Glue.

That would be how I would describe this Fresh and Easy Spaghetti with Meat Sauce if I could only use a single word.

On the subject of less words: I’ve noticed that my reviews here are often long-winded and gratuitously long. I was thinking maybe I should start up some sort of “25 Word Reviews” on Cheap Eats in order to both save my time and your sanity. Anyhow, that’s Cheap Food for thought.

Before I begin to give this spaghetti meal a well-deserved drubbing, I just want to remind everybody that I’m the latest Fresh and Easy fanboy to be converted to their prepared foods. I love Fresh and Easy so much that I wrote a love letter to them earlier. I just want to get that out into the open in case you think I’m backsliding there. One crappy meal isn’t going to change my love for them. Hmm…. that sounds like song lyrics. But I’ll spare you the horror…

Truthfully, a majority of their stuff is really good and cheap - especially if you can sneak in between the gargantuan whales who crowd the F&E discount bin. Luckily, I have skinny arms so I can snake my way in and grab some of the discounted food. On occasion, however, I’ve grabbed a whale flipper by mistake.

This meal is a refrigerated, fully cooked meal of Spaghetti with Meat Sauce. I have to admit this wasn’t my first choice, but it’s what I was able to grab and it was fairly cheap at a dollar fifty for 12 oz. of food. So I went with it.

I somewhat regret it.

Now, I’ve had meals like this before - usually frozen, but sometimes fresh. And the biggest concern with pre-cooked spaghetti is that if it’s not done correctly, it deteriorates or gets clumped together. The taste of the sauce is usually not a problem - it’s the consistency of the noodles which is crucial.

This spaghetti tasted like glue.

It could also be because it was getting near it’s due date, but this spaghetti just tasted horrible. It was like someone got a bushel of hot cooked spaghetti and left it out for a few hours so that it congealed together. I know fricken Alton Brown and all the other fun-alicious Food Network chefs say never to rinse hot cooked pasta. However, if it’s going to be for a prepared meal like this, and you don’t rinse and cool it correctly, it’s going to turn into glue.

But you can see from the picture above that it looks pretty decent. The overall flavor of the sauce was: Meh, just OK. It had a normal tomato taste, not heavily spiced, and in fact a little on the bland side. Which is saying quite a bit for me, since I usually think things are too salty or spiced. The sauce featured ground beef, onions and interestingly - carrots. That sorta came out of left field. Although we sometimes do put carrots in our homemade spaghetti sauce, i’ve never really seen it in prepared sauces. That was actually quite different, and it made me want to try it again.

The noodles, as I mentioned, were pretty horrible. I actually had to add about 1/4 cup or more of water to the sauce, plus some olive oil to get it palatable. Spaghetti should not stick to the roof of your mouth in most universes.

Overall, this spaghetti survived a truly low score only because it was so cheap at $1.50. Still: I think I could make better Spaghetti in my sleep. I was actually a little disappointed because I’ve had some of Fresh and Easy’s other prepared noodle meals, such as the Chicken Parmigiana, and the noodles were fine. I believe with these company branded prepared meals, there are going to be occasions where you just get a bad one. So I’ve been meaning to try it again just to see if the one I got was a dud. But it hasn’t gone on sale in the discount bin again. I guess I’ll post an update if I try it again. Toodle-oo, Mr. Glue…

Price: $1.50 for 12 oz. (MSRP $3)
Found At: Fresh and Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 3/10

[Editor’s Note: F&E Is pretty damn COOL. I only hope that enough people patronize the one I’m at so that it doesn’t shut down. If it shuts down I’m going to be crying for a long, long time.]