved by adding my own shredded cheese and parmesan, but if I’m going to start modifying it I might as well cook the whole thing myself.
The biggest problem, though, was the chicken. I’ve never knowingly had canned chicken, but I’m guessing this is what it’s like. The texture was just all wrong, spongy but somewhat hard, like it had retained water. I wouldn’t say it was chewy per se, but each bite was unpleasant. The flavor wasn’t bad, but that texture is just horrible.
The lesson here is to not be lazy and boil some damn pasta myself.
Boston Market frozen meals are owned by Bellisio Foods which in turn is owned by Charoen Pokphand, a Thai private conglomerate.
Wilkin & Sons Tiptree Orange & Tangerine Marmalade (~£3 in UK , ~$9 in US) is, as you can expect, bittersweet – and so is my experience with it. I bought this little jar, a year ago, when I was staying with my mother after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We grew up drinking afternoon tea, and I retook this habit with my mom. I needed something to put in my bread, so I bought this marmalade. A couple of months later, after she died, i brought it home where it has mostly stayed untouched – as I had other open jars here.
I opened it yesterday and found that the top was completely crystallized. I’ve stored it high in the refrigerator door, so that might be the issue. I just mixed it back.
This marmalade is absolutely delicious. It has a strong Seville orange flavor, with bright bitter and sweet notes. It’s sweeter than other orange marmalades, and maybe it’s the right jam for me to eat now, when I can finally let the sweetness of my memories with my mother overcome the bitterness of loss.
I am once again amazed at how the Brits are able to create such an amazing jam for such low price (in England). It’s not like other foodstuff in England is particularly cheap, so it’s not just a matter of exchange rates.
These adorable mini-cupcakes were available at Grocery Outlet for $2 a dozen (other flavors also available), and we figured they were worth a try. For the price, we can’t complain.
The cupcakes are very small (pictured here in front of a jar of pistachios for comparison), and while they could fit in a single bite, it’s probably more polite to eat them in two. The yellow cake is a bit crumbly, Grocery Outlet sells many near-expiration products so perhaps that’s because they weren’t too fresh. but tasty enough. It’s your typical yellow cake. The smores flavored topping had a hint of marshmallow flavor, but I also thought it tasted a bit like coffee. It was very sweet, too much so for my taste. They probably work best as a quick bite to get a sugar rush.
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