Critique: Best Choice Double Stuffed Beef Ravioli

You’d think with such a long name that there might be some redeeming quality with this canned item. Well, you’d be wrong. I originally bought this product because the price was so attractive when compared to a similar can of Chef Boyardee Jumbo Beef Ravioli located a few shelves down. Here is what I discovered.

First of all, nothing can be done to disguise the amount of salt in this can of crapola. A 425 gram serving hits you with 2,200 milligrams of sodium (a whole days allowance). That’s almost enough to leave a salt ring around your mouth. In many cases, salt helps to camouflage bad tasting food in an effort to make it more palatable. In this case, all you actually taste is the salt. Oh, and after going to the trouble, eating a can of this stuff racks up over 500 calories! The Chef Boyardee version, while not much better in the nutrition department, does taste a whole lot better.

The bottom line: If you’re under the age of fifteen, you can eat this stuff on occasion and survive the process. Anyone older than that should maybe take a pass.

Critique: Banquet Classic Fried Chicken Meal

Being the gluten for punishment that I am, after critiquing Banquet’s Homestyle Pot Roast which received less than stellar grades, I deiced the go ahead and give their Fried Chicken Meal a go also. As you can see, the picture looks very inviting. The meal is on the small side; only 228 grams in total. The three compartments held a round bread ball that is supposed to be the chicken thigh while the other two sported a helping of mashed potatoes and corn.

First, I would like to address the nutritional values before delving into the actual taste. OK. Hmm. Let’s see what we have here… the calories come in at 440 with half those coming from fat. Not to be out done, the cholesterol is an impressive 80 milligrams or one third of the average adults daily allowance… but wait! The real winner has got to be the sodium content! Over 1,110 milligrams or close to half an adult’s daily allowance. So, let’s review shall we? Seems we have a meal here of somewhat questionable nutritional value. For a few bucks, your body gets assaulted with a boatload of fat, cholesterol and salt! What a deal.

OK. Let’s move on to the big tamale shall we? The taste test is where it’s at, as they say. I microwaved the meal for the proscribed amount of time and was soon greeted with the smell of chicken, corn and potatoes all mixed up together. The end result is about what you’d expect from Banquet, not great, but also not all that bad considering the poor nutritional score. My grade for this meal is a C+ for taste and a D- for nutrition or a 5 on a scale of 10. (A slightly better grade than the one I gave the Pot Roast meal in a previous critique).

Mubarak, your fifteen minutes are up!

If you had asked the average Joe on the street who the leader of Egypt was, I’m sure a lot of blank stars would ensue. Now, in just the span of nineteen days, it seems everyone knows everything about Hosni Mubarak. A name that will now just as quickly be forgotten after he was unceremoniously ousted from office on Friday. So, that’s it then. What used to be fifteen minutes of fame seem now to have inflated out to almost a month. In Mubarak’s case, that was exactly eighteen days, twenty three hours and forty five minutes too long.

Critique: Banquet Home Style Pot Roast

This offering from Banquet serves up a frozen entrée consisting of two compartments; one with green beans and one with a mix of carrots, potatoes and pot roast chunks in a brown gravy. While they got the gravy and pot roast correct, the rest of this meal left me gagging.

The problem seems to be with their idea of doneness. It seems to be different from mine. My concept of a good pot roast requires all the vegetables to be about the same amount of doneness. Not too hard and not too mushy. Not so with this CF. In the package I ate, the carrots and green beans were almost crunchy (raw?) while the potatoes were decidedly over-cooked. Not a great taste sensation as far as my primitive little mouth was concerned.

I give this meal a solid D- on flavor and a D on nutrition (a palm-sized  272 gram meal with almost 900 mg of sodium) or a score of 4 on a scale of 10. In general, a total waste of my time and money. ConAgra, you can do better than this.

More snow for Forsyth!

I think February 2011 is already turning out to be a snowy one. After receiving a couple of inches of a combination of ice and snow on the first, not a one inch forecast snow turned into a good five incher overnight. I think the weather service referred to this as a ‘deformation event’. Whatever that means.

Once again, I'll bet the snow plows have be at it all night getting the main and secondary roads cleared off so  people can get to where they need to go. Good thing this happened on a Friday night. Most folks don’t have to try getting into work as a result.

Hopefully this little forecast Icon I saw on my home screen this morning is in error!

Hotmail Email Update Request is a Scam!

Beware of any email that looks like this. It is a scam and the crooks behind it are trying to rip you off! Any email you get that asks for information is normally not in your best interests.

Lady Gaga in Paris with her song Telephone

Pure Lady Gaga live in Paris and doing her thing. Good work on choreographing and other effects! My edits were poor as befitted an old mans vision. The circle thing with the fingers... yes, done that! It's the energy of all the cells working together, in each of us, that matter. Just as we each emerged pure and naked from our mother's birth canal, so then do we now blaze forth. Each capturing our special and unique moments of divine existence... At some point in World Time, the Creator glanced down, and was proud.... For we are!

UFO over Jerusalem! Real or fake?

A glowing orb filmed hovering over the skyline of Jerusalem has left UFO experts dumbfounded.

The circular object was seen descending slowly over the holy city's iconic Dome of the Rock before flickering and shooting skyward like a rocket. Similar clips have been seen before and debunked as hoaxes. But this latest sighting has proved more difficult to dismiss -- as it was recorded from four different perspectives.

Some UFO enthusiasts believe the videos -- which have taken the Internet by storm -- are final proof that aliens exist, while others say the unidentified object was the Hebrew god Elohim.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that flying over the Dome of the Rock landmark -- an ancient Islamic shrine -- is forbidden. Two witnesses at the Armon Hanatziv panoramic lookout near Mount Zion filmed the object at 1am on Saturday. A little after one minute into the clip, the object descends slowly, almost to ground level.

The craft hovers there for a short while and then flickers before shooting upwards at an incredible speed. Former Ministry of Defense UFO investigator Nick Pope said: "If these are real, they are some of the most incredible videos ever shot. "If they are not, then this is a very well-planned and coordinated hoax designed to eliminate elements of doubt."

"The way it shoots up into the sky suggests it is unmanned, because no living thing could survive those kinds of G-forces.

"We know the Israeli army has some very high-tech drones at its disposal. If this is one, it is one of the most advanced pieces of technology created by man."

Another set of observers also uploaded their mobile phone footage to YouTube on Saturday.

They wrote: "Have fun debunking this one." In their video, the American tourists can be heard saying: "We've seen them in Mississippi like this."

Two other clips filmed from different viewpoints were posted online. Skeptics have noted the views come from perspectives that could make nearby objects seem farther away and faster-moving. Others say the whole thing was faked and have prepared several alternative versions of the videos which they say prove they are not real.

These include stabilized versions in which the brightness and contrast have been increased, which they claim highlights a major flaw of perspective.

Another is motion-tracked, and apparently shows the UFO "bouncing around like crazy" -- which, say the skeptics, shows the makers had trouble inserting it into the scene.

Random Thoughts for Feb 3 2011

A word for our times…

After searching the Webster dictionary, I came up with the word I think best describes the time we live in…chaotic. By definition chaos is, ‘a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.’ That seems to sum up the state of our country, foreign events and the weather as of late.

The next big one!

The next world war will be fought over two ideologies; Christian and Muslim. Be sure to pick your side now. When the Suez Canal is shut down to the west (and I feel it will be soon), the price of oil for Americans will go through the roof. Couple that with an administration that is entrenched with a fantasy that solar panels will save the day and you have beginnings of a fire that will begin here and the rage all across the globe.

Wal-Mart may be wearing out its welcome.

The fine folks in New York City have had enough of companies that come in and strip out the ma and pa shops while most of the profits go to foreign interests. Add that to the manner in which it treats its employees and you have a company who has worn out its welcome in America.

EPA grants a GE power plant and exemptions from new regulations!

Wonder who currently in bed with our government? Why GE of course.

Seems the EPA is giving California a break, but giving Texas a really hard time? What gives?

Last week the EPA moved to punish Texas for being the one state with the temerity to challenge its methods. Can't stand Texans, President Obama? (See the entire article here).

Apparently, the EPA violated every tenet of administrative procedure in an effort to strip Texas of its authority to issue the air permits that are necessary for large power and industrial projects. A first in the history of the Clean Air Act, that the EPA has now elected to abrogate state control. A decision that will greatly impact growth in a state that is the U.S. energy capital.A decision that will only increase the distance that exists between those who have faith in the government to lead effectively and those who do not.

Perhaps some Americans will respond to the Islamic Brotherhood!

By my count there are more than enough extreme patriots in our country to make up a sizable force that could be used as a kind of ‘shadow army’. A Christian jihad army whose purpose would be to to infiltrate and create an Americanized caliphate of our own in select Islamic countries.Think that thought is way out there? Think again.

Personally, I would call these folks 'The Fitting Justice League' and maybe their emblem could be two crossed nukes with the words ‘Get it On’. Maybe it's time we gave the baby killing, godless extremists in the Islamic Brotherhood a beating they will not long forget. Oh, and a heads up. We don't throw rocks. We sling lead brother.