Not enough artisan cheese in Sargento blends

Sargento Artisan Blends Shredded Cheeses. Parmesan, Parmesan & Romano, Whole Milk Mozzarella, Mozzarella & Provolone, Double Cheddar, and Swiss. $1.99 to $4.99 per 3-ounce to 10-ounce bag.

Bonnie: I love cheese. In fact, it's always on my short list of foods when someone asks, "If you were stranded on an island, what foods would you want?" (Others include red wine, crusty bread and salad greens.) But these new Sargento Artisan Blends are not the kind of cheeses I have in mind.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with these new varieties of shredded cheese, which combine Sargento cheese with handcrafted small-batch artisan cheese from other producers. They're fine to add to soups, salad, nachos or wherever you might want to add a bit of cheese flavor.

But for me, the special nature of artisan cheese does not come through. Sorry to say, Sargento, but these are not like the handcrafted artisan cheeses I'd want on my desert island.

Carolyn: Since Sargento is not an artisan cheese company, maybe it can cash in on the tremendous recent growth in this segment of the cheese business by partnering with some cheesemakers who do fit that definition.

Hence this new line of Sargento cheese blended with some smaller company's cheeses — in some cases, the exact same variety. Which raises the question: So what's wrong with Sargento cheese?

To see, I taste-tested Sargento's Artisan Blend Whole Milk Mozzarella against Sargento's regular Classic shredded mozzarella. The new Whole Milk kind did taste slightly richer and more gamey — like real cows were involved — but that could at least partly be attributed to the higher milkfat in the Artisan Blend's mozzarella. Differences were more noticeable when the added artisan cheese was a different flavor than the one from Sargento's. Still, it's not as if you could say any one of these blends had a strong flavor.

This is probably because of the mild and familiar cheeses in these blends and because any artisan cheese difference that might exist is diluted by blending it with Sargento's factory kind. In short, this product follows the general rule that any product with artisan or gourmet in its name probably is not.

Bertolli Mediterranean Style Frozen Dinners. Chicken, Rigatoni & Broccoli; Rosemary Chicken, Linguine & Cherry Tomatoes; Garlic Shrimp, Penne & Cherry Tomatoes; and Shrimp & Penne Primavera. $7.50 per 24-ounce bag.

Bonnie: Bertolli's latest offerings are Mediterranean Style dinners for two that cost only $7.50, can be prepared in under 10 minutes and taste pretty good.