Stouffer's Five Cheese Lasagna

I have been jonesing for lasagna in the worst way for about a week now. Sadly, the lasagna I really want is located in Georgia (and my mother does not like to make lasagna all that much). In my house lasagna was made, without exception, on Christmas and Easter. But during the rest of the year, getting it was more of a treat. And yes, I do LOOOOOVES it cold, straight from the fridge.

Believe it or not, though, I have never attempted to make my own lasagna from scratch. Honestly, it is a little too much work to go into for something that only I will eat. I am also notoriously picky about my Italian foods. I tend not to like restaurant versions. As for the one restaurant lasagna that I did like...well, while the restaurant is still there, the old lasagna is not (most of the food changed when the owners did).

So, what's a girl to do? Stouffer's was on sale...and it's pretty damn hard to turn down not only the chance for a review, but lasagna for only $1.88! And to be fair to Stouffer's, I really do like their veggie lasagna.

But how does this version stand up?



I got the all cheese/no meat lasagna. It features the layers of noodles and sauce you would expect, with a generous cheese center.

The sauce is the same sauce used by Stouffer's for their French Bread Pizzas (which I love), and, I assume, many of their other red-sauced items. It's on the sweet side, but there are actual chunks of tomatoes and visible herbs. It's not a sauce that I would want to eat by itself, but it's doable.

The noodles are thick, and like most pasta that has been frozen, a little gummy. Not gummy enough to ruin it, but it could be better. (At the same time, it could be worse.)

The cheese center is reasonably tasty. It's a little mushy but it is cheesy. I couldn't tell you what cheeses the five cheese blend actually consists of, but yeah...it's definitely cheese.



As a whole?

I have had much worse that I paid a lot more for. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. It just sort of was. But I do understand why a lot of people like it -- for a mass-marketed frozen item, it's certainly tasty enough, and of course it's easy and convenient.

I still prefer the veggie version, though.



PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

PRICE:
$1.88

CALORIES:
370 per serving (1 small package).

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains milk and wheat.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
stouffers.com

Wonka Exceptionals: Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar

What pulled me to this bar was the use of the word (well, I guess it's sort of a word) "Scrumdiddlyumptious." A co-worker and I have actually had conversations about how the word "scrumptious" is not being used enough, and...well this was pretty close.

The Wonka Scrumdiddlyumptious bar is part of the Wonka line, and is a milk chocolate bar with toffee pieces, crispy cookie, and peanut bits.



First, regardless of taste, I liked how they molded this bar. As you can see, it's got a really whimsical mold. The pieces come in a variety of sizes to break off, and there is the standout W in the center. It looks good -- but how does it taste?



The chocolate is very smooth and very sweet. There are strong dairy notes; you can definitely taste the milk in the bar. But the chocolate is still very, very sweet. My throat was burning after only a couple of squares.

While the mix-ins are plentiful, they're not uniform. So some squares have oodles of "crunches" and some have next to none. The toffee bits were my favorite because they added a little buttery, salty hint. The cookies in question just seemed plain and blah. There's nothing really wrong with them, but they're certainly nothing exciting. The peanuts were crunchy and added a nice nut flavor.



I gotta give Wonka points for the cool name, and for having an interesting ingredients list. Tastewise, it was decent but it didn't really rock my world. I won't be pulling on an Oompa Loompa suit and trying to sneak into the factory for free bars just yet, but it was a nice enough option.

Check out both Cybele's review here, and Jim's review here.



PURCHASED FROM:
WalMart

PRICE:
$2.18

CALORIES:
170 per 1/3 bar.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains peanuts. Made on equipment shared with tree nuts and wheat.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
wonka.com

Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies: Red Apple

Nestlé has really gone all out in the last few months pumping some new life into the Wonka line of products. Why they didn't go this far when the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out a few years ago (which would have been a natural tie-in) is beyond me, but in any event they are doing it now.

I opted to start with the Exceptional Fruit Jellies because they just seemed different -- and you just don't see a lot of red apple flavored candy.



As you can see above, this candy has a lot of packaging. While it is very colorful and fun looking...well damn, there is just a lot! There's a sturdy cardboard sleeve that houses another cardboard box, and then inside of that box the candies are sealed in a foil packet. Why so much? These candies are not that delicate. Is there some sort of Oompa-Loompa packaging don who demands so much be used or Willy sleeps with the fishes? Does Al Gore know about this?! I mean, I love the purple -- can anything bad really come out of a purple box? It is cool packaging, but c'mon, there's like 40 pounds of it...

OK, regardless of Wonka's obvious hatred for trees, how about the candy that you get to after the oodles of packaging?

Each candy is the size of a sugar cube, each square is sugared, soft, and brightly colored. The box has a slight apple scent to it (What? Doesn't everyone smell their candy boxes?), but the individual candies are pretty much without any smell at all.



The chew is soft. It's not as as firm as a gummy type product, but it is softer and less sticky then most jelly/gel candies.

I both chewed them and simply let them dissolve in my mouth. I found I liked the flavor and texture more if I let them dissolve.



So how was the flavor?

Really good! It's not overly sweet, despite the outer coating of sugar. The apple flavor reminded me a lot of apple juice, rather than the "green" sour apple that most apple candy tends to be flavored with. They are quite juicy, and it is entirely easy to eat a handful or two and wonder where they went. I really liked these little cubes.

Cybele reviewed not only this flavor but the grapefruit and goji berry as well. Be sure to check out her review here.



PURCHASED FROM:
WalMart

PRICE:
$2.96

CALORIES:
130 calories per 14 pieces.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Made with 25% real fruit juice. Fat free, sodium free.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
nestleusa.com

Rowntree's Randoms

My thanks to the great Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds for once again sending me some yummy U.K. candy to try.

Amongst all the wonderful things Cinabar packed into my latest box of goodies was this little pack of gummies (or "jellies," for those of you on the other side of the pond). What caught my attention -- besides the bright colors -- was how soft the gummies felt through the package. Also, the shapes on the package reminded me a lot of some of the fun Asian candies I have seen online at sites like J-List or at stores like Ranch 99 or Kam Man. My package also had this little gnome guy on it (has to do with a contest the company is running) that reminded me of the Travelocity "Roving Gnome." I was really hoping there would be a gummy gnome in the package because I liked the idea of posing him Flat Stanley style next to random objects.

Part of the fun of the candy is that each bag is a random mix of gummies and you never know what you are going to get in any given bag. Sadly, there was no gnome in mine.



There were lots of fun shapes and several different flavors. I picked my favorite shapes to represent each flavor:



Purple: This one had a taste that was sort of grape, sort of raspberry, sort of...currant, maybe? It's a good, juicy, fruity flavor even if I couldn't pin it down entirely.



Green: I was hoping for green apple -- but instead, it's lime. I give Rowntree points here. It's a completely artificial lime, but they still manage to avoid that industrial cleaner taste most fake lime has. Instead, it's like a gummy version of green doctor's office lollipops.



Orange: Zesty, but a little bit sour. Sort of like a gummy version of unmixed orange juice concentrate. That probably doesn't sound great, but it tasted really good.



Orange/White: This one is a combo of gummy and "foam" or cream base.



It has the same great flavor as the orange in the orange part (big stretch there). The white foam/creme has no taste as far as I can tell.



Yellow/White: The yellow is lemon. This may be the best gummy lemon ever. It's fresh and vibrant.



Granted, it's not quite natural, but it isn't completely fake either. Once again, the white base is tasteless.



Red: This was the lone flavor I didn't like. It was cherry, and it tasted like cough syrup and "red." But the color was quite pretty.



Lighter Red/White: I think this was supposed to be strawberry.



The strongest flavor was simply "red" from the food dye, but it didn't have the same cough syrup taste that the plain red had. The white base, again, is tasteless.

The texture on all of the gummies, regardless of flavor, was a very soft, chewy gel. The only difference with the gummy/cremes is that the creme base is harder and less chewy.

As a whole, this is a really fun candy. The shapes are cool, and they're very well molded. The flavors (besides the red) were really good and the texture was perfect. Hey Nestlé, we need our version of these!

Be sure to check out Cinabar's review here.



PURCHASED FROM:
Gift from Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds.

CALORIES:
164 calories per bag.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains gelatin, and may contain traces of dairy.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
rowntrees-randoms.co.uk

Nestlé Lion Bar

And now Brit week comes in with a roar, courtesy of Nestlé's Lion bar -- and the scary looking, fang baring lion on the package. I should note this is also the same look George gets when you try to take his catnip away.

Feeling the bar through the packaging before opening it, you notice all the lumps and bumps, waiting beneath the wrapper to pounce on you as if you were a lazy Zebra. The bar is a thick, rocky slab. It has a wafer center (sort of like a big Kit Kat) with a creme filling. Then the bar is enrobed in caramel, and on top of the caramel is a layer of milk chocolate with puffed rice embedded into it. It looks more like something home made than mass produced. It's lumpy, it's kinda ugly, but I liked that it had sort of a rustic look to it.



The smell of the bar is mostly that of the milky Nestlé chocolate. (Why is it that the chocolate Nestlé pawns off on the U.S. is so different from what the rest of the world gets?) This smells like it has a lot of dairy in it. The enrobing is thick, but at the same time the chocolate melts quickly on your fingers (or maybe I am just that hot...).



This bar has an amazing texture! It's as if a Kit Kat Extra Crispy bar (that giant Kit Kat that looks more like a regular candy bar) mated with a 100 Grand Bar. The Lion is thick enough that you really feel like you're sinking your teeth into it. There's crunch from the wafers. The caramel is chewy and has a very buttery, sweet taste. The bits of puffed rice are malty, and have a more cereal-like texture than the wafers. The chocolate is sweet, but it's less sweet than Cadbury and the milk flavor tastes more like the real thing than powdered.

It's all those different and contrasting tastes and textures playing at once that make this bar so good. Why oh why do we not have this bar here?! WHY?!

(Read both Cybele's review and Jim's review for their takes.)


PURCHASED FROM:

Gift from my mother

Nestlé Cranberry Raisinets

Dried cranberries are good in pretty much any shape or form. You can eat them on their own as a snack, or add them to a salad. You can sprinkle them on ice cream (try it with a quality vanilla). They are full of antioxidants. They are just a good all-purpose treat.

So who wouldn't want to try a chocolate-covered cranberry? I know I would!

Well, the cranberries themselves were quite good. Very plump and moist. Not quite as chewy or tart as "craisins" can sometimes be (although Ocean Spray Craisins are my dried cranberry of choice).



It's the chocolate that was the downfall here. To give some credit to Nestlé, the product is made with actual milk chocolate -- but it helps a lot if you're a fan of Nestlé's American version of milk chocolate...which, unfortunately, I am not. (I really like Nestlé's Swiss product, but our version is just not as good). The cranberries are thinly enrobed in the chocolate. The chocolate is really sweet. It's not exactly creamy, but at least there is only a slight graininess to it. It is also waxy, but that seems to be somewhat universal for this kind of snack. I wish that Nestlé had gone with the "dark chocolate" coating they came out with for the classic Raisinets. It would have better complemented the cranberries, and while it is not a fantastic dark chocolate, it does taste exactly like Toll House Morsels.



All in all these little bites are tasty enough, although the chocolate is at best forgettable.




PURCHASED FROM:
Vons Supermarket

Azuki Bean Kit Kat

I admit it. Prior to this Kit Kat (minus the odd red bean paste filled Moon cake) I had never really eaten azuki bean.



And beyond that, the only reason they ever stuck in my mind was because Gillian McKeith is always going on about them on the BBC show "You Are What You Eat." Of course, she also goes on and on and on about poo, so maybe she's not the best person to listen to...

Anyway, as some of you may not know (and as a reminder for those who do), in Japan Kit Kat produces tons of different flavors. Much like Pocky, some of them are seasonal or regional, and the sheer number of flavors seems endless.

The Azuki come in a cute little box protecting its payload of 4 fingers, separated into two packets each containing two fingers. The fingers themselves are the same size as their U.S. cousins.

The first clue that these are not like our Kit Kats is the smell. There's sort of an earthy, grassy smell that wafts out of the packet. It's clean and pleasant in a Demeter Fragrance Dirt sort of way-- but it's definitely not something you'd expect from a Kit Kat.



The flavor is unique. It didn't really remind me of the red bean paste I've had before. If you have ever had boiled peanuts, there is a touch of that taste--which is to say, nuts that have more of a soy bean/raw green bean essence. There is also a grasslike taste.



The chocolate is milk, and it seems a little thinner then our version. It's very milky and while it's sweet, it reminds me more of the imported Nestle chocolate than the U.S. version.

Once I got used to the flavor, I really loved this Kit Kat. It's just such a different flavor than what I am used to that I found it addicting. Once J-List starts shipping chocolate again--or I make it back to New York City--I am doing some serious stocking up on this flavor!



PURCHASED FROM:
Kam Man Market NYC

I purchased mine from Kam Man in New York City...but my friends at J-List also carry it, so be sure to check them out!

Nestle Coffee Crisp

I was scanning the International Foods aisle, and this bar popped out at me.

A little Googling and I discovered that there are several versions of this bar to be had, and I am not sure entirely which one I got. The bar is marked Nestle's Canada -- but most of the label is in Spanish. And to add to the confusion, it was placed in with the UK products. I will just assume my little bar is its own special U.N. version.

The Coffee Crisp bar seems to be most loved in Canada. As best I could tell from my bar, it's a "Chocolaty" coated bar that is made up of layers of wafers with coffee flavored cream sandwiched in the middle.

The "chocolaty" coating is very thin, it actually looks better in the photo than in real life. It looks dark and almost thick in the picture. In reality it was a much lighter brown, and its surface had several spots where you could clearly see the wafer below.


The bar smells like a combination of cheap coffee flavoring and cereal. BUT, it does taste better than it looks or smells.

The thinness of the coating works because it means that it is fairly tasteless. This bar is really about the wafers. The wafers reminded me of those cheap generic sugar wafers you see in stores. But they are surprisingly airy, and tasted to me like a "cake" style ice cream cone. The coffee flavor, while artificial, was sweet and had a little bit of a milky quality.

I really liked the texture. It was dense but had a great crunch. I think this would be good crumbled over ice cream. This bar may not be the highest quality product that Nestle offers, but it is strangely addicting. It's sort of like the Giant Kit Kats' slightly backward country cousin. It may not be as pretty, it may not be that rich, but it's good in its own simple way.



PURCHASED FROM:
Stater Brothers Market

Kit Kat Mixed Berry

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