Being from the Midwest, I didn’t know anything about Cuban sandwiches until I moved to California. You read that correctly. It took a move 1,600 miles in the wrong direction for me to finally experience the warm, toasty delights of the Mixto — roasted pork, sliced ham, swiss cheese, pickles and yellow mustard on fresh Cuban bread pressed with a plancha (iron) and cut diagonally across the center. ¡Delicioso! So far be it from me to shy away from sampling the newest addition to the Hot Pockets line-up, the Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pocket.

Much like the East Coast/West Coast hip hop feud of yore, there’s a rivalry between Tampa and Miami regarding ownership of the Cuban sandwich. Tampa appears to be the original home of the Mixto (a.k.a the Cubano), which was introduced there in the 1890s by hungry Cuban cigar factory workers in the Ybor City neighborhood. They did, however, add salami to the sandwich — a highly controversial move, especially considering how Miami’s sandwich artists have adhered to the traditional recipe. I suppose this would be the “Who Shot Ya?” event of the sandwich war because things really popped off after that.

Suffice it to say, the salami-free Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pockets seem to welcome me to the city where the heat is on, all night on the beach ‘til the break of dawn. Bienvenido a Miami…

These Hot Pockets are demanding that I get Pitbull on the phone and tell him to meet us in the V.I.P. at LIV for some bottle service after the Heat game and then afterwards, crank up the salsa as we speed to the Ritz-Carlton South Beach in our yellow Lambo for the after party.

But before I book that plane ticket, let’s pause for a moment and talk about Cuban bread. It’s delicious and airy with that necessary touch of fat that makes Cuban bread Cuban and almost all other bread crap. I can’t be sure that the Hot Pockets people have injected lard into their crust, but the Cuban Style Hot Pocket is soft and delicious. True, the crust isn’t crispy since these Hot Pockets are heated in the microwave and don’t come with a crisping sleeve, but it isn’t soggy either. It manages to maintain a perfectly bread-like exterior with the right amount of give and softness without becoming a mushy mess.

When it comes to the innards of the Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pockets, they closely approximate the makeup of authentic Cuban sandwiches. They are full of pickle flavor, but I’m at a loss trying to explain where the intense pickle-y taste actually comes from. How did they manage to get so much flavor out of these itsy bitsy chunks of pickle? The meat portion of this Hot Pocket consists of diced ham and sliced pork — two delicious meats that come from the same magically delicious animal. There is a hint of mustard in the Hot Pocket, but it definitely takes a backseat to the pickle flavor.

The Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pocket is a winner with a pleasantly soft crust, savory pork bits, gooey Swiss cheese, tangy pickles, and no salami. Though it lacks the crispy, toasted texture one can only get from using a sandwich press instead of a microwave, I am positive that anyone looking for some Cubano goodness won’t be disappointed. Just don’t tell Tampa.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 260 calories, 90 fat calories, 10 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 680 milligrams of sodium, 32 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, 10 grams of protein, 15% Calcium, 10%Iron, 0% Vitamin C, 2% Vitamin A.)

Item: Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pockets
Purchased Price: $2.00 (on sale)
Size: 2 sandwiches
Purchased at: Ralphs
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Pickles, pork & cheese. Thick, soft bread. Lard injections. Pitbull.
Cons: Teensy mystery pickles. Sandwich feuds. Definitely not plancha crispy. Only around for a short time.

As someone whose stomach has had the pleasure and pain of experiencing many different varieties of Hot Pockets, the new Limited Edition Spicy Beef Nacho Hot Pockets tasted like a meat and cheese cocoon that the fine folks over at Nestle had released before.

After spending more time than anyone should on the Hot Pockets website, looking through the varieties like they were perps in a mugshot book, I realized this limited edition Hot Pocket didn’t taste like a previous regular Hot Pocket, it kind of tasted like these Fiesta Nacho Hot Pockets Snackers.

It’s not surprising since the bite-sized Snackers with its taco seasoned beef, Mexican-style cheese sauce, and jalapeños in a tortilla style crust looks on paper very similar to the spicy beef, reduced fat mozzarella, jalapeño peppers, onions, cheddar sauce, and seasoned crust that make up this limited edition Hot Pocket. It would’ve been cool if the meat and cheese cocoon also had tortilla chips inside of it, but I don’t know if frozen food technology has advanced to the point where it can keep chips crunchy in a Hot Pocket.

As the pocket got hot in my microwave, it made my kitchen smell like jalapeños, which got me thinking that these Hot Pockets were going to be spicy. They were, but not five-alarm spicy. It was more like a two-alarm spicy that instantly smacked my tongue around like I was making out with a first time French kisser. For me, water was unnecessary.

So instead of having the word “spicy” on fire on the front of the box, perhaps the letter I should’ve been a lit match, because it definitely wasn’t word-on-fire spicy. And while I’m talking graphic design, the word “spicy” is on fire, the word “beef” looks like it was branded, but nothing was done with the word “nacho” beyond some gradients. Come on, Hot Pockets graphic designer! Couldn’t you have made it look like cheese was dripping from it?

Speaking of cheese, why does this nacho-flavored Hot Pocket highlight mozzarella? The cheese isn’t what I would consider nacho-ey. But after spending more time than anyone should reading the ingredient label on a Hot Pockets box, I did also learn it has some cheddar, Monterey jack, parmesan, and swiss cheeses. Maybe having more cheddar would’ve helped the cheeses stand out because they get overwhelmed by the jalapeños and the almost too salty ground beef.

Overall, Limited Edition Spicy Beef Nacho Hot Pocket’s flavor was good, thanks to the jalapeños, but not amazing. The only thing that was completely amazing about Limited Edition Spicy Beef Nacho Hot Pocket was how its contents didn’t ooze out from the slightly crunchy crust while being microwaved, which, again, as someone whose stomach has had the pleasure and pain of experiencing many different varieties of Hot Pockets, I can say is a very rare occurrence.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 pocket – 260 calories, 90 calories from fat, 10 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 20 milligrams of cholesterol, 640 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 8 grams of protein, 8% vitamin A, 15% calcium, and 15% iron.)

*made with partially hydrogenated oils

Item: Limited Edition Spicy Beef Nacho Hot Pockets
Purchased Price: $2.50 (on sale)
Size: 2 sandwiches
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Nice jalapeño flavor. Innards didn’t ooze out while being microwaved. Slightly crunchy crust. Made my kitchen smell like jalapeños.
Cons: Beef was almost too salty. Not really a creative flavor. Cheese gets lost among the jalapeño and beef. Mozzarella being highlighted in a nacho Hot Pocket. No tortilla chips inside the Hot Pocket. Playing armchair graphic designer.

New year, new Limited Edition Lean Pocket.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Hot Pockets and Lean Pockets on this site… and I’ve realized that there comes a point when every Hot Pocket starts to taste the same. It could be because I’ve burned my mouth so many times eating these things that I’ve lost my sense of taste, but I think it goes deeper than that.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s clear that Lean Pockets and Hot Pockets come in a wide variety of flavors, and Hot/Lean Pocket connoisseurs would argue that each Hot/Lean Pocket is its own unique creation, like a snowflake… or a TSA patdown.

But let’s get real here.

There’s very little you can do to mess this thing up (see my previous entry on the Limited Edition Four Cheese Garlic Pasta Bake Hot Pocket for examples of how this could be done) – it’s a toasted crust stuffed with meat, sauce, cheese and/or veggies. Culinary Rocket Science, it’s not. The result is that there’s never much to explore or even to improve upon with this fairly simple microwaveable sandwich, and the new Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara Lean Pocket does little to dissuade me of this notion.

The Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara Lean Pocket has a decent flavor but has little to distinguish itself from all the other Lean Pockets in the freezer aisle. It’s crispy, gooey, savory and piping hot just like a Lean Pocket should be. But the only thing making this Limited Edition Lean Pocket different from its toasty brethren is the inclusion of those tiny mushy globules we call peas. Did you know that carbonara sauce is a mixture of eggs, cheese, bacon and black pepper… and has nothing to do with peas?

Peas may populate carbonara dishes the world over now, but back in the day when carbonara was created (like in WWII or something), it was all about the eggs and bacon. Lean Pockets don’t care. Lean Pockets is all, “We’ve got your cured bacon, your Italian spices, and your parmesan cream sauce with peas, so dig in, you crazy carbonara lovers!” I don’t hate peas or anything, but you can’t depend on peas. We learned that in WWII.

Anyway, this thing also has mozzarella and grilled white meat chicken to accompany the bacon, peas and parmesan cream sauce. The chicken is okay, but the bacon is really the major selling point here. I don’t think that anyone can argue against the presence of bacon in this Lean Pocket. What’s better is that the bacon chunks seem to be evenly spread throughout the sandwich along with the parmesan cream sauce, creating a delicious mélange of savory flavors from end to end. As for the Italian style herb crust, it’s warm and crispy and good. No complaints here.

The Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara Lean Pockets aren’t all that different from some of the other Lean Pockets out there, especially those from the Culinary Creations line, which seem to specialize in seasoned crusts. If someone who hasn’t eaten nearly EVERY SINGLE Lean Pocket or Hot Pocket on the planet were to sample this new Chicken Carbonara Lean Pocket, they would probably delight in what they’d think is its amazingly unique flavor and composition.

I can’t, however.

My enthusiasm for this Lean Pocket is as dead as the skin on the roof of my mouth now.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 260 calories, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 540 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 4 grams of sugar, 9 grams of protein, 4% vitamin A, 15% calcium, and 10% iron.)

Item: Lean Pockets Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara
Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: 2 sandwiches
Purchased at: Vons
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Eternally hot. Creamy sauce. Delicious chunks of cured bacon. Crispy seasoned crust.
Cons: You can’t depend on peas. Mouth burns. Mid-century global conflicts. Lean Pockets don’t care.

Contrary to a review history which leans towards a diet based exclusively around breakfast cereal and fast food, I do not hold anything against the vegetable food group. I count Larry the Cucumber among my favorite recording artists, have been known to munch on frozen peas as if they were beer nuts, and might, according to my grandmother, even transform into a vegetable one day thanks to hours spent watching college sports on TV.

So no, I’m not a veggie-phobe by any means, and I certainly wouldn’t spurn the chance to nosh on a salad that could increase my lifespan.

But here’s the thing: vegetables are complicated. Buying them, cooking them, and even knowing which part to eat are all tricky. Also, if I want to add a totally chic “lean protein” to the salad, I have to wield a knife and totally risk salmonella with my careless Millennial kitchen hygiene habits (not to mention risk chopping off a finger).

Of course, I could go the convenience route, but that can be expensive. Last I checked, Panera had a rockin’-looking Asian chicken salad. But $7.09 plus tax is pricey. I mean seriously. That’s like seven and a half small Wendy’s Frosty desserts forgone. If you really want me to eat my vegetables, then get me something cheap, not complicated, and something which won’t go bad should I, you know, put off the whole veggie eating thing in favor of those Frosty desserts for a few days.

Lean Cuisine meals might not be aesthetically pleasing, but they aren’t complicated. Taking something out of the freezer and heating it up in the microwave oven is, based on numerous test runs, pretty simple. A head of lettuce? Well, aside from exercising restraint and resisting the cereal aisle at the grocery store, that actually seems relatively painless as well.

Also, ‘Asian style’ food isn’t complicated. I’ve never been one to even try to understand what separates Korean, Chinese, and Japanese cuisines, but throw some carrots and broccoli in there, dress it up with something gingery and soy-based, and my white person American taste buds are totally basking in the idea of ethnic food.

Lean Cuisine’s new Salad Additions look to engage my yearning for de-complicating veggies by combining the miracle of refrigeration with some good old fashioned step-by-step heating instructions, all the while keeping me well away from knifes.

After keeping the ethos of Asian-style and picking up a head of green leaf lettuce and some spinach at for a combined $2.73 at my local Lotte plaza, I made sure to follow the directions by placing my sesame-ginger vinaigrette in room temperature water to thaw. It didn’t. At least it didn’t within the three and a half minute microwave window the box told me to nuke the vegetables and chicken for, and it still didn’t thaw completely after I stood around and inhaled the smell of bland lettuce for five minutes after that.

This was a most disheartening wait given that the vinaigrette passed from a consistency bordering on root beer float popsicle to that of diarrhea, all the while waiting to be drenched on a hodgepodge of cut up colors that provided little truth in advertising to the juicy pieces of pineapple and grilled chicken breast that the package photo displayed.

Finally reaching a vinaigrette consistency that might fool you for an actual vinaigrette, I decided to make my salad pretty. Despite an art background which includes numerous preschool awards for staying within the lines, I was unable to make my salad appear exactly as it was on the box. The salad tastes like what you’d expect from a mediocre fast food attempt to make a similar salad.

The chicken doesn’t really taste like chicken, but with ten ingredients to make “cooked white meat chicken,” that might be expected. The chicken strips ranged from gummy to dry and were mostly salty with a bit of that gelatinous gunk you sometimes encounter with canned chicken.

The broccoli and edamame would best be described as terribly bland. However, I can accurately report the orange and yellow carrots tasted like absolutely nothing. Compared to absolutely nothing, bland might as well be chocolate cake. I believe, but cannot confirm, I received one or two small slices of pineapple, which tasted canned and were cloying, like the dressing. However, I do appreciate that dressing as well as the crunchy noodles. Together they contributed salt, sweetness, crunch, and a bit of fat, albeit in a very McDonald’s salad kind of way.

Lean Cuisine’s new Asian Chicken Salad Addition is not very complicated, not very Asian, and not very good. But because it’s also not very expensive and not very horrible, it leaves me feeling significantly less guilty about my purchase than an overpriced and not very good salad from say…McDonald’s. It also leaves me less likely to purchase something that will significantly decrease my lifespan, and leaves me with a buttload of leftover lettuce. And you know what they say when life gives you a bunch of lettuce?

Yeah, I don’t really know either. I just hope it doesn’t involve buying more Lean Cuisine Salad Additions.

(Nutrition Facts – 260 calories, 80 calories from fat, 8 gram of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 510 milligrams of sodium, 400 milligrams of potassium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 16 grams of sugar, and 17 grams of protein.)

Other Lean Cuisine Salad Additions reviews:
Brown Girl Next Door
Texas Type A Mom

Item: Lean Cuisine Asian-Style Chicken Salad Additions
Purchased Price: $2.00
Size: 7.2 ounces
Purchased at: Weis Markets
Rating: 3 out of 10
Pros: No fuss vegetables. Tasty vinaigrette. Noodle strips. Cheaper than most ‘Asian-style’ fast food salads. Fitting in with the middle aged women at the office lunch table. Forces me to buy lettuce. Turning into a vegetable via too much college sports watching.
Cons: Gives vegetables a bad name. Insipid two-carrot mix. Not very many vegetables. “Grilled” chicken that doesn’t taste much like chicken, and contains nine ingredients which aren’t actually chicken. Vinaigrette looks like frozen Dr Pepper.

Since 2011, there have been several limited edition Hot Pockets. There’s the Spicy Hawaiian Style Pizza, Four Cheese Garlic Pasta Bake, Chili Sauce Cheese Dog, and BBQ Recipe Bacon Burger. After the last two Limited Edition Hot Pockets releases, I began to wonder what new Hot Pockets varieties they could surprise us with next year (I hope it’s spaghetti and meatballs) and why there weren’t Limited Edition Lean Pockets.

Well, I no longer need to wonder about Limited Edition Lean Pockets, because, during a trip to Target, I discovered the Lean Pockets Limited Edition Three Cheese Tomato Melt. This particular Lean Pocket is made up of tomatoes, low fat mozzarella, reduced fat cheddar and provolone cheese with a creamy sauce in a seasoned crust.

So how lean are these Lean Pockets? One has 230 calories, 5 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 420 milligrams of sodium, 37 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 4 grams of sugar, and 8 grams of protein.

I’m not sure if this is the only Limited Edition Lean Pockets available right now. If you’ve seen others, let us know in the comments below.

Winter is coming.

And now is the time to prepare.

Because, alongside the vanishing flip-flops, shorter days, and temporary extinction of Super Soakers comes the Annual Freezer Hibernation, that distressing time of year when the ice cream companies swipe the shelves of their limited-time summer bounties, taking with them their Samoas and S’mores as the Good Humor Trucks mosey out into the weary horizon with the anticipation of a predicted dip in ice cream consumption.

However, I also know that, within this magnificent world, there exists a league of talented individuals: the few, the proud, the bat-crazy, dairy-lovin’, cream-o-vore daredevils who dive into the comforting frozen dairy treat smack in the middle of a snowstorm February.

If you happen to look like a forlorn bulldog on the night of the winter solstice as you press your face to the glass in the frozen dessert aisle, fear not, oh wonderful cream-lovin’ crazy! Hope may just be on the horizon! For it seems that those Healthy Choice humans are setting aside their microwave ways and diving into the world of frozen yogurt.

In my domineering obsessions for chocolate and peanut butter, seldom do I gush about the glories of vanilla, and yet vanilla has a certain flexibility and persistence that allows it to transcend the average, holding strong as the backdrop to a barrage of toppings. Fudge, fruit, cones, cups, cookies, and cravings of all sorts can meander their way into vanilla and create a brand new concoction and transform the simple, delicate flavor of vanilla into a new creation.

As a result, I’m guilty of plundering the humble vanilla bean with an abundance of other toppings, mixing and melding and masking away at the taste of the gentle black flower. I decided last week that it has been for too long that I have swept vanilla into the passenger seat. For my first tasting, I am going to let the yogurt stand alone, void of decoration or ornaments.

Come with me, little non-microwavable vanilla ice cream cup, and let us see if the world will smile.

First off, my freezer is so cold it could freeze a bottle of vodka into a stone, so I’m going to set this first cup out for about 15 minutes so as to allow the ice cream melt into the “semi-melt” stage, which might be described as “gloopy” if gloopy were a word. But feel free to defrost to your own liking due to the strength of your freezer and the breadth of your inner ice cream patience (mine happens to be a very short).

(And she dives in with the multi-colored spoon)

Whoa.

My past experience with vanilla ice cream tends to put my taste buds into a state of melancholy despair, leaving my mouth coated in a film of milky vanilla water, but this! This tastes of hope! Hope with hints of honey and caramel! And it even holds a tang that tinges on…is that cheesecake?? Because, if it is, he’s welcome to the join the parade.

With the addition of Greek yogurt, I feared this tang would snake its way into the realm of sour, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it’s quite a diplomatic tang: neither too strong nor too soft. Thank you, dear vanilla bean, for resolving your flavor contrasts in such a peaceful and delicious manner.

A main kick that knocks me off the ice cream cart is the presence of freezer burn as it invades across the spine of an overly whipped and/or overly watery ice cream landscape. Not so for these little cups. They’re dad-gum creamy. Daisy, the happy Healthy Choice cow, should be pleased with her work here.

Look at that creamy goodness (yup, those are little bitty vanilla bean specks).

Some ice creams make you feel sad, frumpy, and powerless, but not these bounties. Standing at 100 calories per cup, each vanilla-studded miracle has four grams of protein, and even have 10 percent calcium, thus giving you the right to celebrate with flips on the monkey bars with your calcium-fortified bones. What’s more, you’re equipped with three bowls of that empowerment to charge you forth during the rest of your day, and, indeed, you should eat all three: recent studies show that eating Greek frozen yogurt will make you a movie star, which may or may not be something I just made up. I’ll let you decide…

One of the elements that distinguishes the human being from the platypus is the human’s ability to undergo the artist’s cycle of the creation and destruction, and, while I sometimes wish I were a semi-aquatic mammal, I could not be more grateful for this ability as I decided to exploit that human skill on a second tasting. I went with a cone option and melted a little chocolate inside the cone to create a candy shell. I then emptied out the Healthy choice ice cream on that sucker and crunched in. It was divine. Of course, the possibilities don’t stop at cones. You could add some toasted hazelnuts and fudge or strawberries and balsamic vinegar. Or make an ice cream sandwich. Or an affogato. Add ginger cookies. Rainbow chip cookies. Relish in your creative capacity! For three whole cups! Create! Destroy! Repeat!

Since it was hanging around before the Aztecs, I imagine the vanilla bean to be a flower of great wisdom, and the benevolence of the simple flavor present in this frozen yogurt spreads that wisdom, reminding me that nothing need be pushy or aggressive to be strong. With the outgoing supply of summer ice creams, I’m relieved to know that I don’t have to wait for vanilla to come into season as this curiously wonderful little cup, indeed, has crept its non-microwave-safe way into my life and made me smile. Keep up the good work, vanilla.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cup – 100 calories, 15 calories from fat, 2 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 45 milligrams of sodium, 135 milligrams of potassium, 17 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 12 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein.)

Item: Healthy Choice Vanilla Bean Greek Frozen Yogurt
Purchased Price: $2.99 (with a coupon)
Size: 3 4-ounce cups/box
Purchased at: Food Emporium
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Vanilla. Creamy. The taste of hope. Cheesecake. Calcium. Single-serving cups. Peaceful diplomacy. Multi-colored spoons. Gloopy. Bat-crazy cream-o-vores. Create! Destroy! Repeat!
Cons: Absence of chocolate option. Ice cream truck hibernation. Forlorn bulldogs. I’m not a platypus.