The Impulsive Buy

Tag: Pizza

  • REVIEW: Limited Edition California Pizza Kitchen Spinach & Artichoke Pizza

    The year is 1999. I have somehow managed to secure a computer and Internet access, despite the fact that I am living in my parents’ house, which is a museum of antiquities ranging from cassette tape players to avocado-green kitchen appliances. I have a Hotmail account with an incredibly dorky handle.

    I check my email and am overwhelmed with quizzes sent by my friends, demanding information about my likes and dislikes. What is your favorite animal? (Unicorn!) What is your favorite movie? (The Crow! Shut up, I was like, 17.) When was your first kiss? (LIE LIE LIE LIE) What is your favorite food?

    …

    Paralyzed with indecision, I stare at the blinking cursor. How do I choose? I must pick something, because if I don’t complete this quiz and send it to five of my friends, I will be cursed with bad luck. For seven years. Those are going to be my most formative years! College! Binge drinking – legally! Actually getting that first kiss! There is way too much riding on this quiz. I have to choose something.

    I usually went with something pedestrian, like steak, or spaghetti. Thankfully, my palate has actually grown less refined over the years, and I don’t categorize food I like as “favorites.” These days, I recognize the foods I like as “shit I am powerless against.” For instance, if I see a sandwich on a restaurant’s menu that includes au jus, that is what I am ordering. If there’s a pasta that uses pesto as its sauce, put down the menu, I’m ready to order. Salsa con queso? Move out of the way, I’m holding a chip that has a date with cheesy destiny.

    This same compulsion also applies to spinach and artichoke dip. If you are dining with me at an establishment that offers this dip as an appetizer, you can kiss your desire to share a plate of potato skins goodbye. We are getting that dip, and I will reach across the table and cut you if you put up one word of protest. I’ll buy it frozen, I’ll buy it jarred, I’ll pretend I’m pregnant and have an insane craving for T.G.I. Friday’s shitty food in order to get at it.

    I have a problem.

    So when I saw California Pizza Kitchen’s Limited Edition Crispy Thin Crust Spinach & Artichoke pizza in the frozen food aisle, it was a no-brainer. Okay, so it’s not a dip, but it’s still spinach and artichoke getting sexy together, and that’s enough to send me knocking Jazzies over in order to get to it. The front of the pizza box describes it as “crispy thin pizza topped with spinach, diced artichokes, garlic, crème fraiche sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, asiago and romano cheeses.” So it really is just like they glopped some dip onto a thin pizza crust! My excitement is palpable. My excitement had to wait a little, as the oven had to pre-heat at 425 degrees, which actually takes longer than cooking the pizza, which only takes 10 – 12 minutes, which is pretty standard for a frozen thin-crust pizza.

    I liked what I saw when I took the pizza out of the oven. The distribution of toppings was even and plentiful, both which are things I look for in a frozen pizza. The aroma was distinctly garlic, with a hint of cheese and spinach. The crust was, indeed, crispy, and I love that the toppings go right up to the outer edge. I honestly couldn’t tell you that all of the cheeses described on the front of the box are present; I am not, unfortunately, a cheese aficionado. However, you can see the parmesan sprinkled on top, and whatever cheeses are mixed up in there form a delicious, gooey, satisfying taste. I also can’t distinctly say that I detected crème fraiche as the sauce, but the sauce was perfect for a good white pizza. The garlic really made its presence known, but didn’t knock you over the head with it, which is what I’ve experienced previously with CPK’s Garlic Chicken pizza.

    On this pizza, the garlic played really nice with all the other flavors. The spinach was flavorful and blended wonderfully with the cheese. My one complaint would be the artichokes – while they were plentiful, I would have liked to have seen more chunks and less thin little slivers. Because of their thinness, or perhaps because of the freezing process, the artichoke flavor virtually disappeared. Every once in a while I’d bite into one of the bigger chunks and get a burst of juicy artichoke, but for the most part the slivers add nothing to the table.

    Overall, I thought this was a very successful white pizza experience. All the cheeses and the crème fraiche sauce gave it a much more sophisticated taste than your average frozen pizza, the spinach made its presence known, and the garlic tied all the flavors together nicely. The only thing missing was bigger, more flavorful artichoke pieces.

    Will I give up spinach and artichoke dip forever and kneel at the alter of California Pizza Kitchen’s Limited Edition Crispy Thin Crust Spinach & Artichoke pizza? Of course not. First of all, while it’s a pretty good pizza, there’s no substitute for dipping a toasty wedge of buttered garlic bread into a warm tub of gooey goodness. Stealing the biggest piece of artichoke for yourself is the best part! Second, CPK frozen pizzas ain’t cheap – at $7.69 a pop, I could probably grab two frozen T.G.I. Friday’s Spinach Cheese & Artichoke dips, and then I wouldn’t have to lie about being pregnant all the time! I think my husband is starting to catch on to me.

    That said, if you’re a fan of thin-crust white pizzas and the convenience of frozen food, I would recommend you try this pizza at least once. After all, it won’t be around forever.

    (Nutrition Facts – 1/3 pizza – 330 calories, 150 calories from fat, 16 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 520 milligrams of sodium, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 14 grams of protein, 15% vitamin A, 0% vitamin C, 25% calcium and 6% iron.)

    Item: Limited Edition California Pizza Kitchen Spinach & Artichoke Pizza
    Price: $5.49 (on sale; regular price $7.69)
    Size: 1 pizza
    Purchased at: Safeway
    Rating: 7 out of 10
    Pros: Flavors of toppings compliment each other well. Unicorns. Cheese blend tastes more sophisticated than on other frozen pizzas. Toppings were plentiful and evenly distributed. Finally getting that first kiss.
    Cons: Not enough larger chunks of artichoke. Being a slave to certain foods. Expensive for a convenience food. Internet quizzes. T.G.I. Friday’s.

  • REVIEW: Red Baron Supreme Pizza By The Slice

    Somewhere out there someone is warming up the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice in the microwave and while watching it rotate to pass the time they think to themselves that the product is a metaphor for their forlorn life. And that person could possibly be the loneliest person in the world.

    Who is the loneliest person in the world?

    The loneliest person in the world wants a cat. Or maybe two cats. Or three. Or whatever the number of cats the Humane Society allows them to adopt. Or whatever the loneliest person in the world can fit in their studio apartment. However, the loneliest person in the world doesn’t want to be known in their apartment complex as “the cat person” who has a machine gun bunker’s worth of kitty litter bags stacked in their apartment. Fortunately for the loneliest person in the world, their landlord has prevented “the cat person” label from being affixed to them by neighbors because pets aren’t allowed in the building.

    The loneliest person in the world chooses to work in the exciting 10-keyed realm of data entry because it’s the Solitare of the employment world. It’s one of the few things the loneliest person in the world excels at. The loneliest person in the world is amazingly accurate and has never made a mistake, but double checks their work because the company’s standard operating procedures say so. Even more impressive is the fact that the loneliest person in the world is ambidextrous when in comes to punching numeric keys in a robotic fashion. The loneliest person in the world wonders why there is so much interest surrounding the world’s fastest phone texter. The loneliest person in the world believes they would type circles around the world’s fastest texter, if the loneliest person in the world had a cell phone, which they have no need for since no one calls them.

    You would think the loneliest person in the world would have some friends at work, but due to poor social skills caused by an extremely sheltered childhood, the loneliest person in the world doesn’t interact with co-workers, but does acknowledge their greetings with smiles and nods. The loneliest person in the world doesn’t have anything in common with fellow employees. The loneliest person in the world doesn’t think anyone in the office is into hobbies that the loneliest person in the world enjoys, like medieval horseback archery, duct tape art and egg shell carving.

    So the loneliest person in the world sits alone in the corner of the office’s break room, eating the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice, which is perfect for the loneliest person in the world since they have no friends to share the other slices with if they had a whole pizza. The loneliest person in the world wishes that it didn’t take so long to prepare, which included microwaving it for 60 seconds on the edge of the microwave oven’s turntable, then 70-85 seconds in the middle of the turntable and then, if the cheese isn’t completely melted, continue cooking in 15 second intervals. The loneliest person in the world has to microwave it an extra 90 seconds to get the cheese completely melted. Although it’s no problem for a data entry expert to press the numbers one and five repeatedly on any kind of keypad, the loneliest person in the world wishes they didn’t have to do so during a lunch break.

    Although the life of the loneliest person in the world isn’t very exciting, it’s much more exciting than the flavor of the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice. While the packaging brags about the fact that the two pizza slices included were “fire baked,” I wonder why that matters much since it’s going to be put through a microwave for more than two minutes. Sadly, during those two minutes, the “special crisping tray” doesn’t do a good job of crisping the crust. The amount of toppings on each slice was sad compared with what’s on the front of the box. Perhaps if each pizza slice had a decent amount of sausage, pepperoni, bell peppers and onions, it would’ve tasted better because it’s not a very flavorful pizza. Not even the sauce could save it because it was neither spicy or sweet.

    If I were the loneliest person in the world, I’d avoid the Red Baron Supreme Pizza by the Slice. Although, since the pizza is kind of sad and pathetic, perhaps it would make the loneliest person in the world feel better.

    (Nutrition Facts – 1 slice – 350 calories, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 910 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 41 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, 15 grams of protein, 8% vitamin A, 25% calcium 4% vitamin C and 15% iron.)

    *made with fully hydrogenated oil

    Item: Red Baron Supreme Pizza By The Slice
    Price: $3.49 (on sale)
    Size: 2 slices
    Purchased at: Safeway
    Rating: 4 out of 10
    Pros: Microwaveable. Comes with two slices. Being really good a data entry. Made with real cheese. Good source of calcium.
    Cons: Tolerable pizza. Not very flavorful. Difficult to make cheese melt completely. Not a lot of toppings. Special crisping tray kind of sucks. Awesome source of sodium. Not being able to have pets.

  • REVIEW: Limited Edition California Pizza Kitchen Cheeseburger Pizza

    The cheeseburger pizza isn’t new to me.

    It actually used to frighten me as a wee lad whenever I would see the words “cheeseburger pizza” scheduled on the elementary and intermediate school lunch calendar twice a month. For most kids my age, the word “pizza” equated to something that was a treat, but for me it was terror and confusion.

    It didn’t look or taste like a pizza, nor did it look or taste like a cheeseburger. I would either pick at it like a bird, or trade it for some syrup-covered prunes. I later came to the conclusion that it was a way for the cafeteria workers to get rid of soon-to-expire ingredients, like ground beef and cheese.

    Sure, when I was in seventh grade, some bonehead blasted me, shoulder first, into my chest while playing flag football, making it hard for me to breathe for five minutes; in sixth grade, I got kicked in the balls really hard while playing soccer; in fifth grade, I pooped in my pants before I made it to the restroom; in fourth grade, the prettiest girl in my grade told me I smelled really bad; in third grade, my classmate seated next to me threw up on me; in second grade, I pooped in my pants before I made it to the restroom; in first grade, I was called “nerd” for the very first time because I started wearing glasses; and in kindergarden, I cried so hard while I had my head down while being punished that my tears created a puddle on the table that ran off the edge and created a waterfall of tears, but none of these grade school memories haunt me more than those cafeteria cheeseburger pizzas.

    Thankfully, California Pizza Kitchen changed my opinion of what a cheesburger pizza is when I had their much tastier version in one of their restaurants. And now I can continue to rehabilitate and rid myself of those grade school cheeseburger pizza memories at home with the frozen Limited Edition California Pizza Kitchen Cheeseburger Pizza.

    The frozen pizza is made up of a crispy thin pizza crust topped with seasoned hamburger, a blend of cheeses, diced tomatoes, caramelized onions and CPK’s signature sauce. According to one of my Twitter followers, who works at CPK, it’s supposed to taste like an In-N-Out cheeseburger, but I think it tastes more like a Big Mac with a little mustard flavor.

    The restaurant and frozen versions taste almost exactly alike. The only major differences are the layer of shredded lettuce that’s added on top of the restaurant’s version of the pizza and the use of a huge wood fire oven.

    According to the box, there’s three servings, which is kind of irritating because I don’t like having to bust out the protractor I haven’t used since high school to figure out how big a slice should be and I’m an Asian who sucks at math. Of course, I can cut it into fourths, but doing so would force me to use more math as I try to figure out how much trans fat is in one slice.

    But wait, if I cut it into sixths, then two pieces will equal a third.

    Oh, I guess I am good at math. The stereotype still lives.

    The Limited Edition California Pizza Kitchen Cheeseburger Pizza is one tasty frozen pizza and is my favorite CPK frozen pizza variety, so far. If you’ve ordered one in the restaurant and enjoyed it, this frozen version will help you remember it, while at home, for about half the price.

    (Nutrition Facts – 1/3 pizza – 350 calories, 19 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 770 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 4 grams of sugar, 13 grams of protein, 6% vitamin A, 20% calcium and 6% iron.)

    Item: Limited Edition California Pizza Kitchen Cheeseburger Pizza
    Price: $5.99 (on sale)
    Size: 14.1 ounces
    Purchased at: Safeway
    Rating: 7 out of 10
    Pros: Tastes like a Big Mac. Tastes like the version available at CPK restaurants. Crispy crust. No lines about I Can Haz Cheeseburger. Asians are good at math.
    Cons: Contains trans fat. Limited edition. Good source of saturated fat and sodium. Trying to cut a pizza into even thirds. Cheeseburger pizza in grade school. Pooping in my pants in the fifth and second grades.

  • REVIEW: DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza

    Chicago, I know you’re still celebrating your Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup, but I want to bring something negative to your attention that would probably get lost if I mentioned it while your anger from the Cubs not winning a World Series for the 103rd straight year erupts.

    I just want to let you know that DiGiorno has a new deep dish pepperoni pizza. Well, at least they’re calling it a “deep dish pizza” because if you saw it for yourself, you would boo it hard, just like you do every time Brett Favre steps on Soldier Field.

    Chicago is the birthplace of the deep dish pizza and as someone who has had a Chicago-style deep dish pizza from Giordano’s Pizzeria (and thinks it’s frickin’ awesome), I believe the Windy City should be appalled at DiGiorno’s poor attempt to create a deep dish pizza. I also believe the Second City should use the most powerful person in the Free World that comes from the great state of Illinois to stop DiGiorno from tainting the greatness of the deep dish pizza.

    No, I’m not talking about President Zombie Abraham Lincoln, I’m talking about Oprah.

    For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing a deep dish pizza, it’s like a large bowl that’s made of crust that’s filled with tomato sauce, cheese, sausage and other ingredients. However, the DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza isn’t at all like that and is basically a Pizza Hut Pepperoni Personal Pan Pizza, except slightly smaller, with a less crispy crust, with a slightly better tasting sauce and would probably make the late Linda Lovelace say, “I know deep, and that’s not deep.”

    While I believe the DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza isn’t a good deep dish pizza because there isn’t enough filling in it to be considered a deep dish pizza, I do think it’s a good microwaveable pizza. The cooking tray does a decent job of making the pizza’s bottom crust a little crispy. On top of that crust is a few pepperoni slices that are cut into fourths, not enough cheese and a decent amount of sauce, which I thought was quite tasty and had a slight spiciness.

    Overall, the DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza is a fine microwaveable pizza, but calling itself a deep dish pizza is a stretch, just like it’s a stretch when anyone on a New Jersey-based reality show calls themself a celebrity or nicely tanned.

    (Nutrition Facts – Whole Pizza – 590 calories, 33 grams of fat, 16 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 950 milligrams of sodium, 52 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, 24 grams of protein, 15% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 35% calcium and 20% iron.)

    Item: DiGiorno Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza
    Price: $3.00 (on sale)
    Size: 7.5 ounces
    Purchased at: Safeway
    Rating: 6 out of 10
    Pros: A good microwaveable pizza for one. Tasty sauce. My ability to learn about Chicago though Wikipedia. Nice source of calcium, iron, and protein. Cooking tray does a decent job of crisping the crust. Oprah. President Zombie Abraham Lincoln.
    Cons: Not a true deep dish pizza. It’s basically a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza. Not enough cheese. Awesome source of saturated fat and sodium. Contains trans fat. Linda Lovelace would probably not approve of its deepness. Spray on tans that make you look orange. The Chicago Cubs’ futility.

  • REVIEW: Kashi Caribbean Carnival Pizza

    You know that expression: “You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time?” Well, Kashi should just stop making pizzas, because they are pleasing none of the people none of the time. Seriously, I really wanted to like this pizza. I’m normally a fan of everything Kashi – their frozen meals, crackers, granola bars, cereals, etcetera, etcetera. But in the past I have been let down by Kashi pizzas. Yet, I decided to give them one more chance to make amends when I saw the new delicious-sounding “Caribbean Carnival” Kashi pizza.

    Spoiler alert: While I expected Kashi’s “Caribbean Carnival” pizza to invoke delightful imagery like friendly anthropomorphic parrots and jovial dark-skinned men wearing brightly colored beads in their hair; this pizza was neither “Caribbean” nor a carnival in my mouth. (Discuss!) Being a healthful eater, I normally resent when others disparage health food as tasting like cardboard – however, tasting like wonderful, delicious cardboard would probably be a lofty goal for this pizza.

    Its promise of plantains, kale, fire-roasted red onions, mangoes and a “sweet and spicy Guava-infused jerk seasoned sauce” yielded a smattering of toppings lumped all in one corner of the pizza, which I meticulously picked apart and spread about before putting the pizza in the oven. Below all of that was some of the nastiest pizza crust known to mankind. I would like to know what think tank thought it would be a good idea to make a pizza crust out of ingredients like buckwheat and brown rice. Poor Antonio Pizzarelli, the inventor of the pizza pie*, would be spinning in his grave if he only knew. Normally the crust is one of my favorite parts of the pizza, and I couldn’t even get it down. Even the dog gave me the stinkface when I tried to pass it off, as if to say, “I’ll eat this because it’s technically contraband people food; but only begrudgingly so.”

    The “toppings” provided little relief to the gritty taste bud-assault that was the crust. The pizza was covered mostly in kale and diced tomatoes, and I think I saw a few specs of yellow that was supposed to be mango. The best part of the pizza was undoubtedly the plantains — as I have expressed my enthusiasm for Kashi products featuring plantains in the past. But unfortunately the pizza only contained four slices of plantains and two bits of something that were probably the bodily remains of brave, fallen plantains who likely fought to the death against being put on this terrible pizza. And as for this alleged sweet and spicy Guava-infused jerk sauce…Well, I did detect some kind of flavor between the cheese and the crust, but I don’t think it tasted so much like jerk sauce as it did like “a funk.”

    What separates Kashi’s Caribbean Carnival Pizza from your garden variety “fail” to an “epic fail,” is that it’s not even particularly healthy. One pizza, which is a reasonable-sized meal for most people, clocks in at over 800 whopping calories. You could probably eat two slices of real pizza for that and not feel let down like a kid who gets socks for Christmas.

    * Look it up!

    (Nutrition Facts – 1/3 pizza (120 grams) – 280 calories, 8 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 590 milligrams of sodium, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar, 14 grams of protein and 10% iron.)

    Item: Kashi Caribbean Carnival Pizza
    Price: $6.99 [sale price, reg. $7.99]
    Size: 12.7 ounces
    Purchased at: Shop Rite
    Rating: 2 out of 10
    Pros: The bites with plantain on them were almost not terrible. Pleasing all of the people all of the time. Friendly anthropomorphic parrots.
    Cons: Pizza crust tasted like puppies crying. No mango. Not enough plantains. Eating this instead of real pizza. Horrible taste plus not great nutritional value plus outlandish price like getting raped in three orifices. Getting socks for Christmas.