REVIEW: Red Baron Supreme Pizza By The Slice

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Somewhere out there someone is warming up the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice in the microwave and while watching it rotate to pass the time they think to themselves that the product is a metaphor for their forlorn life. And that person could possibly be the loneliest person in the world.

Who is the loneliest person in the world?

The loneliest person in the world wants a cat. Or maybe two cats. Or three. Or whatever the number of cats the Humane Society allows them to adopt. Or whatever the loneliest person in the world can fit in their studio apartment. However, the loneliest person in the world doesn’t want to be known in their apartment complex as “the cat person” who has a machine gun bunker’s worth of kitty litter bags stacked in their apartment. Fortunately for the loneliest person in the world, their landlord has prevented “the cat person” label from being affixed to them by neighbors because pets aren’t allowed in the building.

The loneliest person in the world chooses to work in the exciting 10-keyed realm of data entry because it’s the Solitare of the employment world. It’s one of the few things the loneliest person in the world excels at. The loneliest person in the world is amazingly accurate and has never made a mistake, but double checks their work because the company’s standard operating procedures say so. Even more impressive is the fact that the loneliest person in the world is ambidextrous when in comes to punching numeric keys in a robotic fashion. The loneliest person in the world wonders why there is so much interest surrounding the world’s fastest phone texter. The loneliest person in the world believes they would type circles around the world’s fastest texter, if the loneliest person in the world had a cell phone, which they have no need for since no one calls them.

You would think the loneliest person in the world would have some friends at work, but due to poor social skills caused by an extremely sheltered childhood, the loneliest person in the world doesn’t interact with co-workers, but does acknowledge their greetings with smiles and nods. The loneliest person in the world doesn’t have anything in common with fellow employees. The loneliest person in the world doesn’t think anyone in the office is into hobbies that the loneliest person in the world enjoys, like medieval horseback archery, duct tape art and egg shell carving.

So the loneliest person in the world sits alone in the corner of the office’s break room, eating the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice, which is perfect for the loneliest person in the world since they have no friends to share the other slices with if they had a whole pizza. The loneliest person in the world wishes that it didn’t take so long to prepare, which included microwaving it for 60 seconds on the edge of the microwave oven’s turntable, then 70-85 seconds in the middle of the turntable and then, if the cheese isn’t completely melted, continue cooking in 15 second intervals. The loneliest person in the world has to microwave it an extra 90 seconds to get the cheese completely melted. Although it’s no problem for a data entry expert to press the numbers one and five repeatedly on any kind of keypad, the loneliest person in the world wishes they didn’t have to do so during a lunch break.

Although the life of the loneliest person in the world isn’t very exciting, it’s much more exciting than the flavor of the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice. While the packaging brags about the fact that the two pizza slices included were “fire baked,” I wonder why that matters much since it’s going to be put through a microwave for more than two minutes. Sadly, during those two minutes, the “special crisping tray” doesn’t do a good job of crisping the crust. The amount of toppings on each slice was sad compared with what’s on the front of the box. Perhaps if each pizza slice had a decent amount of sausage, pepperoni, bell peppers and onions, it would’ve tasted better because it’s not a very flavorful pizza. Not even the sauce could save it because it was neither spicy or sweet.

If I were the loneliest person in the world, I’d avoid the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice. Although, since the pizza is kind of sad and pathetic, perhaps it would make the loneliest person in the world feel better.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 slice – 350 calories, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 910 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 41 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, 15 grams of protein, 8% vitamin A, 25% calcium 4% vitamin C and 15% iron.)

*made with fully hydrogenated oil

Item: Red Baron Supreme Pizza By The Slice
Price: $3.49 (on sale)
Size: 2 slices
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Microwaveable. Comes with two slices. Being really good a data entry. Made with real cheese. Good source of calcium.
Cons: Tolerable pizza. Not very flavorful. Difficult to make cheese melt completely. Not a lot of toppings. Special crisping tray kind of sucks. Awesome source of sodium. Not being able to have pets.

REVIEW: Stouffer’s Corner Bistro Stuffed Melt and Soup Steak & Swiss Stuffed Melt with Broccoli Cheddar Soup

/ / Spotted on Shelves / 16 Comments

I feel like I’ve been stuck in a rut lately. I’ve dubbed it the “4 out of 10” rut. It seems like everything I review is either spectacularly underwhelming or just plain blech. Which is why I was so glad to see Stouffer’s new Stuffed Melt and Soup. It’s an ingenious idea with three available combinations that all sound like they could be really tasty. I chose the Steak & Swiss Stuffed Melt with Broccoli Cheddar Soup over the Three Cheese & Ham Stuffed Melt with Creamy Tomato Bisque because I can’t seem to find a tomato soup I like, so I wanted to give Stouffer’s the best chance possible to succeed in making my taste buds give them a round of applause.

Apparently there’s also a Chicken Bacon Ranch Stuffed Melt with Baked Potato Soup available, but they didn’t have it at my store. If it had been there, I would have had some tough decisions to make. Actually, I probably would have just bought them both, after standing in front of the frozen food section for 15 minutes, paralyzed by my inability to make a quick trip to the grocery store last less than half an hour. I really shouldn’t be left unsupervised.

As a brief side note, food manufacturers really need to start cutting down on their product names. Seriously, “Stouffer’s Corner Bistro Stuffed Melt and Soup Steak & Swiss Stuffed Melt with Broccoli Cheddar Soup?” Is the Stouffer’s marketing team working on the Dickensian pay scale? Can’t we trim it down a little? Also, who uses the term “stuffed melt?” It’s a fucking sandwich. Treat it as such. Or at least be less fucking redundant.

The entire description of the SCBSMSSSSMBCS on the front of the box is as follows: “Herb-topped focaccia bread filled with beef steak, onions and mushrooms in a swiss cheese sauce paired with creamy broccoli and cheddar cheese soup.”

Whew! Thank God they specified beef steaks. I thought I was in for some crazy fish steak and swiss cheese adventure.

There are no conventional oven cooking instructions, only microwave. That’s how fucking serious Stouffer’s is about giving you a bakery fresh taste in minutes. You are strictly not allowed to take your time. The top of the box tears away, leaving you with a handy little tray to hold your soup and sandwi…stuffed melt. You pop the soup in by itself for a minute thirty, then you add the melt with its convenient crisping sleeve for another three and a quarter minutes. Voila!

And yes, I spilled some of the soup into the tray by accident. Don’t worry, I scraped most of it off the cardboard with my spoon and ate it. No stone left unturned for you TIB readers! And also, no dignity for me.

I’m really sad to say that the finished product fell well short of my expectations. Let’s start with the soup. The broccoli bits were small but actually had a nice, crunchy texture, whereas you might expect them to be soggy, so that was nice. There wasn’t a whole lot of them, but then again, the soup was pretty small to begin with, so I guess ratio-wise they were on target. The cheese part of the soup was really disappointing.

The flavor was pretty much on par with Campbell’s broccoli and cheese soup, which I actually enjoy, but it was just so watery. It was like cheese water, which is a phrase that actually makes me a little nauseous. The little orange things as pictured on the box were also present. I guess they were supposed to be carrots? They were minuscule and tasted like nothing, but their shape did make me wish I was eating some sort of awesome Tetris soup, except all the pieces were the long, straight pieces that never dropped when I had that giant, gaping, straight chasm that was just begging for that piece. Now I’m mad at Stouffer’s AND Tetris. And I’m still thinking about cheese water, which is just…ugh.

I knew going into this that the “stuffed melt” portion of the meal was probably going to be nothing more than a glorified Hot Pocket, especially after I saw the crisping sleeve. And I was generally right, except Hot Pockets have about 50 percent more filling than this stuffed melt had. It was woefully under-stuffed.

The molten lava cheese, when you could actually find some, was pretty tasty, but the “steak” consisted of largely flavorless tiny pieces, and while I could taste a hint of onion, good luck finding any mushrooms. Who knows, I could have been eating mushrooms that I thought were steak the whole time. I wouldn’t be surprised. Also, they can call the shell herb-topped foccacia bread until they’re blue in the face, but seriously, once again…Hot Pockets. The bread was nicely chewy and texturally acceptable, but it was no artisanal masterpiece.

It’s pretty sad when what seems to be a really great concept fails so badly at execution. It’s also pretty sad when I can tell Stouffer’s that Campbell’s makes a concentrated broccoli and cheese soup that costs 99 cents per can and tastes better than their soup, and that a Hot Pocket has more plentiful and flavorful filling than their stuffed melt. Furthermore, I have a pretty dainty appetite, and after finishing off the Stouffer’s Corner Bistro Stuffed Melt and Soup Steak & Swiss Stuffed Melt with Broccoli Cheddar Soup, I was actually still a little hungry. This could have been a great five-minute, stomach-warming lunch to take to work on a rainy day, but instead it just makes you wish you’d rushed to the bakery down the street and ordered their half-sandwich and soup lunch special.

Looking back on this review, I’m making it sound like Stouffer’s killed my whole family, when what they really did was just offer up a mediocre frozen meal. I guess I just really wanted them to win with such a great concept, which made my disappointment all the more tangible. In all fairness, it’s edible, it’s convenient and probably tastes better than whatever horror show sits in your break area’s vending machine. It just wasn’t the comfort-food-in-a-box that I was hoping it would be.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 stuffed melt and soup (283 grams) — 400 calories, 90 calories from fat, 10 grams of total fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 880 milligrams of sodium, , 41 grams of total carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 7 grams of sugars, 17 grams of protein, 15% vitamin A, 40% calcium, 15% vitamin C and 10% iron.)

Item: Stouffer’s Corner Bistro Stuffed Melt and Soup Steak & Swiss Stuffed Melt with Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Price: $2.99 (on sale; original $3.89)

Size: 1 stuffed melt and soup (283 grams)

Purchased at: Safeway

Rating: 5 out of 10

Pros: Broccoli bits were crisp and tasty. No fish steaks involved. Easy to prepare. Fun carrying tray. Swiss cheese was tasty. Stouffer’s did not kill my whole family.

Cons: Under-stuffed stuffed melt. Cheese water. Good concept, bad execution. Incredibly long food product names. Steak bits too small. Made me want Tetris soup, which does not exist.

REVIEW: P.F. Chang’s Home Menu Shanghai Style Beef

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I don’t dine regularly at P.F. Chang’s because the horse statues in front of their restaurants freak me out. I swear they’re watching me with their blank stone eyes. I’m also afraid, while during the 30-45 minute wait time to be seated, the statues will start glowing, come to life and then chase after me like I’m in an episode of Scooby-Doo.

But I don’t have to face possible horse spirits anymore because I can now enjoy P.F. Chang’s at home with only my personal demons, thanks to their Home Menu line of frozen meals. There are eight varieties: Beef with Broccoli, Orange Chicken, Sweet & Sour Chicken, Ginger Chicken & Broccoli, Shrimp in a Garlic Sauce, General Chang’s Chicken, Shrimp Lo Mein and Shanghai Style Beef.

However, with the Shrimp Lo Mein and Shanghai Style Beef, you won’t be experiencing the frozen versions what you would get at a P.F. Chang’s restaurant since they don’t appear on the menu. The Shanghai Style Beef contains slices of beef with a sweet and savory sauce, onions, string beans and red bell peppers. Unfortunately, unlike the Wanchai Ferry frozen meals, the P.F. Chang’s Home Menu Shanghai Style Beef doesn’t include a starch, like rice or noodles.

To prepare the meal that foolishly doesn’t include rice, you have the option of either preparing it on the stove top or in the way that would’ve made Percy Spencer elated. Since he’s dead and I don’t expect what’s left of his body to start glowing, come back to life and chase after me, I decided to shun Percy Spencer’s invention and kick it stove top style, which involved dumping the contents of the bag into a skillet and letting everything cook for several minutes.

When prepared, the P.F. Chang’s Home Menu Shanghai Style Beef is a very pretty dish. The string beans are a healthy green, like alluring green eyes; the bell peppers are a nice bright red, like luscious red lips; and the beef comes in an edible shade of brown, like perfectly tanned skin. It’s so pretty that if it were a woman in a nightclub, I’d go up to her and say, “You have a beautiful face. I hope it’s the first thing I see when I wake up tomorrow morning.” After that line, I’d expect her to pour her Cosmopolitan on top of my head, laugh at me and yell “jerk” as she storms away.

While it looks pretty on the outside, making out…I mean, eating it out…I mean, consuming it helped me discover that it might be better to look at than eat. The sauce is supposed to be sweet and savory, and it is. But it’s also too mild for my tastes. As for the beef, the slices are a nice size, but I was disappointed I couldn’t really taste the flavor of the beef.

The only things the P.F. Chang’s Home Menu Shanghai Style Beef really has going for itself are the serving sizes, which I thought were ample for two people, and the fact I don’t have to make eye contact with eerie stone horses to eat P.F. Chang’s food.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 package (312 g) – 320 calories, 12 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 1010 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 23 grams of sugar, 17 grams of protein, 10% vitamin A, 10% calcium, 20% vitamin C and 30% iron.)

Item: P.F. Chang’s Home Menu Shanghai Style Beef
Price: $7.00
Size: 22 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Quick to prepare on the stove. Looks really good. Good sized portions for two people. Allows me to eat P.F. Chang’s food without having to make eye contact with scary stone horses. Knowing who the inventor of the microwave oven is. Scooby Doo.
Cons: Sauce is too mild for my tastes. Lacks rice or noodles, which other Asian frozen meal competitors have. Can’t really taste the flavor of the beef. Awesome source of sodium. Waiting for a table at P.F. Chang’s. The horse statues outside of a P.F. Chang’s restaurant.

REVIEW: Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola

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Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola

The Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola was inevitable, which is unfortunate. If you break it down, you’ve got two food innovations (I use the term semi-sarcastically) that came together in a perfect storm of potential horror.

On the one hand, you’ve got the gourmet pizza movement, which cropped up a few decades ago. Based entirely on shit someone told me with no empirical evidence, Wolfgang Puck made the first gourmet pizza, so you can blame him for shit like cream cheese smoked salmon pizza and foie gras pizza and god knows what else. I also blame, again, with very little evidence, California Pizza Kitchen for bringing gourmet pizza to the masses, with creations like cheeseburger pizza and Pear & Gorgonzola pizza. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gourmet pizza and non-traditional toppings. One of the little local pizza joints in my town has a $10 large unlimited topping offer that I abuse on a regular basis to create my own monstrosities. White pizza with a butter parmesan crust with double green olives, feta, onion, tomatoes and artichoke hearts, anyone? I wouldn’t be surprised if they take that deal off the table because I’m single-handedly putting them out of business.

The other part of this equation is the recent explosion of breakfast frozen food products. I don’t know when this started – maybe it’s been around for quite a while and I just never noticed – but I seem to remember a time when, if you wanted a breakfast frozen food, you grabbed yourself a box of Eggo waffles and shut the fuck up about it. Now you’ve got crazy options, from sausage Mcmuffins to bowls with all your shit thrown together to…whatever in God’s name this is.

My point, quite obviously by now, is that Eggo took these two concepts, herded them into a small pen, watched them do the nasty, and what came out a couple minutes later (food gestates quickly) was the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza. They wiped off the amniotic maple syrup and disgusting globs of strawberry jam and said, “I think we’ve got something here.” Kind of like how my friends think their newborn babies are cute, and I think they look like horrible aliens.

I hadn’t noticed this before, but there’s a strange purple sauce-like substance underneath the toppings. Ugh, is that supposed to be yogurt? I am not looking forward to having hot yogurt in my mouth. I’m also not comfortable with that sentence.

The instructions are simple: unwrap the pizza, flip the box over that it was resting in, set it on the silver circle on the back of the container, and throw it in the microwave for a minute to 1 1/2 minutes. I split the difference, and stuck it in there for 1 1/4 minutes. It was still a little cold in the middle, so I stuck it in for the extra 15, but my microwave is also a piece of shit, so bare that in mind. Waiting a minute and a half for a quick breakfast when you’re on the go is a little impressive. It takes me longer to smear cream cheese on a bagel. I have some pretty strict rules about cream cheese.

Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola

It actually smells pretty good coming out of the microwave. It smells like a bowl of oatmeal that has berries and granola in it – warm and inviting, something you’d want to eat on a cold, snowy day. Unfortunately it’s 106 and humid right now where I live, but I’ll close my eyes and use my imagination.

There’s obviously blueberries going on, scattered about the top of the pizza, shriveled up as they tend to do when cooked. They’re distributed nicely, but I would have liked to have seen a few more of them.

I don’t see any other recognizable berries, but there’s some red glop haphazardly strewn over the top. I took some off and tasted it by itself, and it tastes like they took some raspberries and turned them into a puree. It’s definitely real raspberries; it’s got that delicious tartness of the berry and I even got some seeds stuck in my teeth, which is the one thing that annoys me about raspberries. But I welcome them here, since they offer proof of real berry, unless Eggo spent millions of dollars attempting to create a facsimile of raspberry seeds to fool consumers. Probably a lot easier just to throw some berries in a blender and hold true to their claims of “real fruit.”

The dreaded yogurt sauce was nothing to fear after all. It’s very thin, and when I tasted it on its own, it had the faint flavor of mixed berry yogurt, but it was very mild and inoffensive. The granola is spread generously on one side of the pizza, but tapers out until there’s barely any on the other side.

I was truly surprised to see that the crust wasn’t actually a waffle. If I’d look more closely at the box, I might have figured it out, but my mind associates “Eggo” with “waffles” so decisively that I just assumed that would be the case. Instead, the dough of this “pizza” seems to be made out of wheat. It looks like a thin crust pizza crust, except darker. Unfortunately, it’s tasteless, soggy and way too chewy. I’m not even really sure what to call it. Wheat…pizza crust…thing. Except it tastes more like a bland PowerBar than a pizza crust.

There seem to be two fundamental problems with the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola: sogginess and poor topping distribution. The crust and the granola were both way too soggy. Perhaps it would have turned out better if I’d cooked it in the oven, but if you’re eating fruit pizza for breakfast, you either don’t have time to wait for the oven to preheat, you’re a college student who doesn’t even own an oven or you’re young enough that you’re not allowed to use the oven.

As far as the toppings go, the mysterious purple sauce was thin to the point where in some places, you could see bare patches of crust. The raspberry puree, which I think is the best part of this item, is strewn halfheartedly across the pizza, globbed up in some places and simply nonexistent in others. The granola is piled high on one half the pizza, but peters out into scattered flakes.

I have to say, I expected this whole “fruit pizza” thing to be a horror show. Instead, it just left me disappointed. If done correctly, it would have been quite tasty. A less chewy, less soggy, more flavorful crust, coated thickly with the delicious raspberry puree, a generous layer of crispy granola, and piled high with blueberries, would have actually been something that I’d consider spending 1 1/2 minutes nuking in the morning for a quick breakfast. Unfortunately, that’s not what the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola really is, so I think I’ll just stick with real pizza for breakfast. That box of double green olives, feta, and everything else pizza that’s been sitting out on the counter all night looks pretty good right now.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 individual-size pizza (5.3 ounces) — 390 calories, 110 calories from fat, 13 grams of total fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 3 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 390 milligrams of sodium, , 62 grams of total carbohydrates, 4 grams of dietary fiber, 17 grams of sugars, 10 grams of protein, 0% vitamin A, 6% calcium, 0% vitamin C and 8% iron.)

Item: Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola
Price: $1.67 (on sale; normally $3.29)
Size: 1 individual-size pizza (5.3 ounces)
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Raspberry puree was delicious. Taking advantage of unlimited topping deals. Quick and easy to make. Purple sauce was not scary.
Cons: Soggy, tasteless crust and soggy granola. “Hot yogurt in my mouth” making me uneasy. Uneven and sloppily applied toppings. Just the idea of fruit pizza making me shudder. 46 percent of total fat was saturated fat on what appears on the surface to be a healthy food item.

REVIEW: Pillsbury Sweet Moments Chocolate Fudge Molten Lava Brownies

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Pillsbury has been the champion of making baking easier with their pre-made cookie dough. And they have been the thorn in the side of fat, pale people everywhere who get poked in the stomach by their friends who hope to make them giggle like the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Now Pillsbury has completely taken the “aking” out of baking by introducing their new Sweet Moments line of products, which consists of bite-sized, ready-to-eat brownies in a bag and their microwaveable molten lava brownies.

If you saw my pale belly that’s been poked several times by my friends to try to make me giggle, you might be able to tell I enjoy molten lava cakes and their gooey warm innards. Unfortunately, these Sweet Moments Chocolate Fudge Molten Lava Brownies don’t have gooey warm innards. Instead, there’s a layer of chocolate fudge that sits on top of the brownie, looking like smooth pahoehoe lava. This is extremely disappointing and it hurts me like I’m walking on jagged ‘a’a lava.

While there’s no baking involved, the instructions call for the brownie, and the four-inch bowl it comes in, to be warmed up in the microwaved for 15 seconds. I put mine in for 20 seconds. When I pulled it out, the bottom of the brownie was warmed perfectly, but the top crust and top layer of chocolate were still on the cold side, making the molten lava part of the dessert not at all molten.

If you prefer your brownies chewy, like I do, you won’t enjoy the way the brownie turns out, which is a lot more cake-like. Although, if you don’t warm it up at all, it’s a lot more chewier. But taste-wise it is what the box says it is, “Decadent & Delicious.” It’s really sweet and chocolatey, so I suggest having a tall glass of milk with you while you eat it.

Again, the Sweet Moments Chocolate Fudge Molten Lava Brownie is really good, but for a company that encourages us to bake, I’m disappointed Pillsbury baked it for us. At least the microwaveable Betty Crocker’s Warm Delights make me feel like I’m actually preparing something, even though it just involves mixing water with cake mix, microwaving it for 45 seconds and then drizzling it with frosting.

I guess I believe that eating pre-baked brownies will give you sweet moments, but baking brownies will give you sweet memories.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 brownie – 370 calories, 19 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 180 milligrams of sodium, 47 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 35 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein, 2% vitamin A and 8% iron.)

*contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat due to use of partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil

Item: Pillsbury Sweet Moments Chocolate Fudge Molten Lava Brownies
Price: $3.49
Size: 2 pack
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Sinfully delicious. Chocolatey. Droppin’ volcanic knowledge on yo’ asses. Great for those who like brownies but don’t like to bake them. Having knowledge of lava because I grew up on an island with an active volcano.
Cons: Molten lava wasn’t molten after microwaving it. Brownie is not thoroughly warmed up after microwaving. Brownie not chewy after being warmed up. No warm gooey innards. Good source of saturated fat. Ending a review with a corny line.

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