Old El Paso Red Enchilada Sauce

Huh! I was sad that this was the only option at my store, because I'm a La Victoria user for most mexi-sauces, and this also has sugar in it (and "spices", always mysterious and possibly allergenic). But it tasted, honestly, surprisingly good. Used it for a slow-cooker chicken enchilada deal and I was pleased and impressed. A little spicy but nothing crazy; smells like taco sauce (which I never use) but tastes much better. Like, dare I say, enchilada sauce. How 'bout that. Sorry for Old El Doubting.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10

Pop Tarts - Lemon Blueberry Crumble

Loyal readers may remember that in my darkest hour, I had a bit of a Toaster Strudel phrase. So it is only natural that in this, my second darkest hour (so far), I consider a second-tier Toaster Strudel (=Pop Tart). Honestly, I might be looking at the Strudel through rose colored glasses, but they truly seem to be leagues above the garbage that is Pop Tart. The only upsides to Pop Tarts is that they're portable and way less messy/sticky. I ate them a lot in college because I didn't always have a kitchen and there were no legit grocery stores in walking distance. (If I'm ever struggling to max out my gratitude practice, I just have to think about how many more options I have to eat food now than I did then, even with all my dietary baggage, and the fact that eating pop tarts is now a choice and not an obligation! Thanks for that moment of perspective, Pop Tart. xoxo)

This flavor looks very pretty. It tastes OK, I guess. The filling is deffo blueberry, and there's a hint of sour lemon to it. The breaded part is actually weird and different, though (unless pop tarts have changed a lot lately, which I doubt). It's....oaty? I guess to evoke the crumble. Impressive flavor matching, but the whole thing is not very Good, even though it is very Sweet (too sweet; made my face tingly).  It is not as good as the top tier pop tarts (cherry, brown sugar cinnamon) and even those are a rare desperation-eat. I am ready for my next pop tart. 

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10

DeLallo Penne Ziti

Kinda weird to be both penne and ziti all at once, since I think of those as distinct pasta entities. But really penne is about the diagonal cut, and ziti is about the smooth tube, so a smooth tube with a diagonal cut, if such a thing exists (and now it does) would indeed be penne ziti. Ziti penne. Zitti e buoni. Neither penne nor ziti are really up my alley, especially the ziti of it all. They're too large and slippery to get anywhere with. A frustrating shape for your girl. The taste is, as always, just fine.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Signature Select Cauliflower Florets

This is frozen cauliflower. For me, the main purpose of cauliflower is to be a veg that takes up space and doesn't intrude with its own personality. In this, it served its purpose. Got nothin' else for you.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Ragu Kettle Cooked Tomato Basil Sauce

Not bad, Ragu, not bad at all. Or maybe that's mild deprivation talking. But this has no sugar, clean ingredos, no weird texture, no weird taste. Just pleasant herby tomato sauce, with a little garlic but not too much. Not sweet or oniony or anything of note, but made the pasta much tastier than it otherwise would have been. Huzzah.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10

Swanson Natural Goodness Lower Sodium Chicken Broth

Really scraping the bottom of the review barrel here, since this is indistinguishable from the Unsalted Chicken Broth and the Regular Chicken Broth. But it is technically a hybrid of those two broths, and therefore a unique product. It was, as always, fine. Made some nice chicken enchilada soup with it. It was a little salty. さすが chicken broth.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Cap'n Crunch's Arctic Crunch - Vanilla Frost

The reviews for this are so bad... I couldn't stay away. The reviews are correct. I should have stayed away. This tastes like frozen lima beans, which I haven't had in a loooong time, because I am allergic to beans. But lima beans are the only bean I don't miss, because they are mealy and gross. This cereal isn't mealy (it's Kix-texture), but it is gross. Genuinely, it tastes like freezer burn (arctic crunch!) and light vegetable. Very weird vibes. I don't get any "cooling effect", though, which is just about the only good thing you get with these novelty frosty cereals. OK, one other good thing here: the aesthetics of the cream & cerulean orbs are very good and unique. It's one of the prettiest cereals I've ever seen. Like glass orbs in a modern Nordic-inspired home catalogue. Other than bad bean, the main flavor note I detect is "aspirational vanilla frosting (gluten free?)". Like me, its aspirations remain unfulfilled. 

As I did my usual "eating a new food allergy panic attack website google" (parse that one, syntax nerds), I saw that this is no longer listed under available products on the Quaker site (though it is ostensibly allergen free). Smart move, Cap'n. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 4/10

Partake Classic Grahams

These taste like a foot, and I do not have a foot fetish. Just a very weird, slightly tangy(?) unpleasant flavor note going on here. Then the aftertaste is much better: like the buttery flour-heavy cookie dough base from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book binder. You know the one. After some mixing of taste and aftertaste, things level out to a slightly weird, slightly fine floury cookie. None of these things are classic OR graham, but it wasn't a total waste of a cookie. Weird stuff. Soft texture. Small circle shape (again, graham who?).

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Abe's One Big Muffin - Banana

I didn't enter a big muffin phase intentionally, but what the produce box delivers, I accept with open arms. This flavor is boring. I like banana things, breads especially, and I have been abstaining from banana for about 9 months since it's supposedly histamine rich. But no longer! Anyway, even with all that distance, this flavor is boring. Maybe on a par with blueberry, which is better visually but maybe the same taste-ily. Choco is still the best big muffin (so far).

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Abe's One Big Muffin - Chocolate Chip

I know that 'in for a penny, in for a pound' is one of my most toxic patterns, but also, I'm in for a lot of pennies at the moment. So the fact that this chocolate chip muffin probably weighs a pound is irrelevant to me. This one is better than the big corn muffin and big blueberry muffin, but I'm not sure if it's because I ate it cold and not in a hurry, or if it's truly better tasting. The chocolate chips are like normal lil dark chocolate chips and the rest of the muffin tastes like normal muffin. The texture is a little bit too dense for my preference, but it's not egregious. Overall it is a treat, which is what you want from your weird large nut-free muffin. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10

Country Fresh Carrots

I had a moment today where a richie rich was complaining about egg prices (up to 3.50$/dozen here, which is frankly still cheap per calorie) and I almost said, "why don't you just replace eggs with carrots?", which is a sign I need to g2b. Luckily I kept my carrot propaganda to myself. Carrots are really cheap though. And so versatile! I don't even like carrots, but I can't deny that they last a long time and add a certain "fun orange color" to any food. Good for rice, good for soup, good for pasta, good for salad if I could still eat raw produce without OAS. Good. But the taste is very "I'm eating this as a chore, but it could be worse". Oh well.

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10

Caramel Café au Lait Milano

People seem to like these, but people are dumb. This is another lower-tier white-choco milano. It tastes overwhelmingly like artificial caramel flavor. I know there are better coffee and caramel flavors out there than "janky caramel Dunkin k-cup" flavor. But this is not those. Still a cookie, though.

Overall
Cost: 4/10 [5.70]
Taste: 6/10

YumEarth Blue Raspberry Candy Canes

I gave up not eating candy canes for Lent. 

I always had the perception that all non-mint candy canes are inferior and gross, but since most candy canes are candy may-contains I don't have that much experience to draw from. These are giving me an additional pro-mint data point. But they're fine. Allergy friendly, weren't broken, no artificial colors, taste moderately pleasant. Sweet and kinda fruity. But a cane is actually a dumb-as-hell shape for a candy to be. Who asked for this? By buying it, I fear that I was. Oopsy.

Overall
Cost: 3/10 [10$?!]
Taste: 6/10

Signature Select Petite Broccoli Florets

Almost didn't review this, since I figured it's the same thing as the non-Petite version (the picture sure looks the same), but based on my comments, this actually is a different, petiter beast. One serving of this is like, 9 florets. Still tastes better than the winter mix broccos, even though I also bought this because they were out of winter mix. Maybe I should give up on winter mix and just go full brocco. But I need all the veggie diversity I can get! Anyway, this was good. I enjoyed it more than I expected to enjoy it, whatever that means.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Cinnamon French Toast Frosted Flakes

Huh. I had pretty low expectations for these, because syrup flavored things are horrible usually. And these really do remind me of a French Toast taste! But they're not at all like the weird glazed donut frosted flakes that I said tasted like French Toast Crunch. Perhaps French Toast Crunch doesn't taste like French Toast either!? This is cinnamony, buttery, and yes, syruppy, but not in that artificial maple way. In a good way. The smell is appealing rather than gross. Pretty impressive! The rare non-gross on-sale novelty cereal!

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 7/10

Haribo Happy Chicks

These are the only happy chicks I see nowadays, you feel me? They're cute though. These gummies are in various states of hatchedness; some are even full egg. The texture is pretty soft for Haribo. The flavors aren't listed on the bag, so these are just my best guess: 

    yellow: pineapple? fine.
    dark yellow: lemon? pretty darn lemony.
    pink: strawberry? fine.
    orange: orange? okay.
    dark red: cherry? good.
    green: green apple? fine.

In conclusion, I should have bought more Haribo. These aren't even that good, I just like them.

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10

Lakeside Organic Gardens Spinach

Spinach is a great veg (grittiness aside), but the bundle I got from Lakeside Organics was kinda mid. Very dirty, holey, scrunchy, wilty, etc. I salvaged many good leafs, and the taste was solid spinach, as ever, but the time commitment was a lot more than I would want to spend on spinach prep. I guess this is better (morally?) than those store brand pre-washed bags are though, s i g h. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Perdue Thin Sliced Chicken Breasts

It's kinda messed up that people wanted plumper chicken breasts, so they selectively bred massive birds, and now the breasts are TOO BIG so they're selling these "thin cutlet" packages instead (at a premium price point). But a lot of things are kinda messed up, aren't they?

Anyway, I spent a pretty penny on these, but it was worth it to make a nice herby chicken dish. These cook quickly (~8min), taste good, and didn't have any weirdnesses (or pee smell, but I didn't use the oven...). Actually, they had one weirdness: the outside of the package smelled so, so bad, but all the meat in my jank-city grocery store is like that, especially on Saturdays. Luckily the inside was uneventful. I was surprised that there were like 6-7 pieces in a 1.5lb package (5 normie chickens, 2 surprise "oh that's separate" chickens), but I guess that's the whole point. Thin chicken is certainly more delightful than thick chicken. Convenient. If I were rich I'd be buying these weekly I bet.

Overall
Cost: 4/10 [13$]
Taste: 6/10