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The Single Man's Guide To TV Dinners
yokimbo writes "The Food Network had a show about TV dinners and how they're prepared, their history, etc... But, what about the useful information, like how they taste? Ray Cole has your solution at The Single Man's Guide to TV Dinners. Although, I think he needs to visit Web Pages That Suck." (Of course, TV dinners don't scream out the way ramen does for improvement and improvisation.)
.... could be used in learning how to make real food.
Cooking is like UNIX, invest the right amount of time and you'll be thanking yourself for the next few lifetimes.
Sunny Dubey
Over the years, I've gone from making ramen a meal to making it a carbohydrate base in the occasional meal. I use it similarly to a base of rice for my favorite stir-fry recipe.
Sliced squash and zuchinni, with eggplant, stir-fried with soy sauce and optional sesame seeds. It's a basic ingredient for several dishes. Use it atop ramen or rice. Add drained black beans and rice and roll it in a burrito.
Squash season is here. Yum.
You gotta WORK that ramen. Make it work for you.
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
hot dog + cheese (2 minutes nuked)
Ramen noodle (cooking time 2 minutes nuked)
frozen lasagne (10 minutes nuked)
grated cheese on bread (5 minutes toasted)
pasta mix (12 minutes nuked)
potato salad straight out of the tub (instant!)
and of course the chips and biscuits
I thought we quit calling them TV dinners back in the 70s...
What about computer-desk-dinners?
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
Exactly, repeat after me "Life is too short to eat crap". Anyone who can follow basic directions can learn to cook. Cooks Illustrated was a huge help in this process for me.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Don't whack off after handling hot peppers.
You'll eat better, more healthy and more tasty food plus you'll acquire a social skill that might - note: might - help you get and hold onto a girlfriend.
I've yet to meet a woman who's impressed by a man who can work a microwave. However, women do go for a guy who really can cook.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm serious. How tough can cooking be? One definitive resource for the basics is all we need.
A "Learning Cooking" book from O'Reilly would rock.
I guess I am old enough to remember the real TV dinners. Aluminum tray, aluminum wrap, always tiny meat pieces and some of the peas and carrots always get mixed with the apple "thing" they call dessert (lots of dough, some apple like gravy, and one apple wedge). They were either overcooked, or cold in the middle.
Seriously, I was in the military, the old C rations were better than TV dinners before the microwave became popular. At least you got a decent wedge of chocolate or a good cookie.
Back when I was a kid, we always held any mom who served TV dinners as suspect. Any mom who served them regularly was considered rather lazy or "low class" in the 60s/70s. You know, the single mother type, who we all knew must be a bad person or she would have a man around.... the times, how they change.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Over last summer, instead of going out or cooking food for myself, I had a TV dinner almost every night, and it helped me lose a lot of weight. Why? Portion control. If you're counting calories, it's dead easy with these - just read the label. Plus, if you're like me, you always feel like you have to clean your plate. With one of the low-calorie tv dinners (Lean Cuisine is especially good tasting, compared to the others), you can - and still not overeat.
So, if you're looking to lose a few pounds, I highly reccommend them.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized. -AC
I'm a good cook. I throw dinner parties for my friends every once in a while. But a lot of time, I just don't want to be bothered cooking a meal for one. All the prep work, the cooking time, then the clean up involved. Sometimes I just want to nuke it , eat it, and toss it. So sites like that are kinda useful for me.
:)
Plus, those meals are a great last resort when you screw up the main meal.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
I'm a guy, I live alone, I have never purchased a TV dinner or package of ramen. When I was getting my place set up, I did have a few frozen pizzas, but not any more.
It's really easy to cook. Pasta's easy, hamburgers are easy, even homemade pizza is easy. The crock pot and bread machine are great time savers. Pork chops are easy: be sure to brine them before cooking (put them in water with some sugar and salt; osmosis does the rest). Just throw them in a pan and brown them, then add some chopped onions and other vegetables. Goes well with rice.
Jalapeno poppers are pretty good to make once in a while, too. Pancakes, bacon, and hashbrowns are 100 times better when made at home, compared to fast-food or frozen variants. The best thing about cooking at home is the leftovers: you're making a meal not only for today, but you're rescuing yourself from pulling a mystery-meat burrito from the vending machine at work tomorrow.
Initially it takes some time, but you'll grow much more efficient. It's a good life skill to have, and you'll eat cheaper and healthier. Just make sure to buy small portions of food that perish quickly, and use them up before they go bad. You need some good tools, too. Sharp knives are a must. The first and only thing I've ever considered buying from Ronco is this huge knife set, and I'd have to say that for the price, they're a good deal and decently made.
TV dinners are industrialized, mass produced slop made from the cheapest ingredients. Even school lunches are gourmet by comparison. And the oddest part about TV dinners is that, even though they are billed as being convenient, since they are frozen food it takes forever until they are ready.
It's Sunday morning and I'm feeling cranky, and I'd like to write several more paragraphs about how awful TV dinners are. But instead, I'm going to rise to the occasion and try to write something genuinely helpful. Below, I'll offer some suggestions on what to eat instead of TV dinners, which are always your worst choice. Everything below is tastier and healthier than TV dinners -- while being just as convenient.
Spaghetti & Tomato sauce -- in the time it takes to boil water and heat up a jar of sauce, you're in business. Usually, I'll take a couple more minutes to mince up some garlic, and saute it in my pan with some olive oil before adding sauce. You can also buy pre-minced garlic in jars in any grocery store.
Most of the time, I'll also grill some fresh peppers in my George Foreman grill to add to the sauce. You can start the peppers as you heat up the water to boil, and they'll be ready to cut up and add to the sauce well before the rest of the meal is ready. Anaheim or bell peppers are great choices.
Grilled Veggies speaking of the George Foreman grill, which you can buy for less than $30 on Amazon, I use this thing all the time for ultra-healthy snacks. You can grill up just about any type of vegetable. My favorites are broccoli and cauliflower. I'll usually break them into pieces, then grill them give minutes or so. Then flip them around in the grill, turn off the power, and keep the grill on them for another five minutes or so. I'll then top with some non-transfatty acid margarine and some flax oil in a serving bowl.
Bread Machine.Amazon.com offers a West Bend bread machine that makes a small loaf suitable for one or two people in less than an hour. You can modify the recipes so that the breads are nearly all whole grain. And it takes only about five minutes to measure out the ingredients. Then, just go away for 45 minutes, and when you get back you've got a piping hot loaf of bread, that costs something like 30 cents even if you've used organic flour.
I hope some of this is helpful. If this inspires you, you can also try some cookbooks geared to convenient and healthy eating. There's one called _The Everyday Vegan_ which I think is especially good as a source of convenient recipes to replace TV dinners. I have no financial interest in the sale of this book; I just think it's great.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Totally agree. I didn't cook much until my girlfriend started to encourage me... Then I found this very funny book which has been a great help - Cooking for blokes: Duncan Anderson and Marian Walls. Note: It even includes a detailed section dedicated to explaining all those weird "gas mark" settings and spoon sizes!! Now I just wish they would write "ironing for blokes" :-)
http://opencurve.org/~sunny/misc/tv_dinners/
Some images are missing, but all the text is there.
Sunny Dubey
One word "freezer"!
Prepare extra food in advance, freeze, decide what you are eating the night before, thaw overnight, place in fridge whilst before going to work, return, zap, eat. Decent food at the speed of a microwave meal.
Agreed. Once you are getting a bit better it is great fun. For me, it has ceased to be a chore, and feels more like a time to relax, be a bit creative.
Also, this topic is a great opportunity to copy and paste some fun links.
The worst breakfast ever: "Swanson, producers of some of the world's fattiest TV dinners, is seeking to take over the breakfast market with a new line of microwaveable morning meals. It's called the 'Hungry Man All Day Breakfast,' and it's threatening to turn people into manatees."
For those who like Mystery Science Theatre 3000, here is a similar take on edibles; The Gallery of Regrettable Food
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
At work I see almost everyone eating something from a little black plastic tray that came out of the microwave.
I am considered to "cook" because I usually reheat something I boiled the night before.
Steve
Nobody I know who has ever worked in a processed food plant will ever eat the stuff. When pressed for a reason they just say "You don't want to know". I suppose it's somewhat analogous to restaurants where you don't want to know what goes on in the kitchen. But with restaurants you can at least select on the external quality of the place. With processed food the same places that make the upscale stuff also make the cheap crap you wouldn't feed to your dog. Dogs will eat anything and come to think of it, so will geeks, so maybe this really isn't an issue.
Yeah, I'm making this for breakfast today...
Poor Man's Egg-Foo-Yung 1 packet ramen 1 1/2 cups of cheap frozen mixed veggies 1 egg Some water Put about a 1/2" of water in a frying pan and turn it on high. Once the water starts boiling throw the whole brick on top and reduce heat to medium and let it cook. Turn it occasionally so it sucks up all the water evenly. When the pan getting close to dry but the noodles are still a bit firm but soft, dump in the frozen veggies (you can put in half a seasoning packet and/or a tsp. sesame oil for flavor at this point) and stir cooking off the water from the frozen veggies. Once they appear thawed, dump in a scrambled egg adding salt and pepper for taste. Let this cook either stirring it up or flipping it omlette style for a filling but cheap entree.
*Bonus tip, adding a bit of milk to the crambled egg (or two) makes it fluff up nicely. You might have to experiment wtih the water amounts a bit... I kinda freestyle my cooking without any measurements.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Sauces, in particular, are rewarding. They either make or break your dish.
They sure do. My local Chinese restaurant can disguise the most disgusting bits of leftover beef in a fantastic sauce. Makes all the difference. Just need to not think about what's underneath.
You think that's beef?
Mr Chalabi argued that "the IGC is the forces that opposed Saddam Husain and, allied with the US, overthrew him. Now the US wants to overthrow us?"
To which another - and more realistic - IGC member, cleric Ghazi al-Yawar replied: "They think they are entitled to a role because they believe they overthrew Saddam Husain. It was the US that overthrew Saddam while we were eating TV dinners."
so apparently the term TV dinner is not only in use its internationally in use. Plus its damn funny in this inconcrous use.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
On my travels through asia I have had a chance to try many of the Ramen of diffrent Asian countries. So far China has made an Excellent showing as has Japan.
Unfortunatly some Japanese ramen tends towards the $3 soup that eats like a meal mark which is so much crap.
It's important that ramen coniseurs get their hands on some Shin-Ramen comming out of Korea as it is definitly a staple.
I'd take that link with a grain of salt. Microwaves were not "invented by the nazis". Health risks or not, microwaves are not inherently evil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven
A pet cat the knew well enough to stay away from anything veggie based, loved the cooked carrots found in TV dinners. That makes me wonder just what they made them out of and how they were made.
Here in Australia frozen meals really had a late start, they certainly don't have the cultural identity they seem to in the States.
Because eating out has traditionally been an expensive way to eat in Australia everyone knew how to cook. The growth of fast food chains through the 80s and 90s into smaller and smaller towns has eroded this a little, but not to the point that the microwave is the cooking appliance of choice.
Having cheap access to good quality ingredients also helps to encourage decent cooking. An uncle of mine who is a chef spent 12 months in the UK, he was amazed how difficult it was to source quality fruit, vegetables and meat.
In Australia the culinary joke is 'meat and three veg' which a lot of us grew up on. Thinking about it though, steak and veges most nights of the week really isn't a bad way to eat.
I want to use these Mod points but I can't find anything Interesting, Informative or Insightful on Slashdot.
ironing for blokes
Seriously, don't. Find a local laundry or dry cleaners and find out how much they charge.
I pay 5.50 UKP for the washing and ironing of 5 shirts. When I iron shirts myself - and I used to iron them all the time - it took me 15 minutes per shirt (OK I'm a perfectionist). That's 1 hour 15 minutes of my life per week, just to start off. Add the time spent loading the washing machine and hanging out to dry, the cost of the washing process and the cost of the electricity to power your iron and it's a no-brainer.
And when I outsourced ironing I realised I did not need to iron any of my clothes. Properly folded and hung or stowed, there is no requirement to iron casual clothes.
I invested in two decent, identical, M&S, non-iron suits (yes I have to wear a suit to work, no I am not a suit) and so far (two years) they have lived up to this claim. Hung properly they dry from the wash with a crease and no wrinkles.
So I got rid of my iron and ironing board and freed up more space that I can live in rather than sweat in.
No-one with a job requiring them to wear a shirt should be paid so little they can't easily afford to get someone else to iron it.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
I dunno, my fiance and I eat TV dinners often enough. It's not that we don't know how to cook, it's that we don't care to waste the money, prep time, and worst of all, cleaning dishes. To make most decent meals, you end up buying all sorts of different groceries (expensive). Then you get home and have to cook it (we usually don't mind this part a whole lot). Then the best part - you eat it. Then the worse part - cleaning dishes.
We both absolutely hate doing dishes. You say life is too short to eat crap? I say it's just food, and life is too short to spend hours a day on shopping, preparing, and cleaning for a single meal that only feeds two people. TV dinners are cheap, are easy to cleanup, and get the job done.
(And before anyony mentions a dish washer, forget it. As much as I hate doing dishes once, I really hate doing them twice.)
There is a REAL need for high-school and adult-education classes to teach how to do basic real cooking and more importantly, how to store multiple portions for later eating!
Kitchen appliances should be your friend, not your enemy. You'll be amazed how just with basic knowledge of cooking skills you could create quite an amazing variety of decent meals. For example, go to the Campbell Soup Company website and there are a huge number of delicious recipes you can make using Campbell's Condensed Soups as a base.
Also, you may want to invest the time and money on decent food storage; when I was living away from my parents I would make a huge pot of chicken a la king, store the portions in small Tupperware bowls, and put them in the freezer for later use over rice and/or toasted bread. You can nowadays do the same with pasta sauce, especially with the new generation of Tupperware containers that are tolerant of the acidic nature of tomato-based pasta sauces.
It's just an extension of the old proverb "Teach a man how to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime."
If you want egg drop soup bring back to a near boil and stir in one raw egg making sure it gets cooked properly. What I do is actually mix the egg and some lemon juice together (shake in a small closed jar is easiest technique) and stir that into headed soup mixture. You get a creamier soup than the regular egg drop soup. Don't overheat though.
Salt is a good preservative. Eat enough top Ramen and your body won't even dacay after you die.
"The Single Man's Guide to Bandwidth Bills - Post Slashdotting"
I would like to recommend:
The Joy of Cooking
if you only have ONE cookbook - this is it....
... hi bingo
When I was single, I had the ability to eat things that were too strange for other people, but that worked for me.
For example, for a low-fat meal that had the prescribed amount of protein & carbs, I would mix dry curd cottage cheese into canned spaghetti sauce, over whole-wheat pasta. Also, storebought burritos with cottage cheese on the side. Grits. Ground turkey.
Now I'm married and eating more traditional foods, and back to being overweight again.
I say it's just food, and life is too short to spend hours a day on shopping, preparing, and cleaning for a single meal that only feeds two people.
Sadly this statement is the way the majority of the population thinks about eating. Food is what goes into your body, and eventually becomes the stuff you're made of. You may not value the taste, but you certainly should value the nutritional value of it. Most processed food like TV dinners contains a huge of amount of saturated fat and/or trans-fat, both major contributors to heart disease. Not to mention all the preservatives and other crap that's likely not very good for you.
The value in cooking and making your own food is an investment in your own health. What's more important than your, and your wifes health?
AccountKiller
While I agree with the sentiment that people should really not consider food just as "whatever fills my stomach attitude" (and I wouldn't consider taste less important than nutritional value, actually), this I have beef with.
Your statement is plain old FUD. "Hey, they are, like, chemicals, and thus they are BAD unless proven not to be, and even then they may be". I'm not biggest fan of all the techniques industry uses to shortchange us (injecting water, faking taste with MSG, garlic, salt, adding too much sugar [high-glucose corn syrup] in places it doesn't belong to), but many of additives -- especially preservatives -- are GOOD for us. Why?
Without preservatives (including ones with some unfortunate problematic effects like nitrates), thousands of people would die in food poisoning each year in US alone. Without preservatives, much more food would be lost, meaning that current world population could not be fed (at this point it's more about distribution and economics; not a hard physical limitation). Likewise, many chemical compounds that help create or maintain proper food texture allow reducing amount of salt used (more salt is otherwise needed to preserve moisture etc.), as well as extend lifespan of products. As nice as it is to get truly fresh products, that's not always possible, esp. if you don't want your local super-dooper walmart to be the only store in town (they can have freshest produce due to huge turnover), and preservation techniques help in getting decent balance between low spoilage and fresh products.
There's balance between being tin-foil food paranoid, and being ignoramus that blindly accepts all additives industry comes up with. It's good to know basic food microbiology and chemisty to know essential additives that make world a better place (when appropriately used) from the ones that only enrichen corporations and allow sub-standard food to be sold.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
TV dinners are a false economy.
Expenses? Look up the ingredients in a standard pre-prepared meal, then do the math to see what fresh ingredients would have cost you. I guarantee you will find that you come out 10 to 50% cheaper.
Washing up? I suspect you're not eating with your fingers, so you have to wash up after a pre-prepared dinner as well. Let's be charitable and say you eat the stuff from its packaging. You have now saved the time in washing up 2 plates and 3 pans (about what you need for a 2 person dinner). Trust me, that's about 1 minute of washing up and toweling off.
About the only thing I can say against buying fresh is that fresh ingredients come in bulk (e.g. a single head of lettuce will give 4-6 servings), and therefore you will generally have to buy for several days at once. That can be solved with a good freezer, but it is a chore.
I found out myself that cooking with fresh ingredients is an enormous saving. I have more money to spend even though I generally have to spend about 15 minutes on a meal, and I eat like a king.
Also, although I am not a health nut, I do find that I feel better after several days of fresh food. It appears that the methods of conservation do destroy nutrient value, to say nothing of additives.
Lastly, pre-prepared food is often salted heavily. A month of eating fresh will cure you of your salt habit, and you'll suddenly find your taste has improved, you're now able to discriminate more flavours, and whenever you do use salt you will find that in moderation it tends to strengthen other flavours, instead of obliterating them, making for a richer experience.
So do yourself a favour, try eating fresh for a month. You will not go back except occasionally.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Hm, the problem is that food is heavy. Even the freeze-dried camping food (which has the added complication of needing a source of hot water to prepare it).
For an average 180 lb. male doing strenuous activity for the whole day, not looking to have a net deficit of calories, it might take 5000+ calories a day. Camping food's efficiency is measured in calories per ounce. Anything having a calorie/oz. ratio greater than 100 is considered alright. The freeze-dried stuff usually has a ratio of around 100-120.
This means that a soldier or hiker would need about 50 ounces, or 3 pounds of food per day, not including the water that's necessary to prepare it. I know nothing about military supply trains, but for long-distance hiking, people hate carrying around extra water. Thus food preparation usually happens near water sources. My estimate is that each pound of freeze-dried food requires about a quart (or liter) of water to prepare, which means that carrying all that water would push the pounds of food per day to about 9 pounds.
Of course, all this water talk is moot if by camping food you meant dry trail mix, goop and the like. Yuck. But I guess that's always a possibility, carrying around 3 pounds of peanuts, cereal and berries for each day out in the field.
Don't knock it! A well rounded medley of salad vegetables with a sprinkling of herbs and spices (chilli flakes and caraway seeds, for instance) can be very morish!
Yours Sincerely, Michael.