Costco is a wonderful store. I mean, where else can you get food in such quantities? One of the best parts is being able to find something you won't see anywhere else. Take the Eat-In Breakfast English Muffin for example. I've never seen the Eat-In brand before, and honestly, I doubt I'll ever see it again, at least not outside a Costco.
So, I grabbed a box of the stuff and put it alongside my 24-packs of Kraft Dinner and several gallons of iced tea and brought them home. Of course the first thing I did when I got them home was to take one out of the package and have a little looksie.
The sandwich is an egg patty, a slice of processed cheese (I'm not sure what kind of cheese it is, so I'm just going to call it 'orange') and a sausage patty held inside an English muffin. It's not unlike McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with Egg, but frozen and kept inside a plastic bag.
I could eat this sandwich, grimace for the camera and make a few snarky side-comments, and that would be good, but I've got a number of these things. So, I called in the troops: Scott and Laura, who had made Chanukah in September possible and my brother Taylor. So, instead of just one review, you get four. That's four times the value!
While I'm certainly familiar with the rules, and you probably are by now, let's go through them for the others:
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Rule #1:
I must follow cooking procedures exactly as they're shown on the container. I will not deviate from those instructions in any way, and I must prepare food in the fastest manner presented to me. -
Rule #2:
I must consume everything that comes with the meal. No hiding of disgusting parts will be tolerated. (In the unlikely event of bones or other inedibles, allowances will be made). -
Rule #3:
To make sure my palate is completely free of obstructions, I may only be allowed either water or alcohol. Alcohol does not include fancy-pants fruity girly drinks. -
Rule #4:
All food will be graded by smell, taste and mouthfeel, with less offensive qualities receiving higher marks. At the end, each part is receives an average score. The full meal is graded by the average score of each component. Appearance of the food is not graded because, let's face it, they all look pretty bad.
Ok, so let's throw these puppies in the microwave and have us a review!
It smells suspiciously of cinnamon. Tastes of dust. It may have been prepared on a radiator for 5 months, and then frozen. It feels like I'm eating a ball of dog hair from under a couch we haven't moved in a year and finally decided to vacuum under. It makes me pray for the relief of a latka soda.
Smell: 2/10
Taste: 2/10
Mouthfeel: 2/10
Total Score: 
(2.0/10)
There's a slight smell of cinnamon. I would not let people eat this in my car. It tastes like short-term memory: it fades into the abyss of my colon. It feels like I'm nibbling on a zitty teenager at the dermatologist.
Smell: 3/10
Taste: 3/10
Mouthfeel: 2/10
Total Score: 
(2.7/10)
It doesn't really smell much like anything, but you can kind of smell the cheese. It's just kind of gross, it's wet. It doesn't really taste like anything. It's not that bad. If the bun was a little different, it would be like McDonalds.
Smell: 5/10
Taste: 5/10
Mouthfeel: 3/10
Total Score: 
(4.3/10)
The smell is not all that great, but it's certainly not offensive. The bread is soggy, the egg is wet and squirts all over, and the sausage is crumbly. There's no real flavor here. There's a very conspicuous lack of any taste.
Smell: 4/10
Taste: 4/10
Mouthfeel: 2/10
Total Score: (3.3/10)
Smell: 3.5/10
Taste: 3.5/10
Mouthfeel: 3.0/10
Total Score: (3.3/10)
So there you have it. While we couldn't all agree on a score, for the most part, we found the food to be rather plastic in taste and soggy. I don't think I'll ever really understand why companies tend to think that you can get away with microwaving bread, but they keep doing it.
The bottom line is this: For about the price of one of these sandwiches, you could probably get one of the equivalents from a fast-food joint. Hell, you might even be able to get one of those deep-fried hash-brown things with it. Or a glass of OJ. Or maybe both. Damn, I think I want to grab some take-out now.
And that is one hell of a weight off my shoulders. By and far the longest wait I've ever had trying to get one of these done. Next time, we're going to continue with some more horrors that are a little removed from the freezer.
