TV Dinners

A few months ago I made a kind of TV dinner for my kids. It was just before we moved, and really all of our plates, pots and pans were pretty much packed, so I didn’t have much to cook with, or serve food on. I’d seen Kid Cuisine TV dinners in the grocery stores for years, but had never tried them. Now I understand why. They’re a huge pain in the butt to make.

They feature basic kid food—spaghetti, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese—but they tried to go a little fancy with the desserts and have things like iced cake and stuff that gets sprinkles on it. The problem with things like that is that frosting and sprinkles don’t heat up well in an oven or in a microwave, so they have to package them separately and you have to remove them from the package prior to cooking.

Even without the removing of the dessert topping step, they’re extremely complicated. I’ve made whole meals from scratch that required less futzing around than these things. First I had to remove the sprinkles or whatever, then I had to peel back plastic from this area, loosen plastic on that area, cook it for awhile, then remove it from the oven and remove the plastic from this other compartment, and re-cover that other thing. They only cook for about twenty minutes, but it seemed that I was yanking it out of the oven every five minutes to reposition plastic film over the various components.

I was remembering my own experiences with TV dinners back in the 70s. This would have been when they actually came in a little foil tray, instead of in some kind of rigid paper thing that could go in a microwave oven. I think you peeled the foil back from one section—the potatoes, if memory serves—and then stabbed holes over the meat part to vent the steam and then just chucked the whole thing in the oven for a half hour or so. Thirty minutes later you had perfectly baked horrible food.

Actually, I loved TV dinners. I wasn’t much for Salisbury steak, but I loved fried chicken. I honestly only remember three types of TV dinners—the Salisbury steak, the fried chicken, and the turkey with dressing. I guess there were probably others, but those were the three my parents bought for me. Or perhaps those were the three I was willing to eat.

The things I remember most about TV dinners are that the fried chicken was always soggy, the mashed potatoes seemed to be one solid mass of…whatever, and somehow there was always a piece of corn in my dessert. I hate when my food touches, so the piece of corn in my dessert was an abomination in my book. In fact, TV dinners were perfect for me because I didn’t like any of my food to touch, and the little sectioned tray made sure that pretty much nothing would (except for that pesky kernel of corn).

A few years later we started buying Mexican food TV dinners. These my father nicknamed “puddle food” because everything did seem to come in a sort of a puddle. A puddle of refried beans here, a puddle of enchiladas there, even the rice seemed to be a somewhat liquid plop on the tray. Mexican food isn’t really TV dinner food to me. TV dinner food really should be generic “American” food, with no loyalty to any nationality (or any nation that would be willing to claim it, for that matter).

At some point we stopped buying TV dinners and I stepped up to Stouffer’s entrees. These I do buy for my kids, and they’re not bad to make. Mostly you just peel the plastic to vent them, then cook them for awhile. They don’t require the same level of attention as a puppy that hasn’t been housebroken, the way the Kid Cuisine ones did.

In even later life, I moved on to Lean Cuisines and Smart Ones and other low fat/low calorie offerings. These aren’t really TV dinners, per se, because they come in a single tray, like Stouffer’s entrees (which also don’t count as a real TV dinner in my book). Real TV dinners come in a sectioned tray and aren’t low anything. Lean Cuisines aren’t bad in a pinch, but I’ve stopped eating them on any regular basis. I don’t like them enough to eat them more than about twice a year.

I wouldn’t bother to buy a “real” TV dinner today. Even if I cooked it in the oven instead of in the microwave, it still wouldn’t be the same. Now that they’re formulated to cook semi-acceptably in microwaves, they’re different, just like the pot pies I loved as a child. I wish TV dinners were the way they used to be, even though I probably wouldn’t eat them, but I guess everything has to change, even mediocre frozen meals.

No Regrets

My kids eat a lot of typical kid foods. The other day I was thinking of the ones I wasn’t going to miss when they got old enough to eat other things. This was actually in the context of things I wasn’t going to miss in general about my kids being small: sippy cups, baby gates, pacifiers. Don’t misunderstand me—I know when they’re not babies anymore, I’ll look back and think how cute they were, and wish they could have stayed small forever. But there are some things I simply will not miss about having small children, and some of them are food-related.

Cereal Bars
Right now we buy boxes of cereal bars at Costco. They come in strawberry, blueberry, and apple. My older son will eat only the strawberry ones, the twins eat all the flavors. A cereal bar is their typical “first” breakfast. They also get another breakfast at daycare, and on weekends we often make something else around 9 a.m. or so. They’re really nothing but cookie with jam in them, but they serve their purpose. I’ll be glad, however, to see them go.

Eggo Waffles
Again, something else we buy in bulk at Costco (with four kids, there aren’t many things for the kids we don’t buy in bulk at Costco). My older son likes them cut into shapes with a cookie cutter, primarily Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (which then gets its nose dipped into a little tub of red decorator sugar). He dips the shapes into his syrup. The twins get no syrup. Nutritionally, these aren’t quite as bad as cereal bars (although the syrup is no gem), but they’re still something I’m tired of buying and making.

Gogurt
I had a debate with a friend about Gogurt. Her position was any yogurt was good yogurt. I said I agreed right up to Gogurt. Any of those kid yogurts are fine, but Gogurt is just garbage. There’s so little of it in a tube, and it has so much sugar, that I think any positive effects of active cultures or calcium is completely negated by the sugar. Although we buy it, it stays in the freezer and is an occasional treat. In truth, Gogurt is no friend of mine, and it does not get a Christmas card from me.

Chicken Nuggets
I don’t mean McDonald’s chicken nuggets. I sheepishly admit to kind of liking those. I’m talking about the ones we buy in bulk that are orange, for God’s sake. They’re fast—they heat up in the microwave in 30 seconds or something, and they claim to be made of whole breast meat (not mushed up reformed random pieces), but that doesn’t redeem them completely in my opinion, and I won’t miss them when the last of my kids stops saying she wants chicken nuggets for dinner.

Hot Dogs
We buy Hebrew National all beef hot dogs, and I actually like them, but I’m kind of tired of making hot dogs. Because the twins are under two, they have to be cut up in small pieces, and my older son actually eats his cold (yes, I agree that this is vile). I won’t mind when hot dogs take an occasional role in our diet, but their constant presence is tiresome.

Juice Boxes
I just seem to be down on all the common kid foods, don’t I? Juice boxes squirt when you squeeze them, which little boys think is hysterical. Mothers do not think this is hysterical because they have to clean it up. Yes, juice boxes are convenient, but they’re messy. I won’t miss them.

In general, I will be very grateful when my kids are old enough to eat the same things my husband and I want to eat (although I know it will likely be many years before they’re actually willing to eat things like fennel and lentils). Still, when they stop eating cereal bars and juice boxes, I won’t shed a tear.