When cooked normally the cranberries would fade in color a bit, (my favorite stuffing recipe has cranberries in it and they sort of fade to purplish) and in the actual loaf they’re probably cut up a lot smaller and there’s way fewer of them than in the food-styled, retouched photo on the box and website.
This thing was pastry on the outside, and a mottled dark brown on the inside. No red. no purple.
Did it taste like meat? Or hazelnuts with cranberries?
Aww, the oozing redness is the best part.
I had a friend who was going through a vegetarian kick a few years ago. I was having a barbecue party, and I bought some Boca Burgers especially for her. She took one bite, and put it down, and said “I can’t eat this - it’s too much like meat!”
Huh, I get a similar dish around here for about €4 (US$5.30).
Neither. I mean, I haven’t tasted meat in 25 years, so keep that in mind, but I don’t think it tasted like meat. I didn’t specifically taste hazelnut or cranberry while eating it, though. Nutty, yes. Specific nut, no. It had a very savory taste and was more about the seasonings than anything else, I think.
IIRC, all of the Field Roast products are expensive. I’ve seen them lately at Costco, where they might be cheaper than Whole Paycheck.
There’s only one reason that anything costs what it costs–the seller thinks enough people will pay that much for it. You really can’t ever say anything more definitive than that.
Side note: Where I work, “the big full-size Stouffer’s lasagnas that serve 12 people” cost $9.98.
So yeah, it’s MORE than twice as expensive. 
Yeah, thats the ONLY reason :rolleyes:
Besides that whole cost of raw materials, cost to manufacture, cost to distribute, opportunity costs, and a buttload of other costs I am sure I missed.
Someone else already pointed it out, but they don’t call Whole Foods Whole Paycheck for nothing.
That’s certainly not true in this case, and in most consumer products these days in general. What happens is that the manufacturer Field Roast is selling the product to Whole Foods, not to consumers directly. They’re going to be negotiating a price and an order volume with Whole Foods.
Once that negotiation is complete, the actual consumer price is entirely up to Whole Foods–and they have a lot of reasons to sell at price points that don’t always fit maximin principles. Maybe they want the Nut Roast to be a loss leader, so they’ll sell it for a lower price point. Perhaps Field Roast put a manufacturer’s coupon in the Sunday paper, so they’ll bump the price up by a dollar or two. Many couponers, in my limited experience in the grocery biz, get excited about “saving” money not realizing they could have had the same product cheaper without the coupon the previous week; other people bring the Nut Roast to the checkout, realize they forgot the coupon, and buy the thing anyway.
I suppose I’m just saying there’s a lot more variables behind “our bean counters say we can turn maximum profit X if we sell it at price point Y.” There’s a lot of game theory behind it all…nothing sinister, but much more complicated than at first glance.
Boca does make some pretty “meaty” burgers. There are a few brands that do, actually. Some brands make both a “veggie patty” tasting burger and a “meat-tasting” burger because some people like the one and others like the other (I like both). I’ve had to go fetch the box out of the trash and double check when having a veggie burger at a friend’s house before, to make sure it was vegetarian because it was so convincing.*
Oooooh good to know. I may have to stock up since they’re seasonal. I assume they’d keep a long time in the freezer. I need to go to Costco soon anyway.
*I’ll repeat what I said earlier though: I haven’t had actual meat in 25 years so what we’re dealing with is my long-ago memory of what meat tastes like, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.