Well, well, well.

Looks like we’re back to frozen food reviews. I’m wondering, what do all the food reviewers out there do to keep their editorial efforts fresh and exciting? Do they attach electrodes to their nipples and hope for a little inspiration-zap from the car battery?

Yes, I said nipples. You know you like it. Woo.

Nipples have nothing to do with pot pies, but it certainly makes for a better intro than “This pot pie was pretty good I guess.”

We’ve reviewed a few different pot pies on Cheap Eats previously, most notably the Marie Callender Pot Pie and the Swanson Turkey Pot Pie. Those frozen selections are pretty far apart on the Pot Pie Scale – sort of like comparing apples and oranges. Or pot pies and nipples.

Hey. I promise you this – I will continue to make the potpie-nipple comparison repeatedly throughout this review. I will take it to new heights. Or lows. So if it bothers you, please pack your bags now. My sincere apologies to all you mommybloggers out there looking to cash in on the lucrative online food review market, who happen to come across this review. I promise I’m not usually a creep.

The 7 oz Banquet Chicken Pot Pie I picked up for a buck at the market seems to be related more to the Swanson type that I reviewed. However, there seemed to be a world of difference in the end result. I actually thought that this Banquet pie was much more cosmetically beautiful. And I DID make it in the microwave, the same one that I used to nuke the Swanson pie.

The instructions say to slit the top crust, so I made several cuts in the top. By the way, you may want to try making a slit in the crust with your nipple. If you do, please let me know about it, because the Guinness Book of World Records has an entry for Longest Slit Made Into A Pot Pie Crust Using Only A Nipple.

Wow, that sounds like terribly like Pr0n.

I’m thinking back and I can’t remember if I made slits in that Swanson pie or not. If I didn’t, maybe I’ll have to revisit the Exploding Pot Pie Due To No Slits theory. It’s like the Big Bang, only with more Pr0n and chicken. In any case, the Banquet pie came out beautifully golden brown. I was almost afraid to eat it, because it looked so nice. Like The Golden Brown Nipples of the Sun. No leakage from the nipples, er, pot pie, and the crust looked pretty nice.

OK, so looks aren’t everything. This pot pie was TREMENDOUSLY salty. OMG it was salty. Salty Nipples, he gratuitously said! Looking at the label on the back, it says that it provides a good 43% of your recommended daily intake of sodium.

America – this is why you’re fat.

It was difficult to get beyond the salty taste, but I have to say the crust was surprisingly nice. It wasn’t flaky like the Marie Callender pot pie, but it’ll suffice for a dollar pie. The chicken was spongy, at best. Not bad chunks of it, but it was definitely lurking in the un-delicious spectrum.

The carrots were OK. The potatoes were OK. The random green-speck-of-something-or-other? I have no idea what that is. I don’t think it has anything to do with green nipples, but man, I just can’t figure out what it could be.

By the way, I will pay anyone $75,000 if you can give me a picture of a green nipple. Kidding, of course.

Overall, I guess I was surprised by this pot pie, in the way that random nipples from Alyson Hannigan popping up joyfully all over the place might cause one to be quite pleasantly surprised. I would definitely keep the Banquet Chicken Pot Pie in the freezer for an “End Of The World Scenario”. But then again…. at the end of the world, I should hope that people of all persuasions and sexual orientations should free their nipples from the oppresive shackles of bras and shirts and pasties and pot pies forever and forever and ever…

Price: $1.00 for 7oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10

[Editor's Note: I know you would like to feel better about yourself, so I will just say that I have very hairy nipples. See? Get down off that ledge. It confuses me why hair will grow joyfully around my nipple areas, but refuses to sprout on the top of my head. This is definitely discouraging to say the least, and results in my having to trim the nipple area of 2 inch long hairs every so often. Oh, by the way, no Nipples or Pot Pies were hurt in the making of this review.]

These Pringles cost 35 cents.

I hit Big Lots the other day in order to try to get back to my “roots”: Cheap, close-to-expiring salty snacks that are the reason America is fat. By the way, did I mention I’ve put on a couple of pounds lately? This is amazing, because in the past I’ve had trouble keeping the weight on. I was smug like a bug whenever people talked about their ever increasing gut bulge.

I’ve increased one pant size in my waist, but These Pringles cost 35 cents.

As I walked down the aisle, a blushing groom ready to get married to whatever junk food under a buck that I could spot, my mind raced as I thought about all those earlier cheap one night junkfood stands. Like Ms. free chips from the dumpster? Check. We had a good romp in bed, Dumpster Chips and I.

But I was looking for something flashy, yet dignified. You know, something that you could bring on your arm at the next Amanda Bynes retirement party.

Amanda Bynes should buy some of These Pringles, which cost 35 cents and sprinkle them all over herself. That’s hot.

I like looking at the “sucker” racks at the end of the aisles in stores like Big Lots. The store management thinks they’re pulling a fast one on me by foisting Little Debbie Orange Zebra Cakes on me. Little do they know, little do they of pea-sized brains know… muhahaha

Those Debbie cakes were not 35 cents. Unfortunate. But These Pringles DID cost 35 cents.

I thought it was a typo at first, but those orange clearance stickers cannot tell a lie. George Washington ate Pringles, by the way. I’m surprised Proctor & Gamble hasn’t used that fact to their advantage in advertising campaigns.

Cherry trees do not cost 35 cents, but These Pringles cost 35 cents.

I actually found 3 different varieties (the exact flavors escape me right now) of Pringles for 35, 45 and 65 cents. I’ve no idea why they rotate the prices around like that for essentially identical pseudo-potato chips. Probably something to do with the expiration date. I actually bought all three types, but settled on these Sweet Mesquite BBQ chips for the review.

I think that was probably a mistake to go out with the Sweet Mesquite BBQ. While we did do some tongue-action – wait, what? Come now, you must know by now that tongue-action is a perfectly normal activity with all Pringles. You know you do it. Pringles have a perfect curve that allow you to stick your tongue in so it fondles all that (less than 50%) potato-ey goodness. Oh baby, yeah – ride on my tongue.

That was racy. 35 cents worth of racy, that is. Pringles, they do cost. Go you must, now, to the next paragraph.

Man, Yoda should’ve taught Luke to use The Force with Pringles. But I don’t think they sold them on Dagobah. They don’t use money there, after all (they use Jedi Credits), so you wouldn’t be able to head down to the Dagobah Big Lots and spend 35 cents on them.

Yes, I’m getting weary too.

OK. The flavoring on these 35 cent Mesquite BBQ Pringles was very pungent, kind of like a 35 cent bottle of barbeque sauce. If I had 35 cents, and bus fare cost 35 cents, I would take the #35 bus first to Big Lots and buy 35 cans of these 35 cents Pringles. Then I would again take that #35 bus (because all buses around here have the number 35 – how do you tell which is going where? Use The FORCE Luke…) to 35th street in Los Angeles and set up an illegal Pringles stand (or two, or 35) and sell these Pringles, not for 35 cents, but for 70 cents.

70 cents is 35 cents times two. Come on, Use The FORCE already.

I guess if these were normally priced, I would not get them again. And the score would be much lower. They’re just too sweet for me, and I’m used to salty or spicy Pringles. However, I couldn’t complain too much, because you know what they say:

These Pringles cost 35 cents.

Price: $0.35 for 6oz
Found At: Big Lots
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10

[Editor's Note: Drat. I initially started writing this CPK Frozen Pizza review with the intention of having it appear like it was coming from the point of view of a slightly intoxicated alien. About halfway in, however, I realized that it'd be impossible to keep this up. This particular alien's point of view just takes too much fricken work to incorporate. And I don't really think or sound like the alien that I wanted. So, I stopped the joke and I've reverted back to "normal" for the actual review. I'm sure CPK will appreciate that more. Enjoy, or not. ]

Eeetch otch ootch.

Uggabugga.

Now that the usual pleasantries are out of the way, I would like to converse toward you or at you, that is, I would like to pronounce variously diverse syllables of this English lexicon, in the manner of that a humanoid of average influence, so that I may explicate (not defecate!) some ideas about so called “edible” objects. I believe this is known colloquially as “food reviewing”.

You see, I have only recently landed.

Or perhaps rather, what you may call a “spaceship” of mine has come to rest with great force and fire upon the center of the township known as Los Angeles in the grossly misproportioned parcel of land called the State of California, which itself is part of the larger functioning empire known as these United States of Canada’s Large Ballsack. (Excuse moi – I may have got the language incorrect but the general gist or mist of the idea is there.)

And being as it may that the thing which you might call one of my gastrointestinal bodily vessels or “stomachs” that I currently harbor had become devoid of fuel, I endeavored to remedy that situation snappity snap.

Upon entering a “supermarket” (perhaps this is spelled incorrectly, is it “stupormarket”?), I ignored the masses of extremely short, fat, fleeing beings (as I understand, being 10 earthling feet tall, 4 earthling inches wide and possessing the USUAL eight appendages is not greeted with friendliness here) and slithered immediately to where these “foodstuffs” were lined up.

I immediately filled up my second expandable hump (so glad to have had that installed recently) with a large variety of these foodstuffs and voorted the hell in a handbag out of there.

So far I have masticated or consumed a number of these earthling edibles with no ill effects. I must admit some confusion: What, pray tell, is a “pringle”? I shan’t even begin to describe my confusion over why these “hot dogs” are shaped so much like what your earthling women use for…

Sorry, a humanoid dressed in a light blue outfit just came to the hatch door and presented me with a package from a business called Amazonedotcom. I apparently was required to use something called an “oven” to prepare this item known as a California Pizza Kitchen Crispy Thin Crust Margherita Pizza, so I contacted this business to get one. My, their service is quite speedy.

.
.
.

(Alien reviewer suddenly turns back into human reviewer.)

Gah, that was difficult and likely a waste of an hour to write. I promise it won’t happen again.

I’m not really a huge fan of California Pizza Kitchen, the restaurant. To be honest, it’s sorta an embarrassment whenever they have those Best Pizza Joint shows on the Travel or Food Channel. They have New York style pizza, and then they have Chicago style pizza. And then they usually tack on “California” style pizza as an afterthought, so all the rabid fusion pizza eating surfer media mogul dudes won’t go postal.

But I’ve eaten the pizza at the restaurants (usually dragged kicking and screaming there by co-workers) and it’s not bad. The thing is that when I feel like eating A Pizza, I want it to be a dang pizza, not a movie production.

I want crust, tomato sauce, cheese and toppings. Usually, I’d like to have some sort of meat like pepperoni, sausage or canadian bacon on there. Pineapple is pushing it. No sprouts or broccoli. No fricken BBQ sauce. No sweet crap. By the hair of my chinny chin chin, if you put something crazy like ice cream or jello or melonballs on there when I’m hungry for pizza, I swear that I will hunt you down and force you to watch Teletubby re-runs, Clockwork Orange style.

(Italians and such: I know you have something to say about what pizza should be like. We shall have to have that conversation yet another day.)

So I guess that I already set myself up not to like CPK’s frozen pizzas from the grocery store. Let’s get right down to price, which is usually quite expensive. A 10 1/2 inch pie usually runs $5-6. However, I was able to get this Margherita CPK pizza for $3.14. I think it may even go as low as $2.50 if on sale.

This is the Margherita variety which is pretty plain. I actually wanted to get this one, because it didn’t have any crazy stuff on it. Just cheese, tomatoes, olive oil and basil. I guess I’m not such a big fan of pizza that doesn’t have tomato sauce – it’s more like cheesebread if it doesn’t have the tomato sauce (again: Italian friends, we shall talk more about that later, I promise.) I just like the stupid average American pizza the best.

Popped the pizza into the preheated oven for 12 minutes like they said. I cooked it right on the grate as they suggested, instead of using the pizza stone that we got recently. If I remember correctly, they actually said NOT to put it on a pizza stone directly. Interesting.

It came out looking very nice, like what you would expect a frozen Margherita pizza to look like. Overall, the best part was the fresh tomato taste – surprisingly good. The basil flavor was lacking a bit, but I can’t really blame them for that. I know this is probably asking for the impossible, but if they could get a better Basil taste to the pizza then I might be sold.

The crust was crispy but sort of cakey. This seems to happen with a ton of frozen pizzas that I try out. It doesn’t taste like a crispy yet chewy pizza crust. It’s more like a cracker, though nice and thin as advertised. I’ve wondered if it was the cooking method, but I’ve tried all sorts of different ways and it always comes out the same.

The mozzarella cheese actually had good coverage which is sometimes a problem with these frozen pizzas. They made a big deal about the “olive oil” flavor but I guess it didn’t really hit me all that much. It’s probably hidden in the crust somewhere. Not a big deal I guess.

The basil was the main downer – there were sprinkles or flecks of it all over. But, as I mentioned, what do you expect really? At least they were honest in the picture on the front cover. I woulda been pissed if they showed big basil leaves all over the place. I guess I coulda just clipped a few leaves off that plant in the corner (yep, we’ve been attempting to grow our own).

I think overall, this wasn’t as bad as I expected. The crust could use some more life to it, but it was pretty good for cheesebread style pizza. However, I definitely wouldn’t get it if it wasn’t on sale – and even if it was, there’s a ton of cheaper alternatives that to my untrained Americano mouth taste a lot better.

Price: $3.14 for 12.8oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

Truthfully (and when, good peoplepersons, have I ever NOT been truthful?), I’ve been thinking hard about this review for the past month or so.

Thinking hard has gotten me exactly nowhere.

So I decided to sum up what few thoughts these few brain cells have squeezed out about White Castle Microwaveable Hamburgers in two sentences:

“John Cho is, like, a god to me.”

and

“These square hamburgers are rather small.”

The End.

I would elaborate more on the first sentence, but I don’t think it’s really worth your time see me heave my enormous Jabba the Hutt bulk up on a soapbox. Or maybe it would be, if I had a fat wormy body like Jabba the Hutt. Jabba the Hutt would probably also have something nice to say about mini hamburgers. OK, I’ll stop saying Jabba the Hutt so you won’t jabba me in the hutt. I mean butt.

Superb. Butt-jokes in a hamburger review.

But if I could just make one little observation: John Cho, and of course Kal Penn (he is also, like, a god to me), have done more good for Asian Americans and White Castle hamburgers than any mortals from this multiverse have ever done.

I speak, with reverence bordering on the supernatural, of that peculiar película known as Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.

Definitely one of the top 20 films of all time.

I have watched it 813 times, 26 of those in a row while sitting on the couch while eating Pocky and drinking Boba milk tea.

If you have not seen it, you have not lived. Or at least identified heavily with a film about two Asian American guys who don’t kungfu-fight (and also don’t travel through “time and space” with a bad accent) who just want a fricken hamburger. Plus, man, does John Cho has a way with ladies of different persuasions.

You go, Cho.

But all that is water under the bridge, meat under the table, and so on. This is a review about hamburgers. According to the movie (and nearly everyone from the East Coast with a heartbeat), they are supposed to be the shiz. Or is it the shiraz? I’m not a wine person, so you’ll have to excuse me. Or excommunicate me.

To those east coasters who say that I can’t possibly write up a review on White Castle hamburgers without having flown over there and tried the Real Deal, I say, “You’re absolutely correct. Now get on a plane and fly over here and have a real hamburger at In-N-Out.”

No really, I can’t say that. I’m sure White Castle does indeed rock the cow. It’s just that a lot of people from the other side of the continent have a highly disturbing way of dismissing In-N-Out hamburgers as hippy California Pizza Kitchen surfer burgers.

As if, dude.

But in any case, I didn’t expect making these little burgers in the microwave to compare to getting the real thing. Although, they sure look VERY similar. I’m not used to “slyders” or “sliders”, unless you mean the great TV show that they should bring back starring, guess who – John Cho.

I don’t even know if they’re supposed to have what amounts to raw onion chunks sprinkled on each one. I didn’t really enjoy that part so much. Also, I could’ve used some cheese on them. And tomato and lettuce. Heresy, yes.

They came in three 2-packs of hamburgers. You just open up the plastic on a pair of the burgers and separate them. Then you nuke for 60 seconds from frozen. I had a little trouble getting the little buggers, er, burgers, to cook completely. Your mileage may vary, especially if you’re a frequent flyer.

The taste is – not so great. The meat was sort of lifeless (on second thought, that may be a good thing!) and a bit pasty from the steam. I can’t understand what it is with people liking the hamburger and the interior side of the bun to be all sopping wet and melded together. Maybe it’s a West coast thing, but I really like them distinct and separated. I realize that large “Helen of Troy”-type wars have been fought over different hamburger styles, so I’ll just stop there.

The bun itself was OK, but nothing to write home about. I really could not get past the onions – scraping them off proved helpful, yet messy.

The price is the straw that broke the cameltoe’s back for me. At 60 cents each, these just weren’t worth it. I don’t even know – how much do these cost normally at the actual restaurant? I feel they should be a quarter at most for the amount of meat inside. Oh sure, you’re getting authentic White Castle hamburgers. But I’m not sure why anyone would pay the premium unless they’re nostalgic for them. Or, like me, you’ve watched the movie too many times and you just have to try them, and you don’t want to fly across the country.

And now, it is my great pleasure to end this narrative WITHOUT a picture of my original idea for this review which was a photo of my naked chest with two White Castle Hamburgers covering my mannipples like pasties.

Eek!

Price: $3.69 for 9.5oz (6 slyders)
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 3/10

[Editor's Note: Any fools out there who would like to have a picture of me fondling White Castle Hamburgers on my mannipples, please send $9.95 to "Burger Pasties, 31539 Scam Street, Burger City, CA" Thank you.]

Salutations.

So, I’ve been monkeying around with the new WordPress install that I grumbled about earlier. Surprisingly, I’ve been finding it hasn’t been grinding my Cheap Eats blogging mojo down.

If anything, it’s made it easier to make posts. There are still a lot of things I hate about it, but it’ll work for now.

I’ve also had some time to think, which is likely a dangerous thing. Deep thinking is not my strong suit. And anyway, I hate to wear neckties.

But yes, I got to thinking that as much as I hate to acknowledge the folks who dislike the “windbaggy” part of this blog, they probably have a sixteenth of a point. In particular, I’ve been complaining too much.

No one likes a complainer.

That is, except my secret horde of Cheap Eats zombie groupies that follow me around the Dollar Store documenting my every move. “Oooh, is he going to grab the Beanee Weenne? Or the Smoked Oysters?

And at night, I lock my lovely food zombie groupies in the pantry where they order my Earthquake food by expiration date. They also type up my ingredients list which is handy because I get tired of writing Thiamine Mononitrate and Disodium Phosphate over and over again.

Yes, zombie groupies are awesome. But even they get tired of me complaining. So I’ll try to wankle and complain less. And write more reviews. Better ones. With better sentences and more grammatically correct.

And I’ll also try to save America from its own gluttony, a la Jamie Oliver, by importing 55 herds of fresh Swedish ox-fish which poop out dynamically balanced meals of meat-veg that school kids will love to eat.

And also, I’ll sail my bathtub to Iceland to put out the volcano so planes can get up in the air already and bring us our imported frozen meat pies, Cadbury bars and haggis.

And so on.

(I lied about the Haggis, I don’t think they can import that to the U.S.)

Speaking of Haggis, this Cook’s Classics Beef Ravioli sure does NOT have anything to with that.

I often get suckered into buying cheap crappy canned food. For some reason, I have this hopeful thought every time I pick up a can of cheap food that it will somehow bring about Everlasting World Peace. But it never quite does. Go figure.

This was pretty cheap at 69 cents for a can. I’m trying to recall if the standard Chef Boyardee Ravioli gets down that far. I think it does at certain stores, but the price I see is usually around a buck. I figured that if this was anywhere similar to Chef Boyardee, I should just put this stuff in the earthquake pantry. I love to buy these off brands for that purpose.

But this Cook’s Classics ravioli really confused me. It smelled exactly like Chef Boyardee’s. The sauce was pretty much the same – gloopy, orange corn starchized puke with bits of “Meat” floating around. The raviolis seemed about the same too – little 1.5 inch pillows of bland, slightly stale-tasting, crackerish (hint, the ingredient after beef is “crackermeal”) paste-pouches.

But the more I ate, the less I liked it. This is somewhat contrary to what usually happens with this kind of food-travesty-in-a-can. What happens normally is that after awhile your taste buds sort of become immune to the crap assaulting it. Either that, or the episode of So You Think You Can Dance you’re watching starts to really heat up, and you forget about meat paste pouches so you can concentrate on all that revealed flesh jiggling onscreen.

Come on. You don’t watch it for the dancing. ‘Fess up.

But truly, I did sort of become more disappointed as the minutes went by. I went from about a 7 score, to a 5 score and finally to a 4. Then Lost came on the TV and I forgot all about scores, as I continued my weekly daydream about kidnapping the cast and holding them hostage in my pantry so that my zombie groupies would have something good to munch on while they’re typing up my reviews.

I think one of the issues is that there is this tangy aftertaste that I can’t quite describe. Kind of like a sour pickle, if a sour pickle was a sauce-drenched pouch of beef paste. Or maybe a cross between a tomato and a pile of metal shavings, if a tomato and a pile of metal shavings was a sauce-drenched pouch of beef paste.

Funny Man needs to end this review soon.

Without further ado, I will now state that this Cook’s Classics Beef Ravioli did not completely suck. However, I would not really suggest you eat this if you are alive.

What I mean to say, is that, zombies and food-reviewing undead, if they are reading this, should immediately go to the Dollar Store and purchase cans of this to take back to their lairs to consume instead of their normal dinner of human flesh.

(If this works, you can thank me later for saving mankind.)

Price: $0.69 for 15 oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 4/10

Whassup.

Yes, I did buy this Wasa Crispbread entirely for its moniker’s resemblance to the catchphrase from that outdated, archaic, so-1999 commercial filled with telephonically challenged idiots who look sort of (but not exactly) like your brother’s inebriated dog’s girlfriend’s owner. I do things like that.

I also smell my armpits. Hmm… Oniony.

You see, the other day I was at Whole Foods.

Wait, back up there Mr. Moneybags. You were at Whole Foods, the mortal enemy of Cheap Eaters around the land? Don’t get me wrong, I like a little expensive toejam tofu now and then. But for the most part, I stay out of Yuppiefoodville. (Incidentally, Sandra Tsing Loh of the Loh Life has a sort of funny series called
“Escape From Whole Foods”.)

What’s the negative of slumming? I don’t have a word for it, but let’s call it “riching”. Every so often I like to go riching it up: rolling down the aisle, eating Parmigiano-Reggiano and sippin on merlot and Reed’s Ginger Ale. With my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

I usually don’t buy anything, merely limiting my interaction with the soccermoms and yogamasters to surreptitiously sampling the cheese platters. Sometimes I can make about 3 rounds before the cheesemonger calls security.

But this time I was stopped in my tracks in the cracker aisle. Excuse me, the crispbread aisle. There are no crackers here – only ryebread, crispbread, bagel chips, melba toast and dehydrated dollar bills. I saw these Wasa Crispbread crackers and though, “Dang, that would make a nice easy review. Just look at the name. Whassup.”

But at $3.29 a pack of crispbread (I actually can’t find the receipt but I know it was at least 3 bucks) this would set me back almost an entire meal or so. So, I headed back out to the car and dug underneath the seat to see if I could find any change. No, of course I’m just jerking your chain – I actually whipped out my bright and shiny American Express card and paid for that bad boy box of crispbread with a single swipe. Damn, that felt good.

But when I got home, I found much of the Whassup magic had evaporated. Would most people who read this blog even remember that commerical? What, they were like 8 years old? And more importantly, even though the ad campaign had been inducted into the CLIO hall of fame, would anyone WANT to remember it. Was I opening up a whole can of whoopass worms that would come back to bite me in the form of commenters who tell me to please jump in a boiling vat of Velveeta cheese? Would people hate me for reminding them of their brother’s inebriated dog’s girlfriend’s owner? Would the castaways on Lost ever finally get off the stupid island?

In the end, I decided to go with it – mostly because of the stunning appearance of these crispbread crackers. A lot to talk about there. Have you ever seen a cardboard box disassembled into 12x6cm rectangles, covered with glue and then sprinkled with sawdust shavings left over from chainsawing a barn door in half? If you have (and I know you have), then this is what Wasa looks like.

I had a large corn on my foot, but I used a slice of Wasa to grind it down to a manageable nubbin.

And so on.

Seriously, the crispbread does look rather woodchippy. Or rather, as more people would say, it looks rather healthy. That never stopped me from putting someting in my mouth, so I went ahead and jammed it up between the choppers.

Bit of a mistake. Slicing up eyeballs, ow ow ow ow. You have to be sort of careful eating these things, but then a lot of these healthy crackers are like that. The look and taste sort of reminded me of Ryecrisp, though I haven’t had those for umpteen years. If your teeth aren’t so good, you might want to opt for something softer. Either that, or soak these in milk first. Or bacon fat.

I suspect things could get really delicious-er if you added grilled chicken, lettuce and curls of parmesan cheese as they suggest on the photo on the front. Then again, if you add grilled chicken, lettuce and curls of parmesan cheese onto a 12x6cm rectangle of cardboard, I think I could probably choke that down.

Incidentally, long ago I attempted to eat a small square of cardboard on a dare. The ex-friend assured I was going to get in the Guinness Book of World Records or something. I did not get in. However, I did feel like a termite for just a little while.

Cardboard resemblance aside, these crackers are ok. A bit dry, but I bet they would be great with some sort of spread on top. I have a problem with paying over 3 bucks for it though. If it wasn’t for that momentary Whassup weakness, I never would’ve brought them home. I considered going back to Whole Foods and returning the opened package. But that cheesemonger – ah, he’s got his eye on me.

Price: $3.29 for 9.7 oz
Found At: Whole Foods
Cheap Eats Score: 4/10

Fresh on the heels of a small earthquake that rocked me out of bed at 4am, I’m just not really feeling excited about reviewing food this morning. Oh, it was no Haiti or Chile (or Whittier Narrows, in which I was on the second floor of a 1930s era school building), but definitely not the type of thing to calm your nerves.

Because of that, this review of Campbell’s Chunky Grilled Chicken & Sausage Gumbo is going to rely on a tried-and-true, boring, unimaginative review “device”. That device is to present you with the raw list of things I wrote down whilst sitting eating this soup. It’s entertaining for me (but maybe not for you) to try and decode what I wrote down, sometimes months ago.

Yes, I actually sit with a pen in one hand, a spoon in the other, and I try and think of witty things to say about canned soup. It’s a wonderful life.

Transcript follows, with later commentary in brackets:

Chunk Gumb Soup

Smell – Smokyness is pleasant, pretty good, very peppery – Jalap & green peppers, if you don’t like, then bad. [Spelling, grammar: terrible. 10 Demerits.]

Soup Consistency – More watery than some Chunkys I’ve had [erm, isn't that Chunkies?]. Bit “slippery” like gumbo should be [I've no idea what I meant by this].

Salt – Med. high, would dilute it for most ppl. [Usually dilute it nearly two to one with water].

Spice – Med. heat, pleasant – I like more. [Please sir, may I have another] Not sharp, but this may be just right for majority.

Taste – Tiny bit of metal tincan taste overall [Good for goats]. But not bad. Slight smokiness [I thought we already covered the pleasant smokiness in detail, must be important]

Broth – Good flavor [Gee, THANKS FOR NOTHING]

Rice – I personally like rice “soft” in soup. If you’re used to crunch of risotto, may not like it. Almost like noodles. [Definitely showing my age here, but I do still have most of my teeth]

Veg – Tomatos [Ding. Quayle issues], Cellery [I kid you not, I wrote "Cellery". Did I mention that I used to spell at a 5th grade level in Kindergarten? I dunno what happened], Bell pepper, decent amount [As opposed to an indecent amount, I guess]

Chicken – Breast meat – a little dry bland. If I was make homemade would use non-breast or brin it. [LOL - just grin and bear it, or brin and gear it.] But at least not salty.

Sausage – Pretty decent size [Insert joke about my sausage and your sausage, and how one may or may not be lengthier than the other], has some heat to it. But in general, not much flav [Flavor Flav] believe it’s given its all to the flavor of soup. If homemade, you put sausage in later. [At least this is somewhat true, I've found it's better to delay putting in sausage into gumbo until like 1/2 hour before serving.]

Score – Probably 7, but price? 1.49 not bad. Overall excellent [My, my - very descriptive]

Price: $1.49 for 18.8 oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10