Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-Op White Cauliflower

Finally, my local veg box has provided me....local veg! I didn't take a picture of it, but the cauliflower head I got was massive. Definitely bigger than my own head, which is pretty big as human heads go (or so I am told). It tasted also like cauliflower, and had no bugs (that I saw) or big brown spots or really any imperfections at all. Just a few tender leaves. It was so big that I failed to cook it fully the first time around and had to boil it since I was too impatient for Steaming 300 Lbs of Cauli A Second Time. But it was good. Big and good, what I strive to be. Also Blogger cum Google is asking me to insert smart search links here. That sounds like a possible AI nightmare, but let's give it a go to see what we're up against, yeah? Because I'm fortified with cauliflower (and nothing else). 

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10
Bigness: 10/10 

Mont-Blanc Carrots (Canada No. 1!)

I feel like I haven't had a veg in years, mostly because I can't spare 20 minutes to cook one lately but partially because my veg box is sending bread instead of veg. Anyway, this is nice. Feels like coming home, even if it's Canadian. Also, eating veg is such a privilege. Well, eating anything is a privilege. (I'm really bad at gratitude, except for when it comes to food.) Bless these carrots! They taste like carrot, were a good size (long but not too thick), fresh, no sliminess, all good things. So many carrot producers up north! We grew carrots just once at my house but they were 90% eaten by bunnies, which is cute in its own way. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10 

evian

This is bottled water. Water is good for you, bottled isn't (or for earth). The ethos is mid; I prefer other waters. The taste is a little cloudy, like it's been in the sun. But it's water. I take it when offered. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Red Robin Steak Fries (Freezer Edition)

Time for my least favorite carb, potato! Red Robin the resto is allergy-friendly, so presumably Red Robin the frozen fries are too (this is a faulty presumption in general but nevertheless?). These are thick and seasoned. They take 24 minutes to cook. That's a long time. They taste like mid potato. The seasoning doesn't really come through, which is just fine for me. A vessel for ketchup. No death. Fine. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Digiorno Personal Size Pepperoni - Hand-Tossed crust

There are things to like about this: no soy at all, a slogan of "pizza just for you" (damn straight), cheap, and multiple cooking options (I chose 3min microwave because my last Digiorno personal pizza had negligible oven gains). It's 740 calos per serving, which is a little high for my current lifestyle (bound to cause minor bodily distress), but surely better than a non-[pizza-just-for-me]. So - filling, convenient, safe. Pretty tasty, although there's a lot of bread and the sauce is the usual weirdly sweet digiorno sauce. But the ronis are good and it's ultimately cheesy bread, so yeah. Solid stuff.

Overall
Cost: 5/10 [4$ish?]
Taste: 6/10 

Schmidt Old Tyme Whole Wheat Bread

I randomly got this in my weekly veg box, even though I didn't order it, it's clearly not a veg, and it wasn't even listed on the website as an add-on option. Did a delivery person just drop in their own shopping by accident? Is it an elaborate plot to poison me? Or, more likely, was it just a weird coding error? Banking on the last one I decided to try it, since I'm not allergic (per the label, anyway), and I've been getting Old Tyme buns. I do love a gamble. 

It tastes like normal wheat bread. This is a good thing, by the by. No weird stuff, no corn syrup, no seeds, normal texture (fluffy), not buttery, huzzah. Tasty plain with butter. However the ingredients on the bag do list "wheat protein isolate" (which I'm not allergic to, it just stands out because Protein Isolate), and none of the Old Tyme breads online do... and this is bread, expires within a week, so it's not like they're slowly transitioning the packaging, right? But, maybe they made a lot of extra bags or something and that's why they're mystery dropping them in veg boxes. The crust also tastes a little like rye, though there is no rye in the ingredos (online or in real life). Lowkey stressful but a solid bread that I would buy in an official store now that I've tried it in a shady unofficial capacity (assuming, as always, that I survive). :) 

Overall
Cost: ???/10
Taste: 6/10 

Stouffer's Signature Sides - Scalloped Potatoes

This might seem like a crazy thing to buy when you can get a box of au gratin potatoes for way way cheaper, but turns out, those boxes contain soy protein/pea protein now. What the heck! So, OK, we'll give the freezer variety a try. Stouffer's is good for allergy stuff in my experience, and this only has milk and wheat. It's basically just potato and parm with a few seasonings. This is 4 servings (in theory; feels like 2 in practice) and you cook it in the microwave. Doesn't sound like the peak of food culture, but it tastes good. More cheese than potato, which is a definite plus. Then again, parm is an aged cheese, so maybe I shouldn't go too hard on this. There are some chewy bits (i.e. pure cheese) in addition to the more milky sauce, but not a lot of "gratin" to speak of. (I guess that's why they went with "scalloped" for the name). When cooking it smelled a bit like canned tomato soup, which is nasty, but the taste was overall "solid". Very similar to their vegetable lasagna sauce actually. Hm. 

Overall
Cost: 4/10 [9$?!]
Taste: 7/10