Frozen Pizza Review #1

This is Frozen Pizza Review #1! Venturing away from restaurants for today, I'm going to talk about something else related to food. I like pizza, but when you venture into the world of supermarket frozen pizza, things could get scary. In this post, I'm going to discuss three frozen supermarket pizzas that I've tried.

Pizza #1: Winn Dixie Crispy Thin Crust White Pizza

My least favorite of the three pizzas I'm going to write about today. The pizza was extremely salty. The majority of the cheese was all on one side of the pizza, as was the chopped spinach. I wouldn't waste my time with this one again...


Pizza #2: Kashi Roasted Vegetable
This pizza didn't look too appetizing once out of the box and cooked, but it was actually pretty tasty. Has a nice spicy sauce and a crispy, cracker-like crust. The vegetables consisted of tiny pieces of broccoli, roasted peppers, and roasted onions. I've made a repeat purchase out of this one, although I've found the crust can either be nice and crispy or cardboard-like and soggy depending on how these pies are cooked.


Pizza #3: Archer Farms Vegetable Pizza

This self-rising crust pizza came from a Super Target. The vegetable pizza had broccoli, yellow & red peppers, red onion, and black olives. This pizza was pretty tasty. I liked the spicy sauce and the frozen vegetables resembled vegetables a bit more than what came on the Kashi pizza. The problem with this frozen pizza was the self-rising crust. Following the instructions on the box, this pie went directly onto the oven rack. Instead of only rising, the dough expanded in all directions and baked itself around the metal bars of the oven rack. I don't think I'd get this one again even though it was pretty tasty, just because it's not fun to cut off the bottom of a frozen pizza that's baked into part of my oven.


Out of the three frozen pizzas, I pick the Kashi Roasted Vegetable as the winner. It tasted okay, and also cooks properly (most of the time). Still I tend to avoid supermarket frozen pizza since their is no comparison to a good, freshly made, NY style pie. If you're going down the frozen pizza route though, good luck making a good choice!

Lakeland Farmers Market

After running a 10k race in Lakeland, I found myself wandering around downtown and came across the Lakeland Farmers Market.

They had a good selection of vendors. The food choices included at least three fruit stands, at least one selling locally grown organic fruits and vegetables. There was honey, bread, kettle corn, an ice cream truck, prepared Italian sandwiches, and more. The variety of edible items at this farmers market was really nice!

Here's a bread vendor:

One of multiple vendors selling fruits & vegetables:

They had plenty of non-food items too, including plants, clothes, jewelry, and more. Here's a plant vendor:

Overall, I enjoyed my visit to the Lakeland Farmers Market. It could compete with some of the better farmers markets in the Orlando area...

Weekend Trip: King Umberto's Pizza

I returned to King Umberto's Pizza in Elmont, NY and had my first experience where their pizza was bad. The place was packed and I think that may have been part of the problem. It seemed like they were a little flustered by the amount of people all ordering pizza at once, plus the overflow of people from their sit-down dining room next door. They still had their amazing selection of pizza, so the experience started out well. I ordered a slice of vegetarian stuffed pizza and a slice with fresh mozzarella. When the slices came out of the oven, they were very burnt. So burnt that all you could really taste was charcoal. Some of the toppings/stuffing were completely black, and forget eating the crust. It was like a rock.


I've never seen King Umberto's serve pizza like this, but it seemed every slice coming out of the oven was blackened around the edges. I'm not exactly sure what the problem was, but I hope it was a one time fluke and their pizza will return to being amazing on my next visit.

Sea World's Manta...

I made a Twitter account for Watch Me Eat (@WatchMeEat) a few months ago. I didn't really understand what all of the buzz with Twitter was about. The whole Twitter thing seemed so pointless to me. I would post something about the blog, but I really don't think any of it was read. Today, that all changed and I found out the purpose of Twitter: To get on new roller coasters for free!

Somehow I found out about Sea World's Twitter account (@RealShamu) and through that, I wound up getting admission into a private after hours event at Sea World called Manta Madness to ride Manta a day before it opens to the public.

We got to Sea World at the instructed time and were lead into the park to the entrance of Manta.



Once at the ride, everyone was free to eat the food and drinks that were supplied. I thought I remembered hearing that when Anheuser Busch was sold, they removed all of the free alcohol from their parks. Apparently that doesn't apply to special events since they had this bar set up serving drinks. I went with an exotic Sierra Mist...



And then there was the table of food. It was filled with vegetable platters, assorted cheeses, tortilla and potato chips, crackers, and a really good artichoke cheese dip. The table of food was constantly getting refilled. It was really nice of Sea World to feed everyone...




While everyone was eating, the park president did a speech, and Manta was opened.


After I finished eating, I entered the line leading to Manta. It traveled under waterfalls:


And eventually the line led into an aquarium. I was kind of disappointed that Sea World didn't have any actual manta rays on display. I saw a few varieties of rays, but no mantas. I've only seen manta rays on display once before (at Atlantis in the Bahamas), and I was hoping for a ride named Manta, there would actually be manta rays on display. I hope this isn't a continuation of the dumbing down of the Orlando theme parks that I've been noticing over the past few years and hopefully Sea World will be getting some mantas to put on display once the ride officially opens. They had a connected aquarium that was closed, so maybe they have some manta rays in there.



And finally, for the ride itself. I've only been on one other flying coaster (Superman at Six Flags Great Adventure), and Manta is definitely a step above that. It starts out with it's unique loading where you get strapped into the very comfortable seats which then get pulled up backwards leaving you dangling. You proceed up the lift hill over a backstage area of the park. It would have been nice if this area was themed a little more, but what could you do. Soon, the train dropped down the first hill into a pretzel loop which started with some great airtime and then went directly into having everyone lying on their backs for a second or two of really intense g-forces. After leaving the pretzel, the ride got much more relaxing with the occasional twist as it zoomed around it's track. After the halfway block brakes, Manta got fun with lots of near misses. If you were on the the right side of the train, you got close enough to reach out and touch water in the ride's splash area. I actually liked the left side of the train as it seemed to come a bit too close to waterfalls, rockwork, and the ground in certain spots.











Manta is definitely a winner. I haven't decided where I would rank it yet in terms of Orlando's other roller coasters, but it does kind of have a monopoly now as the only flying coaster in the area.

I checked out some of the other Manta Madness postings that have popped up on the internet from this event, and I'm disappointed that I left before the T-Shirts were given out. I did get a Manta pin, but I would have loved a shirt.

Thank you Sea World for letting everyone in to ride Manta!

Chinese Food from China Wok III

I returned to China Wok III in Sanford, FL and ate Vegetable Lo-Mein and Wonton Soup. The lo-mein was filled with broccoli, snow peas, scallions, carrots, onions, and more. Everything was tasty leaving me with no complaints about my dining experience.


The restaurant had signs all over telling their customers to vote them as one of theTop 100 Chinese Restaurants. I would have voted for them since they asked, but that website wasn't very user friendly. Besides from the '404 File not Found' errors that I kept on getting, I couldn't find any place to vote for the restaurant. Sorry China Wok III.