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