7/4/05 | Michelina Lasagna Meal
[ Currently Eating: Canned Clam Chowder ]
A reader of the Cheap Eats Banquet Frozen Meals series of reviews had suggested taking a look at Michelina’s line of “Budget Gourmet” frozen dinners. Supposedly, these tend to taste a little more refined than the slammed in a box mentality dinners that Banquet.
Surprisngly, I also found these for the same low price at the supermarket - 10 for ten dollars. I mean, you can’t be crazy enough to eat these things every day, so 10 frozen dinners will certainly last a long time. The trick here is also that you don’t need to buy TEN to get the dollar-per-meal price. This is that tricky supermarket psychology at work here again. For instance, I just bought three of them but still got them at a dollar each. But the price says 10 for $10, no mention of the INDIVIDUAL price. Pretty sneaky, sis.
Anyhow, first on tap is Michelina’s Lasagna With Meat Sauce Frozen Dinner. Please note that they seem to feel the need to say “Premium” on it. Little warning bells - there goes my Cheap Eats spidey senses.
One thing I liked about Banquet is they don’t mess around with trying to be “health” conscious at all. I mean, if I’m going to care about that stuff, I’ll just buy the Weight Watchers or Lo Carb brands. At Cheap Eats we’d rather get full than eat healthy! At least within reason.
So I don’t really care that this Michelina’s meal only has 9 grams of fat. Strike one. I also didn’t care for the overall look of the cooked meal… I mean take a look at it! This is clearly one of the most unappetizing frozen dinners I’ve seen. A definite Strike two. This sort of reminds me of the dirt bike riding trails in the California desert after a hard rain. I think the lunches that I remember from primary school cafeterias looked better.
So, I was hoping that this would avoid Strike 3, which is taste. Let’s just say it foul tipped, but the catcher almost caught it. It was actually halfway decent in taste. Better than Chef Boyardee for sure. The problem is in the layers of noodle and sauce. There is only ONE real “layer”, sandwiched between two noodles. To their credit, they didn’t show more than one layer of stuff on the box… so I can’t exactly accuse them of false advertising.
But this was pretty sad. I think they could have simply put more food in here. Even at a buck for this meal, I think it is still not a good deal. I would much rather either attempt making a half hearted lasagna at home, or splurge and buy something like the Marie Calendar’s version of it (this is over three bucks last time I looked at it though). Interestingly, i’ve had a really decent “Canelloni” type frozen dinner from none other than Trader Joe’s. They tasted similar to Michelina’s “Lasagna” but had more substance. I think they might have gotten rid of this, but at a price of about $2.15 I used to stock up on these all the time.
A bad way to start out on the Michelina line of frozen food, but here’s hoping that future meals are slightly better. I would give it a lower score, but it IS a buck after all…
Cheap Eats Score: 4/10
July 5th, 2005 at 9:31 am
i eat the lean gourmet line for lunch, and most of them i reallly actually enjoy! My favorite is the shrimp pasta alfredo. With a little spice (i like my food spicy), it’s actually pretty good.
July 7th, 2005 at 8:00 am
Yup, I’ve eaten this stuff before. I didn’t like it much, either. But for a buck, it’s not too bad. I guess I still prefer a regular peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch at work - easier to eat, too. No messy microwaves to deal with.
July 7th, 2005 at 10:33 am
The one’s I buy are in a green box not blue and are not associated with Budget Gourmet. www.michelinas.com/3_prod…
Daz them - they are usually a little over a buck - say $1.19 and the lasagna does NOT look like that slop in the pic
July 7th, 2005 at 10:40 am
oh and if you decide to try them my favs are lasagna, salisbury steak (mix the gravy with the mashed potatoes - mighty tasty) and spaghetti with meat sauce.
July 7th, 2005 at 11:06 am
jodie - oops i thought i replied to your comment earlier. I meant to say that funny you mention the shrimp one because one of the three i bought was Shrimp Scampi and it was pretty good actually. Surprisingly!
bottom (steve) - why are you posting in blogs when you’re on vacation!? =) Hey I like peanut butter and honey too…
shawn21 - dang, that looks really good. I will need to check those out, but I thought they only had the budget line for michelina at my market. I think I might be willing to fork over an extra 20 cents if it is quite a bit better…
July 10th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
i enjoy the ones in the green box…the chicken, vegetable and pasta is good.Also the kiddie meal, the chikn nugett one, is pretty tasty.
July 10th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
shannon - Hm… I think I have seen the kiddie meal. I like chicken nuggets, so I might need to try that one!
July 21st, 2005 at 9:41 am
That picture of the lasanga does look pretty sick. I just had the Lean Gourmet version of lasanga and let me tell you, it looked a LOT better. I can’t compare taste because i’ve never had the regular version. But the lean kind of pretty decent.
July 21st, 2005 at 1:10 pm
lauren - yeah, it looks sort of like dog food, don’t it…
November 2nd, 2005 at 9:49 am
The thing about Michelina’s lasagna is that the microwave instructions are written for older, weaker machines than those we use these days. As a result, the first time I tried it, it overcooked, turning into that red clay mess in the photo. Luckily, I had bought two of them, so I just sheared a couple of minutes off the time, and it turned out utterly delish. As a matter of fact, I just had one for lunch.
November 2nd, 2005 at 9:53 am
wanda - thanks for that tip. I noticed that the cooking times can vary hugely due to the power of the microwave. But a couple times with frozen dinners, I’ve had the reverse happen: I cooked it for the required time and it was still a bit frozen! My microwave is wacky…
March 2nd, 2006 at 10:28 am
I just finished trying to eat one of you Salisbury Steak dinners. I bought ten of them last week as they were on sale at out local grocery store. Everyone of the steaks had hard bits of bone or hard grissel type stuff in them. I had to throw almost all of the steak away. I kept thinking that the next frozen dinner would be better but it was the same, they were all bad. It is interesting because a lady at the grocery store stopped me and warned me not to buy them. She must have had the same terrible experience as she said they were terrible. I should have listened to her. I have tried some of your other dinners and I felt they weren’t as bad as the Salisbury Steak but they were not anything I would purchase again. I feel your product is a waste of consumer’s money. I’m really curious as to what you “add” or put in the food. I’m wondering if it is truely real human food or if it is the quality of dog food. I will never buy your dinners again. They are terrible! - to say the least. Not worth the money at all. (Even when they are on sale!) I am seriously thinking of filing a compaint.
Marilyn
March 2nd, 2006 at 10:50 am
marilyn - i haven’t had the Michelina Salisbury Steak dinners in awhile… i’m surprised that they had bits of bone in it. That’s terrible.
Ok once again, just to clarify, I have NO affiliation with any of these frozen meal companies! I’m a consumer too…just writing about Cheap Eats. I have no idea if any of the reps from those companies read my site either… but I highly doubt it.
June 30th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Tonight I had what you call 5 cheeses Lasagna.Well as far as I am concerned this was Lasagna with NO CHESSE, no less 5 kinds.
It wasn’t worth buying and I never will again
UPC code 1785410627 .
This had to be the worse I have ever had frozen.
Lorraine Conroy 6/30/2006
April 24th, 2007 at 9:46 am
We really like the flavor of these cheap eats, and have tried several other more costly ones. The manicotti is good too!