On busy days, sometimes it is hard to sneak in a healthy, filling, breakfast. My hectic work life leaves me not eating breakfast on most days and feeling famished by lunch. With this in mind, I decided to try out some of the microwavable breakfast meals found in the freezer section at my local super market. Among the items chosen for testing were these Smart Ones Breakfast Quesadillas. I've also tested the Smart Ones Wraps and found them to be quite good so I had the same expectations for these Breakfast Quesadillas.
I had several criteria to examine when reviewing this product including cost, ease of preparing, nutrition, general appearance, portion size and of course taste. Here is my assessment of this product:
Cost: About $2.80 (.35/oz) for a package of 2 quesadilla's. In my opinion, not worth it when considering the portion size (see below for more on that).
Ease of Preparing: The directions seemed rather simple. You take a quesadilla, insert it into a sleeve, place on a microwaveable plate, and heat for 2 minutes, 15 seconds. Voila! Instant nutrition breakfast! One thing that bothered me was how both quesadillas and sleeves were packaged together in one wrapper. Each quasadilla was 1 serving, therefore, these seem like they should be packaged separate. I know that when I eat a hot pocket, each pocket and sleeve is in it's own wrapper. Same goes for the breakfast wraps also by Smart Ones. Each serving is separately wrapped so I am not sure why the same didn't apply here. In any event, I had one heck of a time getting the two quesadillas unstuck from each other so I could just heat up one.
I followed the instructions for the first quesadilla. Yes, you read that right when I said the first one as I did end up having to heat the second quesadilla. No, it was not because the first one was so damn delicious that I couldn't help myself. It was because the first one came out hard as a rock when heated for 2 minutes, 15 seconds. In the trash that one went, on to the next one. Apparently, that 15 seconds is way too long so I heated the second one for just 2 minutes. Also, rather than letting it sit for 1 minute as the directions instructed, I decided to get it out of the sleeve immediately. This did help with softness of the tortilla though there were still some area's that were hard such as the edges. I am all for having a crispy quesadilla but this was not crispy, this was downright hard and almost stale tasting. Did I mention that the darn thing stuck to the sleeve when trying to remove it? I had to use a fork to try to pry it up. If you don't believe me, here are some pictures to prove it:
Needless to say, this was supposed to be easy but the only thing easy was fu**ing this quesadilla up. I could have made my own quesadilla in 2 minutes and had a larger, soft one that didn't stick to my plate.
Nutrition: In all, this is a relatively sound meal. It is high in protein, high in fiber, and low in sugar. It is relatively low in fat, calories, and carbohydrates. However, the portion size is relatively puny so I can guarantee that you will still be hungry after eating one of these. That means that something else would have to be added to make this a more complete meal which could potentially add to increased sugar, carbs, calories, and fat if you are not careful. Also, I would have liked to see more vegetables in these quesadillas. The box shows bell peppers but I think I came across one piece of recognizable bell pepper in mine.
Appearance: I'm not gonna sugar coat it, these quesadillas looked like crap after coming out of the microwave. Much of the issue was the first tortilla being rock hard, and the second sticking like crazy to the sleeve. The pictures above demonstrate this pretty well. I did manage to gussy up the appearance for the sake of stomaching this abomination by adding it to a nicer plate with some fruit and salted caramel biscotti (I have another review for the biscotti in case you are wondering).
Portion Size: The picture to the right does not show the size accurately and makes this quesadilla appear larger than it actually is. I can honestly say that it was about the size of my hand when flat and I have really tiny hands (my husband calls me baby hands). Even after eating everything that was on this plate and a cup of coffee, I was still hungry which should tell you that eating just this quesadilla will still leave you famished by lunch.
Taste: The taste actually wasn't bad. I have tasted the breakfast wraps from Smart ones and these quesadillas tasted pretty much the same. The only difference and downside, if you couldn't tell already, was the hard stale tasting tortilla. Also, I added some hot sauce to mine to give it a little oomph (I have a hard time eating scrambled eggs without some kind of hot sauce or salsa).
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| NOT Jen Approved |
Overall grade: I would give these a D. The only upsides of this product is that it tasted somewhat ok and actually had substantial amounts of protein and fiber. These are definitely not Jen Approved!
Other Recommendations: Try the Smart Ones Morning Wraps instead.
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