Michael Angelo's Eggplant Parmesan

I work at a grocery store, so its safe to say that I have a huge assortment of meals to choose from.  Today, I didn't bring anything to try and instead decided to let The Fresh Market decide for me.  Like I said before, I LOVE Italian food. I don't mean the kind of love that fades.  I'm talking about a true passion and admiration for Italian food.  So, when I say that I was excited about the Eggplant Parmesan, I really mean it.  This is one of my all time favorite dishes.  And if that wasn't enough, this meal came with raving reviews from my coworkers.  "Delicious" was the word of the day when it came to this dish, according to everyone I asked.  Well, apparently I have a different definition of the word because this frozen meal was anything but delicious.

First complaint of many was the texture of the eggplant.  Disgusting was a better descriptive term.  It was mushy and flappy.  By flappy, I mean that if you picked up a piece of this eggplant it would sag like a limp noodle before completely falling apart.  If it weren't for the strip of skin that they left on, I wouldn't even be able to identify the vegetable at all!  The breading was so finely ground that it was probably just sand.  Actually, it tasted a bit like sand too. (I think I ate sand.)

This company was claiming fresh ingredients but I didn't see anything fresh about this product.

The one positive that I can give this is the cheese was good.  I ended up eating the saucy cheese and buying some chips.  Well one thing is for sure, the photos was pretty accurate, except for the thickness of the eggplant, which was thin.  Definitely not a product I would recommend.