I am not a pretty, pretty princess.

This is not the story of my life living with a Jamaican lobster “Under da Sea”. It’s sort of the story of A Man, a Plan, a Can – Disney Princess Spaghettios. But drat, my palindromic powers are lacking. How about “Omelette was I ere I saw Elmo?” Closer, but wrong movie. And food type.

I did not dress up last Halloween as Ariel. Sometimes I wish I did, because I probably would have gotten more candy than when I dressed up as Richard Nixon. Can you just imagine answering the door and being greeted with “Trick or treat, I’m not a crook” while holding out a bag…

I do not have the hots for Robert Pattinson. But that would be an interesting mix. I think a Disney vampire princess cartoon would sell like hotcakes. Or has that been done already…

I don’t have any posters of these Disney princesses on the wall. Parents with young daughters are rightfully quaking in their shoes at the sight of the Holy Trinity of the Disney-fied Apocalypse on this can – Ariel, Belle and Cinderella. ABC, 123, shoot me now please.

And so on.

One of the difficulties when writing product reviews, is that you’d suspect that this can of Spaghettios Shapes would practically write it’s own review. The problem is that it’s TOO easy to make fun of. It’s like shooting cans of Spam in a barrel.

There are too many inside princess jokes I’d like to spew forth, and too many pop culture references that beg to be mashed up with Spaghettios lore. So what happens is that I start to ramble, to sling those fine Dungeons and Dragons asides. I become comfortably incomprehensible. And inevitably, it turns into one of THOSE reviews.

But I promised myself I wouldn’t do that this time. The only way I can find to mute the mouth is to show a bunch of pictures of the product. It takes up room in the post and makes me feel like I’ve written more than I actually have.

Anyhow, there’s not much more to say on the taste of Spaghettios. We’ve reviewed them before, and once you’ve tasted one can, you’ve tasted them all. The only difference is whether they include meatballs, and what shape the extruded noodles are in. Marketing and packaging – that’s all it is.

This first thing I have to say about the packaging is that I think something is wrong with the above sentence. But I can’t figure it out. “Cool shapes shaped pasta in tomato and cheese sauce.” Maybe I’m wrong – after all I just write written reviews about cans of canned food.

There was a surprising diversity of shapes in the can – however, I was disappointed to note that perhaps 50 percent of the shapes were simple “O’s”. Man, if you’re going to go through the trouble of promoting the Disney movies, why not include omit those O shapes? Because (as a future reader will no doubt write in to tell me) then you couldn’t call it Spaghettios any more. And there goes your brand name.

Beyond the shapes, everything else was pretty much what you’d expect. Inhalable noodles in a sweet orange sauce. When I was heating this up in a pot, I was already prepared to be disappointed by the lack of pasta shapes that actually corresponded to the pictures on the can. The shapes that I saw on first glance looked nothing like princesses, castles, carriages or crowns. OK, maybe the crown did look accurate. They looked pretty unrecognizable. I could see why this was on clearance for 90 cents.

I wouldn’t have blamed them if they didn’t include ALL the “Seven Enchanting Princess Shapes.” After all, who’s going to keep track of stuff like that? What kind of idiot would actually sit there carefully pick the different noodle shapes out of boiling spaghetti sauce? What kind of OCD maniac would try and identify each of the shapes, set them aside on a plate and try to take a photo of them in the same configuration as the picture on the can?

Price: $.90 for 15 oz.
Found At: Ralph’s
Cheap Eats Score: 4/10

[Editor's Note: I actually have a soft spot for Ariel since this was the first movie my wife and I ever saw together. Uh, I think that was 20 years ago. But no, I still won't put up a Little Mermaid poster on the wall. Also, yes I know the "Carriage" noodle shape above is rotated clockwise 90 degrees. I did that on purpose as a silent protest against the death of carriages.]

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, there was a Bag of Chips. These chips were called Pringles Bold Crunch, and they were of the Jalapeno variety. No, I’m not going to stick the “N-yay” on the “n” in Jalapeno, because I’m too lazy. Anyhow, were these bold? Yep. Were they crunchy? Quite. Did they have a Jalapeno taste? Indubitably. And were they Pringles?

NOPE.

And, this IS their story…

OK, I have to admit I’ve been suffering writer’s block after a can of Juanita’s Pozole fell out of the sky and hit me on the head. Actually, it fell out of the kitchen cabinet but since my high cabinets were made for aliens 8 feet tall, and aliens tend to fall out of the sky, I guess you could say that an alien can of Juanita’s Pozole hit me on the head after falling out of the sky.

Thank you very much for the scattered applause.

I had originally written up a fake interview with a Mr. Bold C. Pringles. The C stands for “Crunchy”, or at least that’s what he told me. You know how it is. People lie sometimes just because they think they can get away with it…

In the interview, I was going to have Mr. Pringles go postal on me, or at least call me a lazy, good fer nothing product reviewer. I was going to make him all in your face bold and crunchy, booyah! He was going to berate my chip eating skills and tell me to go back to the dollar store and return them because I didn’t deserve to eat them.

I was going to finally muster up the strength to launch my own counterattack: these Pringles ARE NOT PRINGLES. No they’re not. I don’t care how delicious they are, they’re not fricking Pringles, no sir. They don’t look like Pringles. They don’t really taste like them. And they’re not in a can, they’re in a bag.

FAIL.

But you know, I’ve learned something today. No one cares about fake interviews with products. Unless they’re really awesome. We should just eat or use the products and then type up a short single spaced paragraph on the Smith Corona (not beer you idiot) in which we discuss exactly what we liked and disliked about it. We shouldn’t bring any emotion or idiocratic (that’s not a word) idiosyncrasies into the conversation.

Instead, we should sit properly at the table when eating our chips and talk about them rationally with our friends and neighbors. For instance, the heady aroma of the Jalapeno (sorry, again no N-yays) that tickles my nose as it wafts out of the bag. And the powdery pifflepuzz of tangy seasonings that glossen each wittle chip goodly. Forsooth, the wunderful crackle and munch of the compressed potato snackling as it slides dutifully down the throat. Verily thy capsicum, it tingles the tongue or bung. But oh ye small but bold chipple (or nipple), why dost thou surface be uncurvaceous and non-stacking? Get thee to a cannery, why woulds’t thou be a breeder of flat chips? Woggle, woggle the pringlebones think they’re bold and munchy but hey-ho your price has skyblocketed while you become uncannedeth!

And so on.

Price: $1 for 5.5 oz.
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

[Editor's Note: Sorry, this was another one of "those" reviews. I suffer from Glossolalia occasionally. It only goes away if I write a review out of it, generally of the Reverse Flowers for Algernon variety. Companies hate me for this incoherence. I receive 4 or 5 emails a month telling me how weird or strange I am or smell. I can't help it, my jeans are blue. But seriously, these are pretty decent chips, but they're just not Pringles. Damnit, Pringles come in a can - the end.]

Here are my first thoughts about Juanita’s Pozole:

CornNut Soup.

That is all.

Just kidding, there’s more. Well, I decided to skip a lame joke about how much I love to eat Juanita’s pozole (as in “everybody say hey, we want some Pozo-le”). Homina hominy, haha. But still, there’s more to say. I also decided to skip a poll on who is hotter: the gal in the Juanita’s or the Sunmaid logos. (Incidentally, I think the Sunmaid gal is a little bit last century’s news, and gosh if her digital facelift sorta makes me think of an fugly bonneted version of Lara Croft.)

No, there is more to the pozole made by Juanita’s Foods than just that. And surprisingly, the majority of it is rather favorable. I say surprisingly, because usually my untrained eye tends to pick out the absolute worst mystery canned foods possible. This leads to lot of dumped meals, which depresses me – especially in this depression where we shouldn’t be wasting food if possible.

Not so with the pozole. I actually made 2 different meals for two people out of this one large can. That’s the first thing about it – It’s a really big can, almost 2 lbs worth of soup. And the second thing is the price – this was a definite impulsive buy at only 99 cents. But I liked it so much, that I later went back and bought more cans at the the same price. I’ll take this as earthquake emergency food over absolute balderdashcrap like VanCamp’s Pork&Beans. Ugh on that. Yum on the Pozole.

I guess it’s at this point that I should admit something. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never really tried pozole before, despite living in the midst of a veritable paradise of Mexican restaurants all my life. I’ve tried a lot of different Mexican foods, but this one was off the radar.

I knew it was a soup/stew and that it had something to do with corn. For those of you who, like me, are pozole virgins (I want to make a joke here but I can’t quite make the connection) – this is a Mexican style pork and hominy soup. From Wikipedia: “a traditional pre-Columbian soup or stew from Mexico and New Mexico… made from hominy, with pork (or other meat), chili pepper, and other seasonings and garnish…”

With that description out of the way, we get to the CornNuts connection. Ah yes, many a pleasant day as a kid was whiled away obliterating unsuspecting molars with those oversized pieces of corn. I actually don’t know exactly what type of corn Hominy is, or even if it’s a different type (is the large size only due to the soaking treatment with the lye solution?) and I want to prevent you from falling asleep from wacky pseudo-agricultural BS. So, I’ll leave that up to you to discover in your free time.

But yes, seeing as my only experience with larger corn kernels has been CornNuts, this is what I thought of. CornNuts Soup. Juanita’s Foods Pozole is a pork broth based soup, flavored with chile peppers and Mexican spices. I thought at first it had tomato based product in it, but from the ingredient list, I don’t think it does.

The main parts of the soup are the hominy corn and the chunks of pork. Maybe I was just still pissed off from the non-porkiness of the VanCamp’s Pork&Beans sweetcrap I had earlier, but this pozole was really amazing. See for yourself in the picture – I just didn’t expect gargantuan chunks of pork in a can of soup like this. They were truly large. The chunks in the photo are smaller than the ones in the can were. I actually had to break them up. It was like playing Pork Asteroids.

The abundance of pork seems supremely generous, I can’t figure it out. Oh sure, I’m sure some naysayer out there has a tale of how this is inferior pork lips, snouts and asses and blah blah blah. Dude. It cost a dollar. It tasted pretty much like some sort of pork shoulder to me. Well, to be fair – it doesn’t say exactly WHAT kind of pork it is…

Actually, I have the suspicion that this can of pozole isn’t normally that cheap – especially after seeing it being sold on a online Mexican grocery site for $6.95!

The large hominy pieces were pretty good and there was a ton of it in the soup. They taste like softened corn-nuts, but have a masa-like texture that reminds me of the outer corn parts of tamales. Indeed, I think that they often make masa out of ground up hominy. I think that they leave part of the corn kernel shell on, so sometimes you encounter some rather rough bits on the pozole. But that didn’t deter me – I had an enormous bowl.

Did I mention this is a 30.5 ounce can?

We ate pozole for lunch, pozole for dinner and I also had pozole the next day. I should’ve eaten it in the morning since I’ve heard that, like Menudo, it’s a favorite for breakfast. I also hear that there are an absolute ton of “garnishes” that are eaten with pozole. The can label suggests fresh radishes, oregano, shredded cabbage, chopped onions and lime. We actually did something rather weird – we chucked some chopped up Kale in it, like you would do for a Tuscan bean soup. It was pretty good.

I also threw some grated parm cheese in it and that gave it even more body. Some people might think the soup is a little “watery”, but I believe it’s supposed to be that way. The cheese thickened it up nicely.

The overall flavor was a little bit on the salty side – but if you know me, you know I always complain about foods being too salty. I added a little water and it was fine. The spices were just about right, but I felt it could use a little kick with cayenne pepper. There was a little bit of “metal can” taste to the soup, but it wasn’t as bad as some other canned food I’ve had.

Ok, the story is almost done here. Truthfully, it’s hard to make any more jokes about this pozole. I was just very surprised at how decent this was. I mean, at a dollar a can, I wouldn’t complain too much if it was crap. But it was rather good – I suspect you could use this as the base for a more “homemade” type of soup if you doctor it up enough.

Price: $0.99 for 30.5 oz.
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 9/10

[Editor's Note: Dear Sunmaid - I apologize for dragging your gal's likeness through the mud. She actually is kinda cute in that Uncanny Valley sort of way.]

Oh, wonderful innocence and naivete for consumables. You have been lost in the hallowed halls of time. It pains me to say this, but Yoo-Hoo is not really chocolate milk. ‘Tis a chocolate drink.

Boo-hoo.

Well, actually it’s been awhile since I realized that not all “chocolate milk” is really chocolate milk. I would say that it occured somewhere between the time I found out Santa Claus was not REALLY a jolly red and white, coke-gulping senior citizen with a facial hair problem, and the time I discovered that the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express tag team were not in fact double-dropkicking their opponents fo’ reals.

Yes, Virginia – wrestling is fake.

In any case, it’s not like they say anywhere on the box that Yoo-hoo is actually chocolate milk. And it does contain non-fat dry milk. And it has whey – uh, better known as milk plasma. You know, little Miss Muffett sat on her tuffett eating her curds and milk plasma.

Tee-hee.

Still, I have good interesting memories with the Yoo-hoo drink. I remember having them at baseball games. Yes, we were the team that always won the championships. However, I was not the player who always hit or caught the ball. In fact, I think I was more concerned with the quality and quantity of the refreshments that parents bought to the games. Oh Kevin’s mom – you think you can get away bringing that fake Pic’n'Save Kool-aid crap to the game?

Hell-no.

There were a few parents who insisted on bringing Yoo-hoo to the game. When I first tried it, I thought it tasted like Chocolate Spit. I dunno, something to do with the amount of HFCS, xanthum gum or corn syrup solids, but it had a really gummy taste to it. Not to mention the fakey chocolate milk taste. Eventually, I grew to learn to drink it, but I was never a big fan. Then again, I never really liked pre-mixed chocolate milk. It had to be the kind you poured and mixed yourself. Nestlé Quik rabbit coming at ya full force.

Boo-yah!

If you fast-forward, I hadn’t probably had a sip of Yoo-hoo in 25 years. So when I saw this 3 pack at the store I had to pick it up for a buck. These seemed to be seriously small containers at 6.5 ounces each. But I guess it’s about half a can of soda or so. Maybe it’s better it’s such a small package, considering the waist sizes of Americans today.

With my new adult taste buds, I was a little more forgiving of the flavor. In addition, it could be my imagination, but it seems to feel less mucous-like than before. (Side Note: someone needs to make a product called Mucilage Milk. I would try it.) I did make the mistake of drinking this at room temperature first. The flavor improved greatly when I chilled it. Speaking of drinking it at room temperature – apparently Yoo-hoo is known to have a (and I quote from Wikipedia) “famously open-ended shelf life” for a milk product. Mine actually did have “best if used by” dates of April 25, 2010. Actually when I first read the date, I thought it said April 2510! That would be some really old milk product.

Moo-cow.

I’m also rather glad that they haven’t gone the “sugar-free” route. I can’t stand the mouthfeel that fakey sugar substitute drinks of any kind inflict on your tongue. Yes, yes Diet Dr. Pepper is still fake Dr. Pepper to me. Yoo-hoo does have a little bit of an aftertaste, but I don’t think that’s due to the sweetener. Especially seeing as how real honest to goodness delicious High Fructose Corn Syrup is the second ingredient on the box list.

I guess I wasn’t terribly disappointed with Yoo-hoo after so many years. If anything, my impression of this faux chocolate milk has improved slightly. However, my baseball skills have not. In fact, I am currently being chosen next to last whenever the guys get together for softball games during the holidays. This is OK with me since I have gained the secret knowledge that prowess with the bat occurs as a semi-compensation for personal “bat-length”.

Po-Tweet.

Price: $1.00 for 3 boxes (6.5 oz ea)
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10

[Editor's Note: Man, I was trying to work in some Imperial Teen into this article, but then I realized no one would no what I was talking about... ... ... ... see what I mean?]

Once upon a time, there was a group of people called the Denver Nuggets. They partook in a sporting activity where the objective was to repeatedly throw an air-filled rubber sphere into a peach basket with the bottom cut out. At the same time, another group of people called the Los Angeles Lakers would try and stop them from throwing the sphere into the peach basket. In fact, they would try and steal the sphere and then, bouncing it along the floor, would run toward their OWN personal peach basket. They would try and loft the sphere into that peach basket. This, of course, was a very exciting activity and billions of other people watched these groups of people try and throw the sphere into their peach baskets.

This is not their story.

However, these ARE Beef Steak NUGGETS that you see above.

I was originally trying to use a joke about Chicken McNuggets as a segue, but it just didn’t fly. Get it? Fly?

Yes, I am a very bad joke/review writer subsisting on dollar store food.

To tell you the truth, these Beef Steak Nuggets (and apparently they are “Original”, because no one has ever made dried cubes of beef jerky before) have caught my eye more than once in the dollar store. But I’ve always resisted the temptation to get them, because I have a sort of “non-dried meat” rule from these discount stores. The last time I was there, however, I accidentally knocked one of the packages off it’s clip in the aisle header.

I took it as a sign.

Note to dollar store owners: you should make sure all the clips fastening these packages to the hangers are loose beyond belief, because when people knock them off they usually pick them up and might possibly buy them.

Or not.

This is a small flat 1.5 ounce package of dried beef jerky cubes. I have to admit I was a little confused at the product description on the back, which states they’re “smoked over mesquite wood”. However, the ingredients state “smoke flavor powder” and even the front of the package says “natural smoke flavor added”. I’m not sure how they can say they’re smoked over mesquite wood, unless maybe they light a little twig of mesquite kindling underneath just so that they can say it on the package. Or maybe I’m just crazy and reading too much conspiracy theory into it.

As with all dried meat products, the price per weight is tremendously expensive as is to be expected. Even with a dollar store item like this, there are exactly 10 cubes of beef in the 1.5 oz. foil pack. Interestingly, it’s claimed on the front that there is “50% more free”. I’m thinking, geez you mean to tell me that normally there are only FIVE nuggets in a pack?

It’s sorta weird how the package makes the beef cubes look “wet”, when in fact they’re dry like normal beef jerky. This is actually what gave me great hesitation in the first place – the beef in the picture looked like wet stew beef. Or Alpo. You take your pick.

I was also very interested to see a small note at the bottom which said “Attention: to enhance freshness and taste, this product is packed with an oxygen absorber packet inside. This packet contains harmless non-toxic minerals, but should not be eaten.”

There was no such absorber packet in mine.

Not that I was THAT disappointed. I wasn’t going to try eating the non-toxic minerals, but hey, you never know.

As for overall smell and taste – I was rather disappointed. The meat had an extremely processed smell to it, but if you’ve had mass produced beef jerky products before, you know what I’m talking about. The smoky smell was not strong at all – maybe they should put more of that powder in.

In my opinion, the spices were weak. They tended toward the very sweet. Now, I know America has this fascination with sweet food, but please, keep it out of my beef jerky. This almost tasted like teriyaki beef. If you’ve had asian beef jerky before, it tasted like that, but even sweeter in my opinion. Too much brown sugar here. Besides the horrible MSG aftertaste floating in my mouth, I did notice an afterglow of black pepper powder, which was more pleasant.

The texture of the beef nuggets was rather tender. I think they’re keeping in mind the toothless generations (older folks and babies) when they made these. It does say they’re “enjoyed by Moms, Dads, and Kids alike”. They’re equal opportunity beef steak nugget producers. Me, I like a beef jerky that’s so tough it threatens to rip your teeth out of your gums when you try and bite off a piece. I likes me a dried cow slab that fights back. The thicker pieces did have a bit more chew, but on the whole I was pretty disappointed.

In conclusion, I wouldn’t buy these again. I actually had to chuck about half of it into the can because I couldn’t stand the sweetness in them. But you’ll like these nuggets if you like sweet dried beef. Maybe you can take them to the next Nuggets peach basket game.

Price: $1.00 for 1.5 oz (10 pcs)
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 4/10

I think I’m suffering from selective pasta amnesia.

The reason I think a part of my brain is on the fritz is that, try as I might, I don’t recall Spaghettios that included “donut holes” in the mix along with the hoops.

What in the world is going on?

I’m just an Unfrozen Caveman Cheap Eats Editor. All these extra pasta shapes confuse me.

To be honest, I probably haven’t had Spaghettios since my youthful Camping Days – and probably only a few times at that. This kind of pasta in a can was banned in our household except during special motorhome trips when it just felt right to eat. It’s probably for the best anyway, because as I’ve mentioned, I’ve always felt bad after eating Chef Boyardee and similar products.

Anyhow, back to the stupefying inclusion of the inner pasta dots along with the O’s. I’m surprised there aren’t riots in the streets. If you look at the picture on the can, there aren’t any little pasta dots. I just see the O’s, meatballs, and gooey, splashing sauce. As a sidenote: the “liveliness” of the pasta in the picture is a little disturbing. It almost looks like it’s alive. Some sort of viral spaghetti and meatballs that’s about to latch onto your face and telepathically feed you nightmares featuring irate Italian chefs waving cleavers. The Horror.

But yep, there are no pasta dots in the can picture. I wish the product was called Spaghettios with Dots and Meatballs so I wouldn’t get confused. I guess it makes since for them to include them in the can, otherwise they’d go to waste. Last I checked, there is no Home for Wayward Pasta Dots just yet. And they taste pretty much the same.

Oh, the taste. I’ve often written about my dislike of “sweet” things – this usually applies to tomato based products as well. There are only a few brands of spaghetti sauce that we can tolerate (Hunt’s in a can is one of them).

But for some reason, I rather enjoy the oversweetened orangey sauce that comes in these products. I’m not quite sure why, maybe my Sweet taste buds get all nostalgic for it. It has a fairly decent flavor, and I like that it’s very cheesey tasting. Afterwards, I had a slight taste of tin can in my mouth that was difficult to wash out. I find this often happens with canned food that contains tomato products. It wasn’t as bad as some of the other canned tomato items, but it was still noticeable.

The meatballs are tiny 3/4 inch perfect spheres of pureed beef-water-breadcrumb mixture. Incidentally, I keep wanting to type “metaballs” instead of “meatballs“. Something to do with a habit of typing “metadata” I guess. Hmm… MetaMeatBalls.

The noodles are pretty much your plain Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup type of soft, overcooked pasta product. They aren’t spectacular, and you pretty much don’t even notice much about them. It’s like they’re just there to fill up the rest of the empty space that the metameatballs don’t cover.

Anyhow, I guess you aren’t going for texture in this product. I pretty much just wolf the whole thing down – if it wasn’t for the meatballs, I wouldn’t even chew.

The price on this can was a buck fifty at F&E, which I thought at first was kind of reasonable. However, the other day, I think I saw a 26 oz. can of Spaghettios (nearly twice as large) for only a dollar. But I don’t recall if it was plain Spaghettios or if it had the meatballs in it. Surely the meatball variety costs more? Anyhow, the end result is that I upped the review score on this a bit because I’m assuming you can get it for cheaper than I did.

So the surprising thing is that I didn’t feel ill at all after eating this. I don’t know what’s happened. It’s either that they’ve done something to the main recipe over the years to prevent it from irritating my bowels, or my stomach has taken a strange liking to these canned spaghetti products.

For the sake of my health, I sincerely hope it’s not the latter. The last thing I need is the OK to ingest this stuff on a daily basis. It’s almost like it was a GOOD thing that it used to make me feel sick – that way I didn’t eat it very often. As for the stupidity of eating things that you know make you sick – I’m like one of those folks who occasionally hit their heads against the kitchen counter to see if there’s a different result than the last time.

Actually, I’ve been thinking maybe my pasta shape amnesia has been brought on by that very action of me smacking my head on the counter. Or maybe, the dots aren’t really there and I’m just hallucinating them!

All in a day’s work.

Price: $1.50 for 4.75 oz. can
Found At: Fresh and Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

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.]