Burger = Ugly

So this is the first of what I expect will be several veggie burger reviews. I say this because the standard veg*n option at most restaurants is a burger. (And if they don't have veggie burgers, you end up with a salad, right? Although at one restaurant all they were able to offer me was a plate of boiled cauliflower and carrots. I'm not even joking.) How A&W managed to screw up a simple burger so badly with their Swiss Veggie Deluxe is beyond me, but they did it!

I think the key to a good veggie burger is to keep it simple. Just because I'm a vegetarian doesn't mean that I have completely different taste buds from an omnivore! If A&W had just dressed the patty with a piece of cheddar cheese, and put it on a normal freaking bun, I wouldn't have had much of a problem. No, the portobello and soy patty isn't fantastic, but it isn't all that different from what you usually get.

The real issue is everything they do after cooking the patty. They put it on a dense whole wheat bun (I'm eating at A&W, people! Don't bother trying to health me up. Give me that soft white bun and leave me alone), splooge a thin/runny ranch sauce alllllll over the patty (why ranch??), add a pungent slice of swiss cheese, and top it off with pickles for an added (gross) bonus.

The end result is really quite revolting. The ranch sauce was so plentiful that it soaked through the bun and made the patty fall apart. I'm not great with condiments as it is, and ended up gagging and throwing most of the burger away and eating too many fries to compensate.

There actually came a later day when the only food option nearby was A&W, so with a sigh I decided to order the burger again. This time, I told the cashier that I only wanted the veggie patty with a piece of cheddar cheese on a white bun. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, "I don't understand, that's not what the burger is." I very slowly repeated myself and explained as nicely as possible that I find the dressing/etc. gross. She said, "Well, you're not getting the actual swiss deluxe then." I said that this was fine. When my food was ready, I unwrapped the burger and found that it was still on a whole wheat bun, and still had the swiss cheese, but at least the sauce wasn't there. So it was still quasi-nasty, but at least it held together while I ate it.

In terms of how good/bad this is for you nutritionally... it appears that there is a buttload of sodium in it, but it also has a fair amount of protein and iron, so that's nice. Keep in mind that, even without the cheese (good luck getting the cashier/cook to leave it off!), the burger is vegetarian and not vegan. As a sidenote - I tried but for the life of me could not find a picture of this piece of crap. Maybe the marketing people know just how ugly it really is.

Product and nutrition info: http://www.aw.ca/foodfacts.nsf/listbyref_new/Burgers-15

Deli Slices = Good

Sandwiches are a beautiful thing, no? Whether you're having PB or grilled cheese or toasted tomato or egg salad (or all of the above? Ew, maybe not), they can be simple but so very satisfying. And I make a bad-ass sandwich, people; in my tortured youth I was once a certified Sandwich Artist at Subway (*sigh*) as well as whatever the hell the equivalent title is for someone working at Pita Pit. Yes, I've had a lot of random jobs in my day (you don't want to know about all of them, really), most of which were in food service somehow. I've said it before and I'll say it again - them bills don't pay themselves!

Back to the sandwiches. I'm sure many of my veg*n comrades have faced the same no-lunchmeat issue I have. Sometimes it really sucks to not have an easy ham and cheese. Luckily many companies offer (to varying degrees of success) their own faux-lunchmeats. And I have to say, the Tofurky deli slices line is by far the best. Produced by Turtle Island Foods, Tofurky has been (unfairly) stuck with an infamous reputation in the non-veggie world as some kind of hippy-drippy/flavourless/colourless/blobby imitation turkey. This couldn't be further from the truth. I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of their full roasts (see: http://vegetariancuisine.suite101.com/article.cfm/tofurkey___friend_or_foe_ ), but their other products have been nothing short of awesome.

The grocery stores around Ottawa only seem to offer the original and hickory-smoked deli slices, though the Tofurky website lists many other varieties, all of which look pretty darn good. I find the original flavour a little boring, so I usually buy the hickory-smoked... It has a great taste and texture. It's really a lot like thinly sliced roasted turkey. The thin slicing is probably one of the best features of Tofurky's line. Other companies (I'm looking at you again, Yves! *shakes fist*) cut their stuff way too thick, and insist upon everything being in unnaturally perfect circles, with seriously odd textures. Tofurky's slices are the complete opposite and I love them for that. I feel like I'm having a real sandwich, not a rubber disk on a bun.

The deli slices are vegan and are full of those oft-elusive vitamins I've mentioned in other reviews. In just a few slices (which, as I said, are very thin), you get half of your daily required B12. They come with a pretty standard price tag too (about $5 Canadian), aaaaand are available in both Canada in the US. I looked into online purchasing, but it seems that they only ship items in bulk. So maybe buying online is intended more for stores and restaurants? That or you can make a wickedly huge sandwich. Mmmm, sign me up.

Product and nutrition info: http://www.tofurky.com/products/delislices.htm

Homemade Marshmallows = Ugly

(Yes, that is an entirely accurate artist's rendering of the marshmallows, and no they did not deserve an actual photograph. Now on to the review. Shush.)

Before I went veggie, I didn't realize just how many foods have gelatin in them. I mean, there was the obvious Jell-o, but other than that I really didn't think about it. In addition, I didn't know that gelatin was such a gross, carcass-filled thing. For those of you who may not know already, gelatin is a glutinous substance that is the result of boiling ligaments, bones, skin, and other leftover parts of dead animals in water. I can't imagine who thought to do this for the first time, and who then decided to use the globby muck to make things like jelly and candy, but they must have been one crazy mofo (Bill Cosby, was that you?!).

Sooo it may have been my lovely veggie friend (see earlier posts) who clued me in, or it may have been some of the books I read before becoming a vegetarian, but luckily I learned quickly about the horrors of gelatin and cut that poop out of my diet right away. Sadly getting rid of gelatin also meant getting rid of Skittles, Starburst, most brands of gummy candy, most yogurts, marshmallows, and more. I happened to become a vegetarian on a beautiful summer day, smack-dab in the middle of prime camping season. And at the time, that meant no roasted marshmallows or s'mores for me - boooo. I found a company online that makes vegan marshmallows (I did eventually purchase these and I promise to review them at some point), but they take kind of a long time to ship and I was in a hurry. So. I looked up a few recipes... Most of them were pretty much the same, with ingredients including sugar, salt, vanilla, water, corn syrup, cornstarch, and most importantly agar (basically the vegan equivalent of gelatin).

You will often see agar and carageenan in vegetarian products that have jelly-ish (not to be confused with jelly-fish! teehee) properties. It was difficult to find agar at a store nearby. I ended up coming across it at a small vegetarian shop in downtown Ottawa, and it was very expensive - about $10 Canadian for a package that was roughly half the size of a small bag of chocolate chips. It was a clear plastic package and the agar looked like tiny translucent white flakes. Luckily you only need very small amounts in most recipes, so at least the purchase wasn't entirely uneconomical.

I swear on all things holy that I followed the recipe instructions to the best of my ability - and I'm not a bad cook! I dutifully soaked a couple of teaspoons of agar in cold water for a while, and meanwhile cooked the other ingredients in a pan on the stove up to what I THOUGHT was the required "firmball stage" (118 degrees Celsius or 244 degrees Fahrenheit). You apparently need to stick a candy thermometer into the mixture to test this. I couldn't find one and therefore tried to use a meat thermometer, which was clearly idiotic since it didn't measure high enough. Supposedly something has reached the firmball stage when you can drop some of it into a glass of water and it forms little balls? I don't know. I guess it was beyond me.

From my understanding, my mixture never reached the firmball point, or maybe just went way past it, because at that temperature you are supposed to pour it over your agar-water mixture and then blend it together with a hand-mixer, and then it will turn into a fluffy white substance, which you pour into a pan, dust with cornstarch, and let sit overnight. It never became puffy and white. It was a greyish, brownish, sticky muck. I loaded it up with cornstarch in a vain attempt to hide its hideousness, but that just made it worse. I tried to cut it into marshmallow shapes, but imagine trying to cut shapes out of something akin to Vaseline. It ain't gonna happen.

Amazingly, dumbfoundingly, the muck tasted a lot like real marshmallows. I don't know why or how. But I couldn't bring myself to eat more than a tablespoon or two. It was too much. And the pan was a royal pain in the arse to clean when I finally got around to it. Ugh. Factoring in the price, the time, the effort, and the insanely disappointing final product, I would say it's a terrible idea to try to make these again. Look at that picture, kids! Look at it and then look at a real marshmallow. Exactly.

Pâté = Good

Don't worry, no geese were overstuffed or otherwise harmed in the writing of this post. Today we are looking at Fontaine Santé's delightful, delectable végépâté!

In all my omnivorous years, I never actually consumed animal pâté, so unfortunately I'm not able to compare the veggie stuff to it. I do, however, have a wonderful and food-savvy friend who is a pretty good judge. She has been a vegetarian for several years longer than I have (and served as one of my inspirations for going veggie), and never liked most meat products anyway - save for pâté! (I can't help but imagine my friend as a prim and fancy little five-year-old, crooking her pinky and demanding pâté, as her parents scramble to bring out the good china, laden with France's finest. This is a ridiculously inaccurate imagining of things, but come on - so cute.) She says that she thinks it was actually the seasoning and texture that she liked about it, so of course she was happy to have encountered the veggie version, and she then turned me onto it.

My impression is that the végépâté is a little nuttier and chunkier than regular pâté, which makes sense since the bulk of it is a sunflower seed paste with other ground vegetables mixed in. I really don't think it was the company's intention to create an imitation pâté per se anyway... This stuff has its own groove and stands very well on its own. I have bought both the traditional and country-style varieties, and I personally prefer the traditional seasoning, but the other kind isn't bad either. I have shared this stuff with omni-friends (including Boy), and they really like it! It is frighteningly easy to scarf down a whole package with a baguette or two.

Aaaand you probably don't want to do that - not just for the fact that it's apparently a dumbass move to eat a whole baguette on your own (whaaat?). The végépâté is obviously intended as a snack or appetizer, not as a significant component of a complete meal. There's not a whole lot of nutritional value to it, though as with many other veg*n products, it is trans-fat free and has no cholesterol. One serving, which is equivalent to a generous 1/4 of a package, contains 100 calories. I'm going to let you all know now that I don't have any kind of formative background in nutrition (shocking, right?), so calorie values and the like mean nothing to me, but I'll let you do what you will with that information.

It's also not a bad price. I believe I paid about $4 Canadian for a 227g package. Since Fontaine Santé is a Canadian company (like Yves Veggie Cuisine), I'm not completely sure if their products are available in the US. Maybe my friends to the south will have to do as I did with the corn dogs, and make a trip across the border. Or we could do a trade! We'll meet in the middle. You bring the dogs, I'll bring the pâté. Awesome.

Product and nutrition info: http://fontainesante.com/wfs_En/Produits_En.php?M=Produit&C=30&F=33&P=90

*Note* I wasn't able to load the official site's full nutritional information, but I found it here: http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/fontaine-sante/vegepate

Bacon = Bad

It just doesn't seem right to say that bacon could be anything but delicious, does it. And yet Yves Veggie Cuisine veggie bacon strips have fallen in with the Bad crew here at VTT. Why Yves? Whyyyyyyy?

Look, bacon is another one of those animal products that I still miss. I can't help it. The grease, the fat, the saltiness - everything. When I first looked at the package for Yves' veggie bacon, I of course could already tell that it would never satisfy me in all the ways that piggy bacon once did. As the picture shows, the strips are all the exact same shape, size, and colour. There is also a swirl of a lighter colour on each strip, which I believe is supposed to be analogous to bacon fat, but it really doesn't do anything to help the overall cause. Anyway, they don't even try to hide the insanely unnatural appearance of these babies, which I found a little unusual since companies tend to go all food-porn on us and make their product look like the nectar of the gods. I guess they just couldn't make them look any better.

I bought the strips because I wanted a quick and easy breakfast meat replacement. I really wanted to like them, especially since I enjoy so many of the other products in the Yves line. They were affordable (about $4 Canadian for a 156g package) and the nutritional information was awesome. As I mentioned in my corn dogs review, Yves fortifies all of their products with a buttload of B12 and iron and all of that stuff that veg*ns want to keep an eye on - and the bacon strips are no exception. They have zero cholesterol and next to no fat too. This is all very promising, no? Unfortunately things go downhill from here.

Upon opening the package, I found all of the strips very nearly melded together in one plastic-y bunch. I carefully peeled out a few strips and was not impressed. They look EXACTLY like the picture on the package, swirls and all. The strips are also quite thick, with the smell and feel of cheap bologna. I followed the stovetop cooking instructions (no, I don't have a microwave; I don't have room for one in my studio apartment... there's barely room for Boy and Cat and I), which said to sauté (a euphemism if I ever heard one) the strips in some oil for a couple of minutes on each side. The bologna smell grew stronger. I set them on a plate with my otherwise normal breakfast. I first tried to eat like a human being, using a fork and knife. That didn't work so well, so I ended up eating them with my hands, gnawing off chunks and chewing for a long-ass time in between bites.

They don't taste terrrrrrrible. They really do taste like fried bologna, just slightly sweeter and smokier (and a hell of a lot chewier). I do love that they are healthy and vegan and affordable, and I have admittedly bought them again since the first purchase (though I am always disappointed and end up throwing them out and should just stop). In a race against the real thing, I guess faux bacon strips just can't win.

Product and nutrition info: http://www.yvesveggie.ca/index.php/products/product/veggie_bacon_strips/

Shampoo = Good

It can be difficult enough to find food and clothes that are animal-friendly. But holy poop, things start to get really dicey when you try to find makeup and hygiene products that fit in with your veggie lifestyle. Despite being a vegetarian for several years, I still struggle with this. Many familiar brands do offer vegetarian (and even vegan) items, but you have to do a little research to make sure. Sometimes it feels like you need a PhD in chemistry (which, regrettably, I don't have) to even understand all of the ingredients listed on the package! That's one of the reasons why I love companies who proudly market themselves as veg*n, and who make it clear on their packaging that no animals are harmed in the making of their products. One of these wonderful companies is Alba Botanica. They have an extensive line of hair and skin and bath and lip care items, all of which are vegetarian and most of which are vegan.

The first of their products that I purchased was the Mango Moisturizing Hair Wash. Yes, they call it hair wash but it's just shampoo. They have others that they call shampoo and I don't know what the difference is. And they translate both into "shampooing" en français. Annnnyhoo - this stuff smells delicious. It smells like the Mango Tango bubble gum that I used to love when I was 13 and can never find anymore. It serves its clean-y purpose. It is vegan. The bottle is really cute. I was able to find it at my local drugstore and at many grocery stores (not to mention online). There are apparently no harsh chemicals in it. And it is so very nice to wash my hair with something that I know doesn't contain animals and was never tested on them.

My issue: it is expensive (roughly $9 US for a 350 mL bottle). If you are on a budget at all, it may be too expensive for you. I certainly would not have been able to afford it when I was a poor undergrad living on rice and a dream. At that time, $9 was just about my monthly grocery budget (shut up). Having at least a liiiittle more disposable income now, I am willing to pay extra for things that are in keeping with my beliefs, especially since this is a really nice shampoo. And maybe if we buy more of this stuff, eventually the price will come down? Well, I can wish anyway. Overall, a thumbs-up! Now I'm off to see if I can find out what happened to that mango gum.

Product info: http://www.albabotanica.com/?id=60&pid=563

Belt = Good

Because the goal of this site is to review a broad range of veg*n products, I thought I'd better start branching out from the food-y stuff. And sooo today we have our first clothing review! This is the Vegetarian Shoes X Belt. No, I don't know why it's called the "X Belt" (maybe I'm missing something obvious), but do you really care? Good, neither do I. Let's move on.

When I made the choice to stop eating dead animals, I automatically extended this to the rest of my lifestyle choices as well. No more leather, no fur (not that I would have had any to begin with... oh wait, there was my Dynasty-inspired collection of mink stoles, *raooooowwwwrrrr*), nothing containing gelatin, etc. I did keep what leather items I had (a belt and some shoes), because I didn't see the sense in wasting what I owned already. Well, when the cow-belt did finally wear out, I had to do a little searching to find a cruelty-free replacement.

Thank goodness for online shopping, because it is much harder than many people realize to find a nice, good quality, non-leather belt at the mall. Sure, I could have gotten that sparkly pink plastic thing at Walmart, but now that I'm growing up and sit at a desk all day I should probably shy away from things I would have drooled over in high school. Also, damn the Wal-man.

So I eventually made it onto the Vegetarian Shoes website. They are based in the UK but ship all over the world. They have lots of shoes and belts and clothes and other goodies to choose from. I wanted a chocolate brown belt with a silver buckle, and they had a few belts that fit this description, all reasonably priced! I liked the shape of the X Belt's buckle the best, so I chose it, paid, and went on my merry way. Yessss I had to wait a little while (I think a couple of weeks) for it to reach me, but come on, it had to swim all the way across the North Atlantic.

I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the belt really is. It looks good with jeans and with dressier pants. It has proven to be very durable. It hasn't shown any real signs of wear and tear, actually. It is made of "vegetan micro", which the company describes as "the toughest, hardest wearing and most water resistant breathable material that we use." Just be warned that the sizing is a little small. I am on the skinny side but decided to play it safe and go up a size, and yet when I tried it on with my favourite jeans, I still had to use the second-to-largest spot on the belt. Regardless - the belt was absolutely affordable (under $25 Canadian), shipping was inexpensive, and I am very happy to support a company that takes a stand against killing animals. Highly recommended. Hooray!

Product info: http://www.vegetarian-shoes.co.uk/belts/x_belt_brown/10556_p.html

Manicotti = Ugly

It had to happen sooner or later. Eat Italian Manicotti is the first of the uglies.

I actually really like the idea and effort behind Eat Italian's product line. Their website and product packaging are styled nicely too. I am guessing the available range of quality gluten-free products is somewhat limited, and this company has attempted to create something convenient (their line consists entirely of frozen entrées), healthy, and tasty that can be enjoyed by people with gluten issues. Sadly the tasty part isn't really there, but I'm sure they tried.

I am not one of said people who cannot eat gluten. I just happened to stumble across the manicotti while with a friend/co-worker at the local grocery store on our lunch break (yes, I have a real job, *sigh*). This particular store has a decent healthy foods section, including a freezer full of organic and vegetarian dinners, so I thought I might find something yummy and satisfying that would be better for me than the large box of wedge fries (cooked in vegetable oil, don't worry!) that was calling my name from the deli.

TV dinners generally seem pretty much the same to me: a small amount of pasta or rice, some sauce, and some other ingredient to liven things up. Pop that business in the microwave and - *ding!* - five minutes later you have a soggy, lukewarm mush that tastes faintly of cardboard. But I have found some that are at least a little better than others (including Amy's rice bowls, which I will have to review sometime), so I try to keep an open mind. I saw the Eat Italian dinners in the above-noted freezer and asked my friend what he thought. They were expensive (about $7 Canadian), but he agreed that the pictures on the boxes looked nice enough, so we checked to see if any of them were vegetarian. It turned out that three of the five varieties were, so I grabbed the nearest one (the manicotti) and headed to the cash.

Kids, I can't stress strongly enough how very different the actual product was from what I expected. Judging from the picture, I thought I would be getting a couple of thick, creamy, cheese-filled pasta rolls with a few dollops of tomato sauce added for good measure. Maybe this was naïve of me? Je ne sais pas. Before cooking, the stuff did look terrible but I didn't think much of it because most TV dinners are like that. After cooking, however, it looked even worse. I could barely distinguish the pasta rolls from the rest of the glop. The cheesy filling must have splooged out and then lost itself in the tomato sauce. And oh, the tomato sauce! The tomato sauce, the tomato sauce, the tomato sauce. There was just so much of it. It was almost overflowing out of the container. I do not have the steadiest hand in the world and of course ended up with a few orangey-red splatters on my white cotton dress (sidenote - after washing, I think I can still kind of see the splatters... booo). It was the most watery tomato sauce I have ever encountered.

I believe that was the main problem. That damn sauce - which comprised the bulk of the product - was so watery that the whole meal had little to no taste. And what taste it DID have was poo. The pasta (wherever the hell it went to) may as well have been non-existent. And don't even ask about the cheese. I thiiiink it ended up being the grainy little chunks spread out through the tomato-water, but that may have been something else.

Being the deal-seeking girl that I am (hey, those student loans don't pay themselves off!), I was honestly a little pissed that I spent so much on this meal, especially since I gave up trying to eat it about halfway through. I could have gotten three boxes of wedge fries for that price!

Product and nutrition info: http://www.eatitalian.ca/manicotti-instructions.html

Jerky = Bad

A few weekends ago, my boy and I decided to go camping. As a kid, I was in Brownies, Girl Guides, and Pathfinders (though I swear I wasn't a complete social misfit, really! Well, maybe a little bit), so I eventually became a pretty good camper. I know the proper way to build a fire and set up a tent and stay warm and all that jazz. Good lord do I have some camping horror stories though. Let's not get into that right now.

Anyhoo, my parents have a ton of camping equipment and supplies, but I live about six hours away from them now and have next to nothing of my own. Also, living downtown in our nation's capital leaves little opportunity for outdoor adventuring. Soooo Boy and I borrowed what we could from friends and then headed over to our local Mountain Equipment Co-op to purchase any remaining necessities. While perusing the camping foods aisle, he picked up a package of beef jerky for himself. I was jealous and figured I would have to content myself with chewing on a salted pleather handbag, but then saw a vegetarian version next to the beefy stuff! Behold, Tasty Eats Soy Jerky. They had a few different flavours, but I decided to go for the original version. There was a sticker placed on the package that said, "DELICIOUS!". The fact that this was not part of the original packaging should likely have been my first clue that the product might be anything but.

Let me describe my eating experience: Boy and I are at campsite. Both of us feel a bit snack-y, so Boy grabs his jerky and I grab mine. (That didn't sound right, did it. Moving along.) Tear open package. Pry chunk of product off of larger quasi-congealed chunk and stuff into mouth. Chew. Gag. Chew for another two minutes with tears in eyes. Swallow painfully. Listen to Boy laugh as he savours beefy alternative. Hand Boy soy jerky. Boy samples jerky with unremarkable expression on face and proceeds to eat entire package, then says, "It wasn't all that different from mine, really."

So maybe I just never liked any kind of jerky to begin with? I actually can't remember eating the meat kind before. I don't know; the real stuff looked and smelled better than mine did, in my opinion. Apparently the Tasty Eats version is low carb, low fat, and vegan, however. I could see where they were going with the chewy aspect of it, and the flavouring seemed well-intentioned (sort of barbecue-y and partly sweet, partly savoury), but something was just really, really off. I can't help but wonder what they have to do to the soy protein to turn it into this stuff. All pondering aside, I think I would have been better off with my salted handbag.

Product and nutrition info: http://www.tastyeats.com/index.cfm?page=products#original

Corn Dogs = Good

There are a ton of faux-meat products out there. As someone who was an omnivore up to the age of 20, I can't help but miss meat sometimes, and have thus sought animal-friendly alternatives that approximate the real thing as closely as possible. One of these real things (and I suppose I use that term loosely) is the hot dog.

You know, for a product that people say is made of any number of odds and ends (boots, sawdust, rat tails), it is pretty damn hard to find a satisfying veggie equivalent. I have found a brand or two that I don't mind (more on those some other time), but generally you end up with a rubbery pink cylinder. Ack, that doesn't sound so good - not in a food context anyway! I digress.

In my meat-eating days, I may have had a corn dog once or twice. My mother (bless her frugal heart) would have bought Pogos only if they were on a serious sale, which apparently happened once in a blue moon. So I had always built them up in my head as an impossibly delicious, fanciful combination of sweet and salty, meal and dessert, weiner and bun. When I heard that a few vegetarian companies were coming out with their own versions, I was admittedly skeptical but hopeful.

Let me tell you, Morningstar Farms' Veggie Corn Dogs will not disappoint. They looked and smelled great, and after my tentative first bite, I ended up mowing (mawing? maowing?) down and eating a whole box of four. They are that freaking good. The dog itself has no hint of that rubbery-ness or that artificial smoke flavour crap that is infused in so many of its other-branded brethren. The batter is light and fluffy. It comes on a stick. Close your eyes and you will find yourself lost in a carnival fantasy, complete with lights and sounds and rollercoasters, only this time you can line up at the refreshment stand with your omnivorous friends and say, "Me too."

A few cons: They are available only in the US. I had to make a long-ass trip from Ottawa, Ontario to a Target somewhere in upstate New York to find these bad boys. I don't even know if you're allowed to bring food back into Canada from the US, actually. Well, I did it anyway. Also, they aren't exactly cheap. Not like $20 a box or anything (which, pathetically, I might have paid), but I think they were $5-something US for a box of four dogs. Finally, although they are much lower in fat than a meat version, and aren't completely terrible for you, I wouldn't say they're really healthy either, as they don't contain a hell of a lot of nutrients/vitamins/etc. I guess I expected them to be like Yves Veggie Cuisine's products, which are all fortified with B12 and stuff. Meh.

Final verdict! I love these and am already planning another trip across the border for the sole purpose of buying a caseload. Shh, don't tell the government.

Product and nutrition info: http://www.morningstarfarms.com/product_detail.aspx?family=367&id=322