Product: Trader Joe’s Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Description: Frozen, preformed balls of cookie dough made with bleached and wheat flour, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate and chocolate liqueur. Box contains dough for 16 cookies.

Preparation summary: Place desired number of dough balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake in a preheated, 350-degree oven for 12 to 14 minutes.

High points: No preservatives or artificial colors, and slightly lower in sugar compared to leading commercial brands. Cookies puff up nicely with enough oozy chunks of decent-quality chocolate to produce that famous endorphin high.

Low points: If your oven is even slightly aggressive, the cookies become quickly overcooked when following the directions exactly. Best to shorten the cooking time by a minute or so.

Average retail price: $3.29

Availability: Trader Joe’s

Product: Hungry-Man Sports Grill Beer Battered Chicken

Description: Frozen dinner totaling one pound of beer-battered chicken patties and potato wedges with cheese sauce

Preparation summary: Remove plastic cover from chicken, place tray on a baking sheet and cook on middle oven rack for 35 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Microwave oven directions are also included but yield inferior results.

High points: The titillating food photography on the package’s cover effectively piques your appetite.

Low points: The processed chicken patties were super rubbery and tasted freezer burned, despite eating the dinner well before the expiration date. Mealy potato wedges riddled by waxy cheese sauce add up to the kind of supper served through jail bars.

Average retail price: $3.99

Availability: Major grocery stores

Product: Betty Crocker Pizza Crust Mix

Description: Dry flour mix in a pouch used for making a 12-inch pizza crust

Preparation summary: Combine flour with half-cup of hot water. Beat with spoon until moist. Cover and let stand five minutes before patting out onto a cookie sheet or pizza pan.

High points: No laborious kneading required. The dough spreads easily, and fingers come out reasonably clean.

Low points: Crust turns out with about the same cracker-like character as most thin-crust pizzas sold throughout San Diego – and that’s not a good thing.

Average retail price: $1.29

Availability: Major grocery stores

Product: L.A. Sliders (Sloppy Joe with cheese)

Description: Four pre-cooked, frozen sloppy Joe sandwiches topped with yellow cheese and contained in mini buns

Preparation summary: Wrap two sliders at a time in a paper towel and microwave on high for 45 seconds.

High points: The “slider” trend has finally hit the freezer section, which means you no longer have to hit those trendy nightclubs and restaurants to get your fix.

Low points: Textured vegetable protein used as filler in the sloppy Joe meat turns it mealy. Beef flavor is pretty much non-existent. Sliders came out with cold centers and required several more seconds in the microwave.

Average retail price: $3.99

Availability: Major grocery stores