Good & Gather Italian-Style Smoked Chicken Sausage

I've never been a huge sausage guy. 

Wait.

That could be taken wrongly in a number of different ways. What I mean is, I'm not the biggest fan of the food known as "sausage" in general, although every once in a while I get a hankerin' and it's usually for the poultry variety. Unfortunately, this product does use pork casings, as many brands of otherwise turkey or chicken sausages do. 

And I've never been a big pig guy either. Heh. Big pig. That rhymes. Where my kosher peeps at? What?

Actually, I'm not kosher, mainly because I LURVE me some bottom-feeding aquatic creatures. And now that I've upset all the #BaconNation peeps as well as at least 2/3 of the adherents of Abrahamic religions, if you're still with me, please proceed to read the rest of this sausage review.

Because these sausages are actually pretty good. They don't have a ton of typical sausage spices—just enough to keep them interesting—and the meat seems to be very high quality chicken. They do well with run-of-the-mill condiments like mustard and ketchup, so you can eat them like that in the manner of a chicken hot dog, or you could go all out, chop them up and deck them with onions, peppers, and pasta sauce, serve them with spaghetti or what have you and either way, they're pretty tasty.

They come four in a pack for just about four bucks. Not a bad value in my opinion. Nutrition-wise, they definitely pack some serious sodium and cholesterol, but I'm pretty sure that's par for the course for most sausage, poultry-based or otherwise.

I'd even think about these as a side dish for a Thanksgiving meal. They're hearty enough and versatile enough that they'd go great with stuffing and mashed potatoes and other Turkey Day leftovers.

I might purchase again as is. Would definitely purchase again if they didn't go with pork casings.

I give these sausages 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Eggplant Parmigiana Pizza

I'm always amazed at how nasty eggplant looks, but how distinctly delicious it tastes. There's no other vegetable like it. It's highly underrated.

Coincidentally, my wife brought home a couple of slices of eggplant pizza from a function she had attended in Center City Philadelphia just the night before we wound up cooking this Archer Farms pizza.

That pizza from Center City originated from an award-winning hole-in-the-wall Italian place called Gianfranco's. It was great. We reheated it in the oven to preserve the freshness, and I was pleasantly surprised.

And I was even more surprised when the following day, we heated this pizza in the oven and discovered that it was even better! This is definitely one of the best Archer Farms pizzas I've tried for this blog. Check out my reviews of the spinach and goat cheese pizza and the Mediterranean arugula pizza. I also took a look at the Genoa salami pizza.

This Italian treat flaunted big bites of eggplant cooked to perfection, parmesan cheese, and tiny pieces of onion that gave the whole thing a great balanced flavor. The texture was similar to other Archer Farms pizzas, and they're always just a tad too chewy in my opinion. But other than that, I can't complain.

If you're a fan of eggplant or open to new things, please give this pizza a try. It's well worth the money. If you hate eggplant, well, I guess you can always pick it off of the product. This is a great-tasting artisan-style pizza at a reasonable price. I highly recommend it.

I'm going to give this 8 out of 10 stars.

Simply Balanced Tuscan Herb Multigrain Crisps

Akin to other whole grain snacks like Multigrain Wheat Thins, these Tuscan herb-flavored crisps are head and shoulders above the recently reviewed Sun-Dried Tomato Popcorn Chips. These crisps are firmer, they have more flavor, and they're more filling, yet the nutrition information of both products is virtually identical.

Just a week or so ago, my wife discovered a delicious Tuscan-themed snack in the vending machine in our building. The same chips popped up at our local grocery store, too. The brand was Good Natured, and we both fell in love with them quickly. But I've gotta say these Simply Balanced crisps give the Good Natured brand a run for its money.

They're full of crunchy whole grains, and as I mentioned before, they're much more flavorful than popcorn chips. There's even a little heat from the Italian spices. It's certainly not enough to "burn" your mouth, but it does give the product an unexpected kick.

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm guessing these chips would go great with virtually any cheese dip or salsa, and I can also see them going well with salads and soups. I could absolutely feature myself buying these on a regular basis. In my opinion, chips don't get much more impressive than this.

I give this product 9 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Tiramisu Gelato

You're going to want to try this.

It's a no-brainer. I was skeptical at first, but this is tied for the best-tasting tiramisu I've ever had. And it's not even really tiramisu. It's gelato.

The first time I ever had tiramisu was in Los Angeles, about eight years ago. I was with a couple of friends, and one of them brought along this crazy French photographer guy I had never met before. He discovered that one other person in our group and I had both never tried real tiramisu, so he took us to this expensive Italian restaurant on Melrose. I insisted that I didn't want any, but he bought all of us dishes of the dessert anyway. It was like $10 for three small bites. It was ridiculous. But so good, it was almost worth the price tag.

Since then, I've tried it at a couple of less-swanky restaurants, and it has been sub-par every time. Until now.

As I mentioned before, the flavor of this gelato is excellent. The top layer tastes like the most rich coffee...it's almost chocolatey. And the ice cream itself is buttery, creamy, sweet and vanilla-ish. Delicious.

There are a few swirls of the dark coffee goodness throughout the gelato, too. It's mixed-in at a pretty good ratio. There's a lot more of the plain golden ice cream, but the dark stuff is so rich, you don't need a lot of it.

The one weakness of this amazing dessert is a slight lack of texture. The creaminess of the ice cream is great, and the softness of the top layer is good...but real tiramisu is made with cookies. Ladyfingers.

If they had added ladyfinger cookies, or even just cookie bits soaked in coffee throughout the ice cream, they could have created the ultimate dessert. Also, there's carrageenan in it, which is bad for you. But it's so low on the ingredients list that we all could have overlooked that.

But seriously, if version 2.0 has little ladyfinger cookie bits all through it, you can bet I'll have heaps of this stuff stocked in my freezer all the time. Even as it stands, this is one killer gelato.

I give the tiramisu gelato 9 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Lemon Meringue Gelato

A week or two ago, I promised a bunch of reviews of frozen treats. This is me attempting to make good on that promise...not that you really have to twist my arm to get me to eat ice cream.

I'm always ready to try new flavors, especially when they're familiar flavors like lemon meringue. Although in this case, I think I like the pie just a tad more than the gelato.

It's not bad, don't get me wrong. It's very refreshing and sweet, but it doesn't taste very lemony. And the "meringue" part is nothing more than little marshmallowy things on the top layer of ice cream.

It has a relatively light flavor. My wife thinks it simply tastes like vanilla ice cream, but I do detect a very subtle essence of some citrus fruit. It's almost like they flavored it with lemon peels instead of actual lemon, but I see right there in the ingredients that they did actually use lemon juice from

concentrate. All I can say is, they must have used it sparingly. It's almost like there's a ribbon of lemoniness running around certain portions of the product because some bites really taste like lemon, and others barely taste like it at all.

It's not a bad choice for dessert, but it doesn't even come close to my beloved Creme Cake & Berry Swirl.

I give the Lemon Meringue Gelato 7 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Dulce de Leche Gelato

In Spanish, "dulce de leche" means "sweet of milk." It's basically caramel. It's good.

This gelato is pretty tasty, too, if you like caramel. Fortunately, I do, and my wife does as well.

But I wasn't quite as enthralled with this product as I was with my delicious Crème Cake & Berry Swirl Gelato. I think it was the bits of sponge cake in the latter that really pushed it over the top for me.

The caramel in this product is very good, the gelato itself is good—on par with all the other vanilla-based gelato I've had from Archer Farms. The mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids are really good...wait...what did I just say? Sometimes it's better to remain ignorant and not even read the ingredients list, especially if you're trying to treat yourself to something special. What? No triglycerides of fatty acids? Cheap jerks.

But seriously, in comparison with the Cake & Berry nonsense, this flavor is just a little boring to me. I feel like I have tasted sweet Heaven, and I don't wanna go back to Earth.

But under any other circumstances, this review would have made this product sound like a raving success. It is very good. My wife claims to like it just as much and maybe better than the Cake & Berry flavor. To say it's better than the Cake & Berry is preposterous to me. But it is a close second...I'll give her that.

I give this product 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Crème Cake & Berry Swirl Gelato

It's hot again here in Philadelphia. And that means it's time for a barrage of reviews on frozen treats from my local Target's freezer.

Compared to the other Archer Farms gelato flavor that I checked out on this blog, this one's definitely a bit tastier. It's got oval-shaped bits of sponge cake all through it, which add a welcome element of complexity to the product's texture. They taste pretty good, too. They're lightly sweet and bready. The gelato's also sweetened with various fruit juices, as well as sugar, so it's got some quality ingredients. It's not just a tub of cheap high fructose corn syrup.

The fruit gel swirled throughout the product tastes vaguely of berry, although considering there's plenty of actual fruit juice in the product, the reddish jelly part of it doesn't necessarily taste that way. I think it might be a simple matter of blending too many different berry juices together, so that it doesn't taste like any one fruit in particular. But that's not a dealbreaker—not by any means.

This product also lacks the nasty aftertaste present in the Cherry Amaretto version, so that's another plus. The vanilla part of the product is creamy and rich, and its quality falls juuust shy of gelatos I've had from actual gelato parlors—places where one tiny dish of ice cream costs as much as this entire tub.

So all in all, this is a big thumbs up. I could hardly keep myself from eating the whole container in one sitting.

I give this product 9 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Italian-Style Four Cheese Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

I only know what the four cheeses in this dish are because I looked at the packaging just now. They are: parmesan, asiago, ricotta, and romano. Supposedly.

I just tasted a single, mild, pillowy white cheese with an unexceptional amount of tang and a decided lack of smack.

But it still beat the flavor of Kraft Easy Mac. No contest.

The flavor of this pasta was subtle, but it kinda grew on me. At first I missed that yellow, biting cheddar that comes in so many nondescript packets of mac and cheese sauce add-ins. But soon enough, the soft squishy sapor of the included mystery-cheese got the better of my more-attentive taste buds.

I'm not going to lie. It tasted better with Texas Pete. And even though the hot sauce dominated the flavor of the entire bowl of pasta, it was as if the dish had been created to host the fresh flavorful zip of that famous hot sauce.

It took me back to our Disneyland days, when we'd visit Pizza Port nearly every weekend, order the Count Down Chicken Fusilli, and drench it in that sexy sauce. And of course this dish lacked poultry, but it didn't need it.

The taste was clean, plain, and ethereal. It was a chance to cleanse the palate of all pretentiousness and enjoy pasta and cheese for what it was meant to be.

And it helped that Sonia boiled the shells for exactly the right amount of time. Another second longer and they would have suggested sogginess. A second shorter and they would have seemed sorely solid.

Upon first bite, I might have scored these morsels a measly six stars. But by the end of the pot, they earned an elite eight. To see a pic of the prepared product close-up, click here.

I give this product 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Genoa Salami Pizza with Spicy Peppers

Man, I just love a good Italian sub. All of those spiced meats, oregano, cheese, and peppers can really hit the spot sometimes.

Now imagine taking some of the best ingredients in an Italian sub and throwing them on a thin, crispy pizza crust and baking them to perfection in your oven. That's basically what we have here.

I've never tasted a meat that blended so perfectly with banana peppers as this Genoa salami did. The cover of this product mentions both "banana peppers" and "pepperoncinis," but I was pretty sure they were the same thing. You know, you always get them at Subway. Most locations label them as banana peppers, but regionally, they're also known as pepperoncinis. I certainly didn't see two types of peppers on top of this pizza, but enough with semantics. This pizza tasted great.

It also has whole milk mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and crushed red pepper already on it. Altogether, the two shining stars of this product are the pepperoncinis and the salami. You could throw a bit of those two ingredients on plain white toast and it would taste pretty good, in my opinion. The cheese and tomato sauce are present, and they certainly don't hurt the flavor, but they don't do a whole lot for it, either. Mozzarella is generally a mild cheese, and maybe AF's food gurus knew what they were doing when they made sure it played second fiddle to the meat and peppers, but I'd be very interested in finding out what this product would taste like with a bolder cheese.

The crust seemed crispier and less chewy than many other AF pizzas. I don't know if that was solely because we cooked it a tad longer or whether the crust is actually made differently in this pizza. Either way, it was pretty close to "New York-style" and it worked well with the toppings.

My wife and I both agree, this is tied for the best Archer Farms brand pizza we've had so far. We'll put it up there with the Eggplant Parm.

I give this pizza 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Amaretto Cherry Gelato

In recent weeks, we've taken a look at crème brûlée and Bolognese pizza. Today, we're taking a look at another European favorite, imported all the way from Italy, according to the label.

It's gelato. Italian ice cream. Not to be confused with Italian ice, or Italian water ice. It's very similar to traditional ice cream, except it's made with skim milk instead of cream. But make no mistake, this isn't a low-calorie/low-fat option. They add plenty of butter and sugar to make up for the nonfat milk. It might have slightly less fat overall, but you can't really call it "light." It gives the ice cream a different texture. It's a bit more rich usually, and it's significantly more dense.

This is a tasty flavor. I love me some amaretto. It has plenty of cherry tang, and there's also a vanilla-esque taste to it. The majority of the product is a white/pink creamy substance with ribbons of deeper red, sticky-sweet syrup running through it.

Compared to other gelato's that I've tried, this one differs in a couple ways. I don't recall ever having a gelato with a "ribbon" of anything in it before. In my experience, that's more like something you'd find in a Ben & Jerry's flavor than in actual gelato. Portions of the product seemed to have crystallized mini-flakes of ice, particularly the syrupy ribbon. So there were minor instances of "crunchiness" interrupting the pure creaminess. Not enough that the experience was ruined, but enough to make me take notice.

Also, my wife and I agree that the candied cherries in this product were NASTY. They were beyond sour. And I love maraschino cherries. But these were...I don't know...something else. Virtually inedible. Thankfully, there were only 5 or 6 of them in the whole tub.

This product also left a bit of a weird aftertaste—similar to that of a cherry-flavored medicine. Not particularly pleasant, but the pleasure of actually eating the stuff outweighs the strangeness of the lingering flavor in my opinion. All things considered, this is a flavor worth checking out, especially if you're a cherry-ophile.

I give this gelato 7 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Bolognese Pizza

If I had to guess what this pizza was all about just based on its name, I would of course assume that it had bologna as a topping. Which, of course, would be wrong. It does, however, have a "beef Bolognese sauce." Yay! Meat, right?

Well, sort of. It's more like a "meat-flavored" sauce than a topping that contains actual chunks of beef. Don't expect a meat-lovers pizza here and you might not be too disappointed. Apparently a Bolognese sauce is a traditional pasta sauce originating from Bologna, Italy, and it's only supposed to contain very finely-chopped or minced meat—not meat chunks. If I had educated myself before purchasing, I might not have felt so let-down.

But on a more positive note, the mozzarella and fontina cheeses taste great. If you've had any other AF pizzas, you know more or less what to expect from the crust. This one boasts that it has a "hand-stretched crust," but then again, so do the Eggplant Parm Pizza and the Spinach and Goat Cheese Pizza. But to me, the crusts all taste pretty much the same as the Mediterranean Pizza, which supposedly does not have said "hand-stretched crust."

Overall, the typical AF crust, the semi-meaty tomato sauce, and the two unique cheese flavors come together to make a fairly snacktastic pizza. It doesn't have a heavy, overwhelming flavor at all. Think of the delicate flavor of a nice, fresh mozzarella cheese and add to it a mild meat-flavored pasta sauce, and you can pretty well imagine what this pizza tastes like.

This pizza earns 7 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Bacon Carbonara Lunch Bowl

So far, AF is batting straight zeros on these lunch bowls. No wonder I see them on clearance every time I'm at Target. I was hoping that an Italian-inspired dish like this would turn out to be tastier than the Kung Pao Noodles or the Southwest Couscous, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

It took a great deal of stirring to completely dissolve the powder into the water. That combined with the six and a half minute heating time is a little lengthy if you happen to be in a breakroom at work where you might be sharing a microwave with a bunch of hungry co-workers who need to use it, too.

Even after stirring profusely and heating for nearly seven minutes, the pasta was still too firm, although once I let the bowl sit for four or five minutes after it was out of the microwave, the little penne noodles did soften up a tad.

The resulting entree was soupy, though I had used the indicated amount of water. The sauce was both too thin and a bit chalky. But the worst part of the product were the bacon bits.

At first, certain bites seemed worse than others, and I couldn't figure out what was causing the inconsistency. Soon, I realized that the bites with the most bacon bits were the worst ones of all. The bacon felt and tasted like cardboard, and it was almost bitter. Bitter bacon. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Terrible.

The product would have been edible if not for the bacon bits. If you happen to try this product, leave out the bacon, but sprinkle it on later just to confirm how awful it is. Without the bacon, I would have given this lunch bowl about 6 stars.

As it is, I give this product 4 out of 10 stars.