Krasdale Kolumn #3

Name: Krasdale Cheese Pizza: For One

I knew I was going to be in trouble with this one. The moment I opened the C-Town's freezer door and reached in for the black box of Krasdale's Cheese Pizza adorned with a ribbon with the words "For One" and a cartoony explosion stating "$1.19", a little voice in my head was screaming "Wrong! Wrong!" But I was on a mission and nothing would deviate me from that goal. I am committed to subjecting myself to all that is necessary to make sure you get the best in generic food reviews.

A little back history first: I tend to like microwavable food. I like microwavable pizza. Admittedly, I haven't had one in years, but my formative years (5-10, let's say) were dominated by a surrogate, possibly made up, motherly figure named Celeste. She was my sun, my moon, my grandmotherly oval-encased stars. She could also make the finest of after school snacks.

But there was something wrong about this Krasdale iteration on the classic, well-tested design.

The boxed contained a not-quite-vaccuum-packed red coated disc barely covered with hard white splinters that seemed to have been cheese. The box did not contain the ubiquitous industry standard cardboard circle, which is silvered on one side, that one usually uses in combination with the pizza to magically make the crust crisper. The lack of the reflective crisper told me one of three things must be true:
1) Krasdale has so much confidence in their pizza's ability to crisp itself, it doesn't need said reflector.
2) Krasdale has given up on the ability of their pizza to ever be crisp and don't even bother with the reflector.
3) Krasdale is saving money by foregoing the reflector and are passing the savings on to you ("$1.19"!)

After eating the pizza I tend to think its some combination of 2 & 3.

The back of the box told me I had 3 cooking options, microwave, toaster oven, or conventional oven. Having a microwave, but trying to coax all the potential I can out of the pizza, i stuck it in our oven, preheated to 450ยบ. After seeing the state it was in after the suggested 14 minutes, i gave it another extra minute or two and cranked the heat up to try and toast the edges a bit, but to no avail. Once it was taken out, the pizza had lost all structural integrity and willingly flopped around. I let it cool for a few minutes hoping for some firming. Despite its condition before and after cooking I remained somewhat optimistic that I might be surprised by the flavor.

Not a chance. The crust was merely a frisbee's worth of soggy dough. The low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese had no taste and only contributed some texture. The only flavor that existed was the fluorescent, overpowering, and all-too-sugary tomato sauce. The rest were merely conduits or compliments to the delivery of that tomato sauce; all were failures.

No good.

The things I do for science.

Price: $1.19
Ingredients: Crust: enriched wheat flour (malted barley flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, contains less than 2% sugar, yeast, salt, baking powder (corn starch, sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, monocalcium phosphate), soy flour, cornmeal.
Sauce: water, tomato paste, contains less than 2% sugar, salt, spices, dehydrated garlic and onion, soybean oil, modified food starch, guar gum, parmesan cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes) xanthan gum, paprika, citirc acid, soy flour.
Low Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese: pasteurized part-skim milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes.

allergens: wheat, soy, milk.

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