It was a Sunday and I was hungry and I figured that for a 'buck-a-meal deal', this offering from
the folks at Banquet would be a safe bet. Now, while I could easily throw the
pasta and sauce together all by myself from scratch, those meatballs would have proven a culinary challenge.
Not the least of which would be all the work involved. Lucky for me, I was fresh
out of hamburger, so the point was mute. Anyway, just look at them thar balls on
the front cover! I’ll even bet ya they're spicy cuz us real men like our balls
that way! (Uh, what)?
Another thing in Banquet's favor was the directions on the
back of the box. (They're just the way I like my world – simple). You open the
box, extract the meal, shove it into a microwave and about four minutes later, it’s
done! (Now somewhere in there, they also talk about slitting the film and stirring,
but that was way too much for me to handle. I contented myself to listening to the
microwave do its thing while I searched in the fridge for a cold one).
As you can plainly see at right, the finished meal looks a
teensy bit different from the advertised product. But, us real men know how to handle
disappointment (we get it often enough), so I sat down to eat.
Right off the bat, I’ll tell you there was this strange smell
that wafted up to my nose when I removed the plastic film. Can’t say for sure if
I could describe it other than to say ‘bad fridge smell’. But, seeing as how I was
hungry and seeing as how I had a cold brewski close at hand to help anesthetize my
innards, I decided to gave it a go. I’m happy to say that the meatballs
(four of them like on the package) were fair to middling. They made up for the
pasta which was not so fair. Here’s the
way I scored this Italian creation:
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Pkg Art:
9 Maybe I should have eaten the package instead?
Reality:
4 Best approached with your eyes
closed. Just like sex!
Cost:
5 At $1 a
shot, this is about as cheap as you can get! And, it shows.
Smell:
4 Ever stick your nose
where it didn’t belong? It was like
that, only worse!
Texture:
3 This pasta not only would stick on a wall, but it would
congeal there too.
Taste:
5 Throw out the
pasta and just eat the meatballs. You're better
off.
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Average:
5 Well, the box was kinda cute anyways!
Rather than endure eating this again, I think I’ll switch to the canned spaghetti and meatballs next
time. Better taste for about the same money!
Note: After the meal, you are left with only a cardboard container
and a plastic tray which like the song
'War! What is it good for?" is 'good' for absolutely nothing! About 52
grams of paper and plastic that can be recycled – so do it!
