The soy food engineers are getting close. The new Gardenburger Meatless Breakfast Sausage (love that description) almost — almost — fooled me.

        The flavor is fine — spicy, with a little smoke, maybe too much rosemary and not enough sage. But the texture is much better than other soy faux-meat products I've sampled.

        The interior is coarse and slightly chewy, it even looks much like a real sausage patty. And if you fry the frozen soy patty with a little olive oil or spritz of vegetable oil spray, the exterior turns nice and crispy.

        Like other soy products, the Gardenburger sausage is pricey — $3.19 for six small patties, or about $5.67 per pound. But the trade-off is only 3.5 grams of fat per patty — less than half the fat in a pork sausage patty. And just think of all those happy pigs.

        This is so good, we wonder when the Gardenburger technicians will wow us with soy sausage gravy.

— Chuck Martin