Review: Steve's Paleo Goods PaleoChef Ketchup

I've mentioned in my prior Steve's Paleo Goods reviews that they were kind enough to send me a box of free samples.  Within that box was a product that I've been kind of terrified to review because of my prior experiences with people trying to make ketchup more "healthy" or what not.  Now, I've mentioned before that I have an unrequited love for ketchup.  It's one of my favorite things in the world and I'll put it on anything...eggs, fries, fried chicken, pizza crust, hot dogs, hamburgers, crackers, vegetables, eat it straight out of a spoon, etc.  Basically, my ketchup love knows no bounds.  Anyway, past bad experiences and my high esteem for ketchup made me fearful of this bottle of Steve's Paleo Goods PaleoChef Ketchup, but ultimately life is about overcoming your fears, so here we are with today's review.  This bottle comes in at twelve ounces and has 24 servings (a half ounces per serving obviously) and each serving comes in at 15 calories.

Review: Atkins Italian-Style Pasta Bake

I've touched on several Atkins products on the blog before and that includes nutrition bars, drinks and also frozen foods.  Today, I'll be dabbling once again in frozen food territory as I was able to pick up this Atkins Italian-Style Pasta Bake at Kroger for $3.99 (I had a coupon to knock that price down to $2.99 thankfully).  This one came in at a solid 9.0 ounces and had 360 calories with a pounding 33 grams of protein.

Review: Boca Bruschetta Tomato Basil Parmesan Veggie Patties

In the history of this blog, I've touched on several veggie burgers but all of them up to this point have been MorningStar Farms products.  Today will be my first "adventure" into Boca Burgers territory as I take a look at this Boca Bruschetta Tomato Basil Parmesan Veggie Patties that I picked up as a box of four veggie burgers at Kroger for $3.00.  Each patty comes in at 71 grams and has 90 calories with a solid thirteen grams of protein.  It's also only two Weight Watchers points per serving.

Review: Atkins Day Break Tex-Mex Scramble

Earlier this year, I got a coupon from Atkins that gave me $1.00 off of one of their frozen products that came with a free bar that I had gotten and reviewed previously.  That said, for nine months of this year, I was a vegetarian and since none of their frozen products were meatless, I was kind of out of luck when it came to buying one of them.  After nine months, I decided to get back on the meat wagon and that led me to be able to use my coupon to buy this bowl of Atkins Day Break Tex-Mex Scramble on sale at Kroger for $2.99.  Each bowl is 7.0 ounces and is 360 calories and 22 grams of protein.  What is particularly remarkable about those numbers is that of those 360 calories, 240 of them are from fat!  I know some of them are good fat, but still!  Also, since this is based on the famous (or infamous) Atkins Diet, this product is marked as good for all phases of the diet plan.

Review: Smartfood Feta Herb Hummus Popped Chips

With this final review of my Kroger clearance section binge, I'll touch on the one chip that I found to have the most interesting flavor combination of the three in this small 0.8 ounce sized bag of Smartfood Feta Herb Hummus Popped Chips that I picked up at half price.  Normal price is $1.00 and each bag has 110 calories of garbanzo bean based fun.  As I've said in previous Smartfood reviews, hummus can sometimes be a controversial food because a lot of people really, really do not like it.  I am not one of those people and I'm honestly intrigued by it.  Plus, I think hummus based popped chips serve as a good base because since hummus is such a neutral flavor, it's a great base to really showcase other flavor combinations and that's what it'll be trying to do here.

Review: Green Giant Garden Ranch Roasted Veggie Tortilla Chips

I mentioned in a previous Green Giant chip veggie chip review that it just seemed to me that Green Giant (General Mills) was directly taking a shot at Doritos under the auspice of being a "healthy" chip.  When I saw these new Green Giant Garden Ranch Roasted Veggie Tortilla Chips in the store, I once again had the same thought.  If you take a second to think about it, these are basically a direct shot at the Cool Ranch flavor of Doritos.  That's fine as chip companies compete on flavors all the time, but I just find it funny that these are "healthy" while Doritos are junk.  In reality, the are all junk.  Anyway, I got this bag on sale for $2.49 at Kroger and it is 5.0 ounces and contains five servings of about ten chips each.  Each of those ten chip servings are 130 calories as well.

Review: Smartfood Garlic Tomato Basil Hummus Popped Chips

I mentioned in my last (and also first) Smartfood review that I picked up a bunch of these mini bags of chips in the clearance section of Kroger for half their original price.  That splurge leads me to the source of today's review of these Smartfood Garlic Tomato Basil Hummus Popped Chips.  Typically, these lunch sized bags run at about $1.00 per bag and they are 0.8 ounces and 100 calories.  I know that a lot of people are creeped out by hummus, but I find it tasty (along with the tomato basil flavor combination), so I was more than ready to try these chips out for today's review.

Review: Green Giant Multigrain Barbecue Sweet Potato Chips

Today's review is the introduction of another one of mega conglomerate General Mills' products to the blog with this Green Giant Multigrain Barbecue Sweet Potato Chips.  With that, I was reminded of one of the more terrifying things that I've ever seen on television.  Most of us today know the cartoon version of the Jolly Green Giant mascot and his little cartoon buddy that they use in the marketing on television, print, etc.  Have you ever seen when they used a real person painted green that dwarfed the made up set that they had put together?  I saw it once in a television special about old commercials and it was terrifying.  What is also terrifying is that I've now got the Green Giant song from the commercials stuck in my head.  AHHHH!!!!  Anyway, this was a sample package that I got in the mail to demo one of their new products (I'll get to the core Sweet Potato Chips later) and since this was a sample, the measurements are kind of skewed compared to what you'd find in the store, but I'll list them anyway.  This was a 0.8 ounce bag and had 110 calories.  Of those 110 calories, 45 came from fat, so that's not particularly wonderful, but I guess it could be worse.

Review: MorningStar Farms Mediterranean Chickpea Veggie Burgers

I've eaten my fair share of MorningStar Farms products for the blog, but the funny thing is that I rarely think to purchase them when I am at the store, so I don't eat them at all except when I do reviews. I guess I don't get them often because they are at the opposite end of the freezer case (let's call it the Netherworld) from where I usually frequent. Recently, I just happened to be strolling thought the Netherworld and I glanced in and saw the "NEW" label on these MorningStar Farms Mediterranean Chickpea Veggie Burgers and being that I'm a sucker for new stuff, I hurriedly reached in and grabbed a box. This box set me back $2.99 at Kroger and each box contains four frozen veggie burgers. Each burger is 2.36 ounces and has 110 calories with 10 grams of protein.

Review: Saffron Road Chana Saag with Cumin Rice

Saffron Road has been generous with me on the blog and has kept me well fed in several reviews as I've already covered several of their crunchy chickpeas snacks flavors.  Now, they've started sending me some of their frozen food products to try out and that leads me to this review of the Saffron Road Chana Saag with Cumin Rice frozen entree.  This one is eleven ounces of joy and clocks in at 420 calories and has twelve grams of protein.  It's Certified Halal and in case you were wondering (because I was), Chana means chickpeas and Saag means spinach.  There's our language lesson for the day.

Review: Patak's Original Tikka Masala Curry Simmer Sauce

When I was in the process of moving a while back, I was trying to go through my cabinets and eat as many of the things that I had stored up for reviews as possible.  Among those things, were a few jars of Patak's simmer sauce that have led to some reviews and also this most recent review with this jar of Patak's Original Tikka Masala Curry Simmer Sauce that I picked up at Kroger for $2.99.  Each jar is fifteen ounces and contains three servings at 130 calories per serving and clocks in at a medium on the Patak's heat scale.  My prior experiences here on the site with Patak's products have been very positive, so I had some fairly high expectations heading in.  Tikka Masala is also more popular in Great Britain than it is in India, so maybe I should consider this a new ethnicity of foods instead of classifying this as Indian like I usually would.  What do you think?

Review: Patak's Original Rogan Josh Curry Simmer Sauce

My experience with ethnic food, specifically Indian food, has been very limited here on the blog even though reviewing those types of foods was one of my original missions when I first started that blog.  Still, I have done some reviews relating to one or both of those things and it's an increased focused on that mission here in 2013 that leads me to do another Patak's review with this review of a fifteen ounce jar of there Patak's Original Rogan Josh Curry Simmer Sauce that I picked up at Kroger for $2.99.  Each jar contains three servings and each serving is a relatively budget-like (in my mind) 100 calories.  On the Patak's spice scale, this rated as a medium as well.  Rogan Josh is typically served with lamb, but I decided to use it like a lot of Indians would, meaning that I stuck to being strictly vegetarian and mixed it with plain Ramen noodles (not something a typical Indian would do).

Review: Patak's Original Dopaiza Curry Simmer Sauce

One of the things that I intended on doing when I started this blog was reviewing ethnic foods.  Fifteen months later, I haven't reviewed a single one (I don't consider frozen food enchiladas to be that) so that FINALLY leads me to my first review of an ethnic food, in this case Indian, with this review of Patak's Original Dopaiza Curry Simmer Sauce that I picked up at Kroger for $2.99.  I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert when it comes to Indian food.  I've tasted a lot of it and I've liked a lot of it, but if a person were to ask me what my favorite dish in Indian cuisine was, I would have no idea how to answer.  I just don't have the knowledge.  That said, I do have the knowledge to determine whether I think something is good or not and to somewhat accurately describe the way something tastes, so that's how we'll approach this review.  It's as much of a learning experience for me as it is for you.  By the way, this jar was fifteen ounces and has three half-cup servings at 140 calories per serving.

Review: Walden Farms Tomato & Basil Pasta Sauce

Of all the Walden Farms reviews that I've done on this blog, I think my favorite was my review of their Walden Farms Tomato Ketchup.  It wasn't my favorite because it was so good, but instead because it was so awful and it caused me to write a post loaded with vitriol and disdain for the product.  I don't think I've ever hated something as much as I hated that, so I was hoping that this review of the Walden Farms Tomato & Basil Pasta Sauce would save me from thinking that all Walden Farms products modeled after tomato based on products suck.  I picked this one up on sale at my local Kroger for $3.69 and it's twelve ounces, zero calories, sugar free, etc.

Review: MorningStar Farms Tomato & Basil Pizza Veggie Burgers

When I was in elementary school, our school cafeteria would serve something that they called pizza burgers once a week or as least every other week.  These pizza burgers consisted of a base of a hamburger bun, a "pizza" mix on top (it was more like Sloppy Joe mix) and then melted mozzarella cheese on top of that.  For some reason, we all thought those were spectacularly delicious.  Why do I bring that up?  Well, this review of the MorningStar Farms Tomato & Basil Pizza Veggie Burgers reminded me of those.  Of course, MorningStar Farms' version is nothing like those that we had in the cafeteria, but at least the name is similar enough that it reminded me of an oddly fond memory from my youth.  Anyway, for this addition to the MorningStar Farms review series, I picked up a box of these pizza burgers on sale at Kroger for $3.00 and each box contains four burgers at a weight of 2.36 ounces and 120 calories per burger.

Review: Walden Farms Italian Sun Dried Tomato Salad Dressing

I am in love with Walden Farms products and I often times find myself searching their website in admiration when I am bored.  Okay, maybe that's not true but I do like a lot of their products and as you can tell by my numerous reviews, I've had a lot of them.  I recently was making a Walden Farms order off of Netrition.com and saw this Italian Sun Dried Tomato Salad Dressing available and since I'd never had it, I ordered a bottle to try out for a review.  As I said, I got this at Netrition.com and it was $3.79 for the twelve ounce bottle.  As always, it's calorie free, sugar free, etc. like Walden Farms products tend to be.

Review: Walden Farms Tomato Ketchup

First things first, I am OBSESSED with ketchup.  There are many foods that I eat that I don't particularly care for (eggs), yet I eat them only as a form of a ketchup delivery system.  Not only do I put ketchup on my eggs (and lots of it), I use it outside of the norm in other ways too.  I use ketchup as a dip for fried chicken, put it on crackers and chips, put it on spaghetti (admittedly, I took this idea from the movie Goodfellas), put it on vegetables, etc.  Basically, I'll put it on anything, although I've never put it on ice cream, nor do I think I ever will.  That said, when I saw that Walden Farms offered a sugar free and zero calorie version of Tomato Ketchup, I said that I had to give it a try.  I knew I was playing with fire with this one, but hey, I'll try just about anything.  I picked up this twelve ounce container for $3.69 at Kroger, by the way.  So, with a sense of terror in my mind fearing how my beloved ketchup could be ruined, I plodded on.

Review: Quaker Popped Tomato Basil Rice Snacks

Editor's Note:  While the product has stayed the same, Quaker now markets these under a different named and they are now called "Quaker Popped Tomato Basil Rice Snacks." The review below applies the same.

The next Quakes review and hopefully one of the last for a long while because I am frankly fatigued on these reviews, is a flavor that is so new (it says it on the bag, but my superior photography skills cut that part off) that Quaker does not even have a website for the flavor!  It's a flavor that I saw in while meandering through Walmart in a large bag for $2.59.  Each serving is 130 calories and in this large bag, there's about six servings.

Review: MorningStar Farms Spicy Black Bean Veggie Burgers

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I bought a lot of these MorningStar Farms products all at the same time due to a triple coupon event at my local Marsh, so this review of the Spicy Black Bean Veggie burgers is one of the many that I've done or plan on doing.  These "burgers" come in a box of four patties with two patties to an individually wrapped package within the box.  I guess MorningStar Farms feels that you should be eating two of these at once and being that they are 2.36 ounces and 120 calories per patty, that's not necessarily a bad thought.  With the coupon, I picked these up for $3.00.