BREAKING NEWS: New Jersey must have been a wonderful place to grow up, right Joe?

This reminds me of a trip Joe, Adale, and I took to a Chinease buffet in Binghamton

BREAKING NEWS: I am consumed with raw glambition.

I've seen a trailer for my new favorite movie. It will definitely make Kristen's Top 10 too. It's a Thai movie called "Chocolate" by the same guys who made Ong Bak, Thai Warrior (another totally awesome movie), and it's about an autistic girl who learns karate & muy thai boxing from watching tv. The tag line is "She's a special needs girl with a special need to kick ass!!"

BREAKING NEWS: The economy is really bad

MICROWAVE DELECTABLES  with geezy

This week I'll be reviewing the Beef Portobello microwave meal from Eating Right. The packaging, including the green & white logo, gives a contemporary feel to an old classic. I was excited about eating "tender beef", roasted potatoes, and a yummy sauce for lunch. Just look at the box - just imagine what it would be like to have that waiting for you in the middle of the day. 

Positivity

• To be honest, there's not a lot to recommend in this lunch. The potatoes were not as soft as I thought they would be. The high salt content will activate certain taste centers in the brain, possibly triggering feelings of satisfaction, but I demand more of my $2.47 microwave lunches. 

Liabilities

• Broccoli. Putting aside my general aversion to naked broccoli, this dish illustrates the problem microwave lunches have reproducing edible broccoli. It turns out always turns out mushy, and you need way more sauce than Eating Right provides to be able to choke it down.
• Surprisingly, the sauce was also a liability. If brown was a flavor, it would have been a winner, but alas, I was not down with this brizzzown.  "Thick" and "salty' are the best, and only, two attributes of this hot brown mess. 
• My biggest disappointment with the lunch was the beef itself. After the sale price, 85% of my decision to purchase this Beef Portobello lunch was the presence of "tender beef", as promoted on the box. I was surprised that even though the beef was drenched in a thick, salty, brown sauce, it was dry and stringy. And that's fucked up. 

The Verdict

I cannot in good faith recommend this meal. The deficiencies I've described above are self-evident. your favorite grocery store offers a dizzying array of microwavable meals, and there will always be one on sale that is more satisfying than Eating Right's Beef Portobello. Eating Right's meals can often be found on sale for around $2.50, and is among the pricier microwave meals that I purchase. To give you an example of what $2.50 per meal means, I can buy 5 Boneless Pork meals (my previous reviewed meal) for the price of 2 Beef Portobello meals. There's no contest. I give the Eating Right Beef Portobello meal 1/2 chocolate sprinkle donuts.

BREAKING NEWS: Tragedy Strikes!

As most of you have heard, a horrible, unspeakable tragedy happened with Us Airways last week. One of their planes hit some birds, causing the engines to go out, and the pilot had to make a miraculous landing in the Hudson river.

 The, the unimaginable occurred.

Us Airways gave all of those whiny, greedy, selfish passengers Chairman's Preferred Status for FREE for the next year!!! Are you f-ing kidding me? Only true road warriors are awarded this most prestigious preferred flyer level, which virtually guarantees First Class upgrades on every flight. You surely remember all the hell I went through to get Silver Preferred with US Airways. Those lucky-duckies did absolutely nothing & they're now the most elite of the elite. Their flight was in the air for 6 minutes. I had to make 25 grueling flights in one calendar year just for Silver. 

I can hear them now - "Waaaah, I landed in the water. Waaah, I had to stand on the wing of the plane." Most of them have no idea the horrors of shit holes like the Rapid City Regional Airport. Want to have a tasty slice of Sbarro pizza before your flight - you're fucked because all they have is a crappy cafeteria. Don't even get me started about assignments in dry counties, hotels that are stingy with extra bars of soap, or what waiting day in & day out for the breakfast pizzas at the hotel buffet does to your soul. 

Don't think I'm some cold hearted ex-business traveller. Listen to commenter Fedupincomptence writing at Usatoday.com (the newspaper of choice for all business travellers):

None of the passengers should be given Chairman Preferred! I've been flying US Airways for over a quarter of a century with some close calls and the only thing I get is what I earn. I have broken my rear to EARN & MAINTAIN Platinum Status. These folks should take their $5,000 they got for losing their bags and be quite. You want Chairman, platinum, Gold, Silver, YOU MUST EARN IT!

Chairman Preferred for a six minute flight? You can't punch me in the nutz and call me daddy - that just isn't right.

Introducing MICROWAVE DELECTABLES with Geezy

As a great man once proclaimed, "Give me tasty microwave meals I can bring to work or give me death." I am confident that my fellow office workers agree on the importance of lunch in our day - it provides critical nutrients which allow us to operate at peak levels of efficiency, the mid-day break is a time to reflect on the day and bond with co-workers, and, if you choose the right lunch, you can mask the smell of the vodka you add to your coffee in order to look yourself in the mirror.

Choosing the right lunch is one of the most difficult tasks an office worker has to master. The grocery store offers a bewildering selection of delectable morsels at a variety of price points. The Man is here to help guide you, my dear reader, through the daunting world of microwave lunches.

While there are a number of important vectors that contribute to a successful microwave lunch, there's no single roadmap for making your decision. Rather than attempt to list all the possible options, I'll allow my theoretical framework reveal itself in it's application to the lunches I've been eating.

The Swanson Classics Boneless Pork...truly a classic. The makers of the first TV dinner has created a a solid addition to your frozen lunch rotation.

Pros: 

• The sweet smell of the bbq sauce will permeate the breakroom and seep into the hallway, making you the envy of all your co-workers.
  
• There's more than enough bbq sauce to eat the pork and then mix in the corn & mashed potatoes. 
• The boneless pork is actually a pressed meat loaf so you don't have to worry about chipping a tooth or having to chew too vigorously. 
  
• It melts in your mouth quite nicely.
• They've added enough salt to satisfy your RDA so you don't have to use your own - that's added value.
• On sale you can get these for $1 each.

Cons

• The novelty of the singular and consistently mushy texture of the every aspect of the meal wears off quickly, and by the end you feel like you're eating pre-chewed food.
• If you don't have anything to read during lunch, you might look too long at the boneless pork loaf. You really don't want to do that if at all possible.
• The mashed potatoes need more butter.

THE VERDICT

The Swanson Classics Boneless pork is ready to be a staple in your lunch rotation. On taste I'll give it 2 out of a possible 5  chocolate sprinkle donuts, but with the rock-bottom price of $1 per lunch (the lowest of all the microwave lunches I buy, in fact), this gets 2.5 chocolate sprinkle donuts. This can be a workhorse in your lunch rotation. Even if you don't particularly like the pressed pork loaf, you can't deny the $1 price. If there's one thing you take away from my advice, remember that you ONLY buy meals when they're on sale. Because sales change every week your forced to think outside the box & sample a veritable cornucopia  of frozen delicacies created by your favorite corporations available at your family grocer.

If all of us lived in the same town, I would buy Snuggies for everyone to hang out in while we watched tv on our couch. It was hard for me to give in to wearing the fleece hoodies Spike gives me for Xmas every year for the same reasons I fought against Crocs for so long. I knew they would be so comfortable that I would not be able to resist if i ever put them on, regardless of what my wearing them said about my lack of coolness. Now that I've broken those barriers I'm ready to live the Snuggy lifestyle.