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Sausage
Box of Frozen Aquastar Crab & Shrimp Seafood Feast
Aquastar Crab & Shrimp Seafood Feast Cooked

We saw this box of crab & shrimp seafood at Fry's (Kroger) and thought it sounded good so we tried some.

The seafood feast comes in a covered aluminum tray, and the cooking directions show that you can cook it in the oven or on the grill from frozen, but the grill is the preferred method, which is what we went with, and it was pretty easy.

While cooking the seafood was fairly easy, eating it was a bit labor intensive since you had to shell both the crab legs and shrimp. Both the crab and shrimp were fine, but I would have preferred more. 2.21 lb of seafood sounds like a lot, but it cooks down to a smaller volume and some of that is the crab leg shells, so it wasn't very much of a feast.

However, it did all taste pretty good with the broth. It was salty, but not excessively so. The broth had a nice, garlic and butter taste. There were 5 discs of corn, which were all nice and super sweet. The sausage tasted good, like a bratwurst. The potatoes were good red potatoes, but they were mushy, which is to be expected for being in a broth. The broth also turned into a sort of slurry with potato starch. There was some red and green pepper bits, but they were very tiny. The mussels also tasted good, but there were some broken pieces of mussel shell lurking underneath some of the other foods.

As an overall meal, it could have used more of everything: more seafood, more sausage, more corn, and more/bigger peppers. It also would have been nice if the shrimp and crab were pre-shelled and if there weren't as many broken mussel shell pieces. I probably would have even preferred artificial crab to having to shell the crab legs. And while I shared the seafood feast with my boyfriend, I probably could have eaten the entire thing by myself.

Overall Rating:
OK
Food: Aquastar Crab & Shrimp Seafood Feast (Crab, Shrimp, Mussels, & Vegetables in a Classic Beer Broth)
Price: $9.99
Source: Fry's Food & Drug Store (Kroger), Tucson, AZ
Rating (Seafood & Vegetables): OK
Rating (Broth): Good

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Box of Kirkland Signature Italian Sausage & Beef Lasagna from Costco
Plate of Kirkland Signature Italian Sausage & Beef Lasagna

Costco's Kirkland Signature Sausage & Beef Lasagna comes in two separate packages of three pound lasagna (six pounds total). My boyfriend and I warmed up one package following the microwave instructions, since the microwave takes ~30 minutes (instead of 65 minutes via coventional oven).

Kirkland Signature Italian Sausage & Beef Lasagna
Cooked Kirkland Signature Sausage & Beef Lasagna from Costco

It came out pretty well using the microwave instructions. This was a very standard lasagna and had three layers of lasagna noodles. I liked that the noodles were thick, and I liked the mozzarella cheese on top. I'm not a fan of ricotta cheese so the ricotta inside started getting annoying after my first piece. Luckily, the ricotta was easy enough to scrape off. The lasagna could also use more sausage; it looked like the sausage was only on the top layer.

The sauce was a little sweet, but the meat helped give it a more savory flavor so it tasted like a pretty decent commercial tomato sauce. Together, the two of us ate about half the lasagna in one sitting.

Update: We tried baking this in the oven to see if it made much difference, and the lasagna did seem to taste better and have a better texture using a conventional oven. So, a microwave still does well, but a conventional oven does even better!

Overall Rating:
Good
Food: Kirkland Signature All Natural Italian Sausage & Beef Lasagna
Source: Costco, Tucson, AZ
Rating (with ricotta scraped off & baked in oven): Delicious
Rating (with ricotta scraped off & microwaved): Good
Rating (with ricotta): OK

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Bag of Johnsonville Fully-Cooked Mild Italian Sausage Slices
Johnsonville Fully-Cooked Mild Italian Sausage Slices

I tried some of the fully-cooked and frozen Johnsonville Mild Italian Sausage Slices as a quick way to eat some sausage without having to cook and slice sausages myself. Usually when I try to cook and slice sausages, it takes a long time, and I'm not able to slice them very well.

When I tried these sausage slices, they were easy to warm up in the microwave from frozen, and they tasted just like a regular cooked sausage. However, like most sausages, they were a little on the salty side. I ate the sausage slices by themselves, but they would probably be good to use in pasta or other recipes.

The sausage slices were a little bit spicy but not overly spicy. They also weren't mushy and didn't have any other weird texture. They were pretty good and were definitely a quick and easy way to eat some sausage!

Overall Rating:
Good
Food: Johnsonville Mild Italian Sausage Slices (fully cooked & frozen)
Source: Albertson's, Scottsdale, AZ
Rating: Good

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