Starter: Tesco Value Pasta in Tomato and Onion Sauce. 28p
Main Course: Tesco Value Lasagne. 66p
Dessert: Tesco Value Strawberry Trifle 33p
Wine selection: Tesco Value Spanish Red, White and Rose wines. £1.29 each for a 25cl carton.
So, that's a three course banquet, plus three glasses of wine, for a very reasonable sum of £5.14. What could possibly go wrong here?
Let's get the meal going. I opened the pack of pasta in tomato and onion sauce, to be greeted by a faint whiff of tomato cup-a-soup, which then went into a saucepan with some water and butter.
Bizarrely, the pasta takes 8 minutes on a hob and 14 minutes in a microwave. First time I've heard of something taking longer in the microwave. Anyway, the end result was this.
Basically it's powdered tomato and onion soup with pasta shells floating in it. No more, no less. It wasn't awful, just really rather dull to eat. I got halfway through the bowl before giving up out of sheer tedium and chucking the rest in the bin.
Next was the lasagna, which I popped into the microwave for a 6 minute nuking. After peeling back the film lid (and narrowly escaping a steam scald), I was greeted by what looked like a layer of glue with orange blobs of fat around the sides.
Under the pasta glue was a mercifully-stingy layer of manky beef mince.
It didn't smell great, and it didn't taste great either. I wound up pulling a couple of lumps of gristle out of my mouth while eating it. I did manage to finish the lasagna, but had no inclination to scrape out the last few bits in the tray. I offered my cat the opportunity to lick up the scraps.
She's a rescue cat, so I'm sure she's eaten some disgusting things in her time. But even she only managed a few disinterested licks before losing interest.
The lasagna wasn't the only thing with some stingy layers. The strawberry trifle seemed rather short-changing on the actual strawberry.
I opened it up, and just what the hell is this?
Despite looking disgusting, the trifle actually didn't taste that bad, other than the occasional sense of a sugar overdose. It was the tastiest of the three, though that really isn't saying much.
On to the wines...
The carton is something of a surprise. Shite Food compares it to a carton of Um Bongo, and I'm inclined to agree that the silver foil looks like something you should poke a straw through. I only have coloured wine glasses, so I poured some into a clear glass to photograph the colour of the white wine.
No, that's not a urine sample.
There wasn't much of an aroma to it, and it tasted somewhat bland, but still drinkable. I treated myself to a glass.
No wait, this is clearly how you're supposed to drink it.
But where's the damn straw?
Rose next, but when I peeled back the foil there was a horrendous smell. From the colour of it, there was clearly something wrong.
Hmmm, that doesn't look like the wine on the label. More like cloudy tomato juice. One experimental sip, and it went straight down the sink.
Then I noticed some discolourations around the foil opening on the carton.
Clearly the foil seal wasn't airtight, and it had gone bad in the carton. Oh well, on to the red.
This one smelled and tasted stronger than the white. Pretty harsh and chalky actually. However, unlike the rose, it was actually drinkable.
In summary then, the trifle was the nicest of the food courses and the white was the nicest of the wines, though I wouldn't be going out of my way to try any of them again. Then again, in these economic times, we're all only one redundancy notice away from this being our staple diet.
What to finish off with though? After-dinner mints, or Gaviscon?
