Banquet Crock-Pot Classics. Beef Stew, Chicken and Dumplings, Chicken With Redskin Potatoes and Vegetables, Creamy Chicken With Pasta, Herb Chicken and Rice, and Stroganoff With Beef and Noodles. $5.99 per 40- to 46-ounce bag of frozen meat, starch, sauce and vegetables.
Bonnie: It was afternoon by the time I remembered that I needed to test these new Crock-Pot meals, too late to begin since they take hours. Not hours to prepare, but hours to cook unattended in a Crock-Pot. That night I made a point of putting a sign by my alarm clock to remind me to start them the next morning.
I began working on the Crock-Pot after grinding beans for my coffee. (First things first!) I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did take under five minutes, as the package promised, to get the ingredients into the pot. In fact, I was done dealing with the first Banquet Crock-Pot Classics before my coffee was ready.
Quick and easy these may be, yet I also found them inedible. The Chicken With Redskin Potatoes and Vegetables, for example, was way too salty to eat more than one bite. And its potatoes were mealy — as might be expected of cut potatoes after freezing.
A cup serving of each variety contains a decent 4 to 6 grams of fiber. But they're all too salty. The beef stroganoff is the saltiest, with two-thirds of the recommended daily limit of sodium in just a single cup. The Beef Stew is relatively modest in calories, fat and sodium compared to many of the others. But I still won't be setting my alarm clock to make it or any of these.
Carolyn: The biggest new thing in processed foods this fall? The old Crock-Pot. No fewer than three food companies have come out with lines of Crock-Pot kits to make this low-trouble way of cooking even less trouble. Banquet's entry appears to be going after a premium audience. Yes, this is the new Banquet of the successful Homestyle Bakes boxed dinners (rather than the old one of the budget potpies and boil-in-bag meals).
Like Homestyle Bakes, Crock-Pot Classics come complete with meat. But they're frozen rather than shelf-stable, and contain big pieces of meat and vegetables that look and taste fresh. Despite this improved quality, the price per ounce is a quarter to a third less than Green Giant Complete Skillet Meals and Stouffer's Skillet Sensations. So Crock-Pot Classics are a real food value.
Too bad these smell better than they taste. They taste fine but bland, and are a bit of a letdown. This is especially true if you work at home and spend the day anticipating the delicious dinner you're smelling. If bland is OK, or if you know your way around a spice cabinet, the only variety I would specifically warn against is the Chicken and Dumplings because of the way the dumplings fall apart and because of a package front that fails to warn you of the three-quarters of a cup of milk you're going to need during the last 30 minutes.
Capri Sun FruitWaves. Apple Splash, Berry Breeze and Fruit Dive. $3.59 per box of 10 6.75-ounce pouches or $9.99 per 40-pouch variety pack.
Bonnie: Carolyn kept telling me I'd probably like these new 100 percent juice Capri Sun drinks. She was wrong again. Although the label states that FruitWaves contain 100 percent juice, they're still mostly just sugar water.
Yes, these drinks are made from fruit concentrates, which is more than you can say about other Capri Sun offerings. But since these fruit concentrates seem to be stripped of most of their pure fruit juices' vitamins, they offer few nutrients other than potassium.
Nutritionally speaking, you'd be much better off drinking water and eating a banana, apple or pear.
Carolyn: For years Capri Sun has meant Kool-Aid for adults. In fact, this new product has languished on our product-testing shelves for several months because Bonnie assumed these were just more fruit drink blends.
I think it's great that Capri Sun is now offering 100 percent fruit juice blends in its trademark shelf-stable pouches — although I wonder about the wisdom of calling them by a brand name famous for not containing much real fruit juice.
Annie's Homegrown Bunnies Baked Snack Crackers. BBQ Cheddar, Ranch and Whole Wheat. $2.50 per 7.5-ounce box or $2.99 per package of six 1-ounce snack packs.
Bonnie: Annie's Bunnies are going nose-to-gill with Pepperidge Farm Goldfish as a kids' snack cracker. These three new flavored, bunny-shaped crackers are made with organic flour, non-hydrogenated oils and real cheddar cheese, just like the original Cheddar Bunnies that Annie's introduced last year.
Each of the new flavors has at least 2 grams of fiber per 50 mini-crackers. The whole wheat contains 3 grams, while the original Cheddar Bunnies contain 1 gram. That makes them better in terms of fiber than Goldfish, which contain less than 1 gram per serving, and more in line with the government's soon-to-be-released dietary guidelines recommending more fiber from whole grains.
That's the reason I'd recommend bunnies over fish, at least when it comes to kids' snack crackers.
Carolyn: Apparently, even kids don't find the idea of eating mice appealing. That's the only way to explain why Annie's chose bunnies rather than cheese-loving mice as the shape of its otherwise more natural alternative to Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.
All three flavors are made with organic wheat flour, but fortunately only the Ranch tastes like it. The Whole Wheat Bunnies sport a realistic (for bunnies, at least) brown color and taste like a not-unpleasant cross between Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and Nabisco Wheat Thins. Annie's original and BBQ Cheddar Bunnies share the cheesy taste and orange hue of Goldfish but lack their puffed bellies (perhaps because the bunnies are also eating healthier than the Goldfish?).
Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat (Quirk). Each week they critique three new food items. ©Universal Press Syndicate