My culinary history in microwavable frozen dinners in Daydreaming on the Porch

Basically, I’ll put it bluntly. I don’t know what I would have done over the years without frozen TV dinners.

I’ll start at the beginning. Back in the 1970s. My favorite early TV dinner was Swanson’s turkey and dressing with mashed potatoes and peas, countless containers of which I heated in the oven for 30 minutes in their little compartmentalized aluminum trays

Never having cooked anything much but hamburgers and frozen corn prior to this, Swanson dinners were a lifesaver. I wasn’t too wild about their fried chicken and mashed potatoes. The chicken seemed rather fake fried and greasy, but if I was really hungry, and in those days I mostly was, I pretty much enjoyed anything I didn’t have to fix.

After about 1986 when the first plastic microwaveable trays were introduced, I never looked back: Swedish meatballs from Budget Gourmet were my favorite. They were actually quite good.

I still have to laugh at that brand name, though I never got into the equally ridiculously-named, and really cheap, Banquet dinners, although their chicken pot pies were ubiquitous, and I must have tried them before switching over to Stouffer’s pies.

Swedish meatball dinners in creamy pasta ruled in 1990-91 when I lived in a tiny, tiny garage apartment in the small town where I was briefly editor of the newspaper. I wold be totally embarrassed to say how many times I scarfed them down for supper, with maybe some canned or frozen vegetables to go with it. Pure convenience.

Funny thing about frozen chicken pot pies. I loved them because they were essentially a complete meal in a little pie, much as the British have heir various meat pies. It was fun eating them because normally you associate pie crusts with fruit and other dessert pies, but a chicken pie was the meal itself. I always liked that. The absolute ultimate in convenience meals. You had your chicken, and a cream filling with assorted peas, carrots and potatoes. Perfect!

The big drawback to those frozen chicken pot pie delicacies is that for some odd reason, it seemed to me, they were some of the meals with the highest fat and sodium content in the entire frozen food case, excluding the notoriously unhealthy, but tasty, of course, Marie Callander dinners. Those were pure, unhealthy decadence. Eat one of those and you are guaranteed to feel guilty.

As I got older and a bit more health conscious, I pretty much stopped eating the more unhealthy meals, although I do miss those fatty dinners very much. Which now means that I am going out and get some for old time sakes! Life is for living!

During the past 10-15 years it’s a been gourmet’s (not!) feast with endless healthy bowl dinners that take five minutes. They’re really not that appetizing, but are at least not the meat, salt and fat extravaganzas I used to love made by Stouffer’s. Their meat loaf, spaghetti, breaded fish, and Salisbury steak with very creamy cheese, were to me the best, but also the least healthy, frozen dinners of all time. So I gave them up. sadly! In short, however, for a long time Stouffer’s kept me fed, as well as their Lean Cuisine line of dinners, which were decidedly healthier, but much less palatable.

Basically I’ve tried them all, and microwave just about everything else. I sure hope microwaves themselves are not harmful.. Oh well, too late if they turn out to be.

Last updated August 09, 2022