Monday, April 15, 2013

Marie Callender's Brings Breakfast to a Low.

Convenience food; yes, sometimes I rely on a frozen product because I am in a rush to get somewhere and there's no time to cook up something fresh. When it comes to breakfast though, I really, truly should know better by now. I have tried many of the products out on the market: IHOP, Jimmy Dean, Special K, Pillsbury and now Marie Callender joins the ranks of the frozen breakfast sandwich. This new product comes in a three pack and good thing too; it will take three tries before you finally get it to a semi-decent, edible state.



The directions begin with "Open carton.  Position open sandwich to match image on left."  Since it is a frozen product, I have to wonder why this first direction?  While in transit from the distribution center to store, could it have been tampered with?  Were the eggs and bacon doing the rumba when no one was watching?  After checking to see it matched the photo, I closed up the carton and microwaved it for 90 seconds, then let it rest for 1 minute as instructed.


As you can see in the above photo, it looks almost exactly like it does on the box; but is it the same?  I needed a knife to pry the sides of the biscuit off the silvery lining it sat upon while microwaving; that's a negative.  The bacon was crisp; that's a plus.  The cheese was not totally melted and oozing all over the place like with other brands of breakfast sandwiches, but it was still on the cold side; that's a neutral.  The eggs were not frozen, but still too cold to eat and liquid oozed out when bitten into; that's a negative.

The second sandwich was microwaved an additional 15 seconds; eggs were warmer, but the biscuit was totally stuck to the silvery lining and hard as a rock.

Third sandwich was microwaved for the recommended 90 seconds; however I removed the eggs and microwaved them separately on a separate dish; so a two step cooking process.  Third time was the charm!!!

The package information states the product was tested in an 1100 watt microwave; mine is a bit more powerful, so you would have thought that it would have been just about perfect on the first try.  Nope!

Until I can find a breakfast product that cooks up perfectly and tastes great on the first try; I guess I'll be getting up earlier to cook up my own.  Sorry Marie Callender, but I'm considering this new product a fail.

Mary Cokenour