Gutter Gourmet

Welcome to the first edition of "Gutter Gourmet" where I will be reviewing various foods that provide a great deal of convenience. Some of these foods will manage to be convenient while maintaining some semblance of flavor while others will not fare so well.

Last weekend I saw that Target had a special on Hot Pockets. A box of two Hot Pockets was on sale for $2. I saw the sale and thought to myself, "Well, that is a mighty good deal. A full lunch for $2. Plus I can just throw them in the microwave at work so they are also quite convenient." I purchased a variety of flavors so that I wouldn't get sick of eating the same thing all week. One of the flavors I chose was Hot Pockets Four Cheese Pizza. After I threw those bad boys in the microwave I began to read the packaging while I waited for them to cook. I noticed in the ingredients panel that these Hot Pockets actually contained three varieties of cheese along with what was labeled as artificial mozzarella cheese. Strangely, when I ate the Hot Pockets the artificial mozzarella was my favorite part of the whole experience. This particular flavor of Hot Pocket was quite bland. I felt like it could have used some artificial sausage or pepperoni. My guess would be that the good people at Hot Pockets probably thought that if you are actually eating these things you probably don't possess a real sophisticated palette and if they mixed some meat in with the already complicated flavor of four different varieties of cheese that it would just frighten and confuse the consumer and the next time they were shopping they would just grab a Slim Jim and Hershey bar which would provide the same amount of nutrients without all the chaos of too many flavors at once. All in all the Hot Pockets Four Cheese Pizza was edible, but not my favorite style of Hot Pocket, which isn't really saying much.