It seems like a lot of frozen foods companies have recently discovered the great untapped resource of breakfast. Swanson and Banquet have for a long while been offering breakfast meals; Pillsbury recently turned their Toaster Strudel into tasty egg and cheese Toaster Scrambles. And now two new frozen breakfast offerings have hit the market.I had a chance to sample Uncle Ben’s Breakfast Bowl one Sunday morning. This particular version was “Egg, Cheese & Salsa”, complete with tortilla chips. Strange how I don’t mind having spicy breakfast burritos, but that I had misgivings over this spicy Breakfast Bowl. It tasted quite nice — the salsa heated up well and the chips had a definite fresh taste; the chunks of egg were large and recognizable too — but it just didn’t taste like breakfast. It tasted more like some “light” (as in not-“lite”) Mexican snack.
I had similar misgivings about the new Meijer’s Morning Bites, similar to pizza or Chinese egg rolls, but filled (in this instance) with sausage, egg, and cheese. These however did not even have the benefit of tasting good. The filling was a grayish paste with an indecipherable leaning-toward-something-which-in-a-roundabout-way-was-vaguely-akin-to-being-much-like-imitation-sausage taste. The only thing which kept them from being pizza rolls was the absence of a fake tomato flavor. The SFG labs give a low-key thumbs-up to Uncle Ben’s Breakfast Bowl (tastes great, but not necessarily breakfasty); but a thumbs-down to Meijer’s Morning Bites. We still prefer Pillsbury’s Toaster Scrambles (the rich crust goes better with egg and cheese than with strudel); and, when we need something heartier, still recommend Swanson’s Great Starts breakfasts.
