The vegan food craze may be over, but I’m still left with a vegetarian daughter. In general, she prefers the taste and flavor of Impossible burgers to those of more natural black bean or veggie burgers. We now know that impossible patties are full of fat of chemicals and are not at all healthy, but that’s precisely what makes them so good for people who choose vegetarianism for ethical rather than health reasons.
Costco occasionally sells these 10-packs of patties for about $16. This makes them a great dea;. You keep them in the freezer and cook them from frozen, about 5 minutes per side on a hot skillet. The patties are thick and a quick meal.
After my good luck with California Pizza Kitchen’s version of thin crust Margherita Pizza, I thought I’d give the Safeway version a try. The differences were amazing. It’s really hard to understand how two products that have basically the same ingredients can differ so much.
The Signature Margherita pizza cooked faster than the suggested time, and the crust was think, super crispy and closer to a cracker than a pizza. The sauce was non-existent, providing no hint of flavor if it was actually there. The rest of the ingredients were tasteless, either together or in the aggregate. The basil provided the occasional shot of bitterness, but even that was fleeting. Basically, it tasted like nothing.
The pizza, which should serve two (particularly if you add a salad) was $6 on sale from $7 regular price.
InnovAsian offers several frozen Chinese-restaurant inspired meals. I guess they figured their name was broad enough to branch out to other cuisines, so they’ve now added a few Indian entrees. They are mostly chicken-based.
They were on sale last Friday ($5 from $9 regular price), and while i was pretty apprehensive after my horrible experience with P.F. Chang’s chicken dishes, and my general disappointment with commercial Indian dishes, I gave the Crispy Butter Chicken one a try. It was better than expected.
You can either microwave or air fry the chicken in this meal, but the former is quicker and simpler so I went with it. The result was chicken that had the texture of chicken. The butter sauce it came with was frozen in a solid block, and it took about 10 minutes of soaking in warm water before it was flexible enough to add it to the chicken and finish heating them up together. Thus the whole process takes longer than you would otherwise expect. It serves one person by itself or two if you add side dishes – InnovAsian tends to skimp on the actual protein and make up the weight with lavish amounts of sauce.
The results were fine. As I mentioned, the chicken had the right texture and the sauce, while still having that element of acidity that all commercial Indian curries seem to have, was not completely unlike a butter sauce – and it was tasty. I ended up actually eating every last drop. So, as far as commercial frozen Indian entrees go, I’d recommend this one.
Come October every year, pumpkin spice season starts in the US. Pumpkin pies have been the traditional Thanksgiving dessert since the 18th century, and a couple of decades ago Starbucks had the brilliant either to create a pumpkin spiced latter – a drink that both offered the taste and mouthfeel of pumpkin pie. Since then, pumpkin spiced flavored everything fills our markets in the fall, and every year there are more products to try.
One of my daughters loves pumpkin spiced foodstuff (though only in October and November), and she got these Belgian Boys Pumpkin Spiced pancakes at Grocery Outlet ($3) last week. They are microwavable and super fast to prepare. She served them with lots of maple syrup and I stole a pancake to review. They were really good.
The silver-dollar sized pancakes are not flat, but rather puffed on both sides. The texture is more cakey than a traditional pancake, but still very light. They have a nice, light flavor on their own, which is really elevated by the maple syrup. It’s really more a dessert han a breakfast item.
I have young nephews, so of course I’d heard of Kpop Demon Hunters, even though I didn’t see the movie. Still, it wasn’t as much the branding that enticed me to buy these Kpop Demon Hunters Golden Waffles when they were on sale at Safeway for $3.50 (from $4.50 regular price), as the fact that I’m a sucker for anything that says “brown sugar”.
These were OK. Serviceable as a quick breakfast snack. They smell amazing while they’re toasting, but the brown sugar cinnamon flavor is not very strong – you wouldn’t necessarily know they weren’t just plain waffles unless you were very familiar with that variety. They are also, weirdly, a tad salty. All in all, I’d say they are interchangeable with plain waffles.
Swedish Meatballs was the second Boston Market frozen entree I bought when these were on sale last week. I remember having them during past cooking strikes years ago, and I remember them being not too bad. Unfortunately this time they’re a definite thumbs down.
The problem was not the meatballs, which were actually pretty tasty on their own. They had a nice texture and the ingredients are not too bad. They’re made with beef and pork, vegetable and soy protein and herbs and spices. If the dish was just the meatballs, I might buy it again.
But it wasn’t, it came with mediocre noodles (I mean, that’s all you can expect) and a completely insipid sauce. It’s really amazing how you can make a sauce and have it have absolutely no flavor. I really don’t understand it. Maybe the dish is directed to people who have COVID and never regained their taste buds, but it’s the definition of insipid. If you’re going to consume 520 calories and 22 grams of fat, you should at least get some flavor out of it.
And this has been my last experiment with Boston Market. If they couldn’t get either dish I tried right, I’m done with them.
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.
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.
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.
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