# Does anyone here have strong opinions on TV dinners? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** food-cooking\ **Created:** [September 10, 2020, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241 "2020-09-10T08:55:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/61 "2020-11-04T00:05:38Z")
I’ve liked all the Healthy Choice Cafe sSeamers I’ve tried. I suspect it because they’re steamed and I don’t end up with mushy potato/vegetables that were cooked in the sauce. ---
**Author:** ![turner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/22d042/32.png) [@turner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/turner)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/62 "2020-11-04T14:46:28Z")
I agree their pretty good, though WAY short on seasoning. I just can’t get over the name–“Steamers”. That has a totally different connotation where I’m from. ---
**Author:** ![CorpusNeptune](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/corpusneptune/32/17561_2.png) [@CorpusNeptune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CorpusNeptune)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/63 "2020-11-04T14:58:37Z")
I think I had a Kid Cuisine at my grandma’s house, like, 6 years ago, I think. I don’t remember it being that good, though it definitely wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Like OP mentioned, it’s alright if you have no other options, but otherwise, you can get better elsewhere. -Baleaf ---
**Author:** ![Drummond\_Bays](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8edcca/32.png) [@Drummond\_Bays](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drummond_Bays)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/64 "2020-11-05T18:26:26Z")
Corn&peas&carrots! Those dastardly villians always used to shoehorn their way into brownie territory! Being an 80’s kid it always befuddled me how that happened to pass qc when the plastic film was hot glued to the rim of each individual secton of the tray. ---
**Author:** ![Drummond\_Bays](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8edcca/32.png) [@Drummond\_Bays](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drummond_Bays)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/65 "2020-11-05T18:33:44Z")
…are you from the second largest city in Ohio? ---
**Author:** ![turner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/22d042/32.png) [@turner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/turner)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/66 "2020-11-05T23:43:27Z")
Nope. I don’t even know what that is–Cinci or columbus? ---
**Author:** ![Drummond\_Bays](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8edcca/32.png) [@Drummond\_Bays](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drummond_Bays)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2020, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/67 "2020-11-06T00:01:57Z")
…Ouch. That joke _did not_ fly so well… …I’ll see myself out ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2020, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/68 "2020-11-06T07:50:45Z")
Well, \*_I_\* chuckled. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2020, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/69 "2020-11-14T02:03:20Z")
I used to buy the bigger TV dinners. These days, though, my usual strategy is to buy one of the smaller ones and add enough rice and cheese to make it substantial enough for me. The smaller ones are generally of better quality, I think, plus it’s also fun to pretend that I’m feasting on Italian-Indian fusion when all I did was dump a bag of basmati rice onto a chicken parm TV dinner. ---
**Author:** ![Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mundane_super_hero/32/6304_2.png) [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mundane_Super_Hero)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2020, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/70 "2020-11-14T13:28:04Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Gosh, I remember those pre-microwave aluminum trays that heated up in the over… \< Shudder \> \< left eye starts to involuntarily twitch \> You were forced to eat those “Swanson” hell on earth monstrosities too? First, thank Og you survived. Second, while I admit my mother was not the best cook, when she and Dad went out to a cocktail party and left one of those, I always felt like I must have done something wrong. I mean, this is punishment, right? So… from left to right… the potatoes. What the hell? That’s no potato… no potato was mashed or even smashed to make that. That was squirted out of a hose and I could almost still taste the rubber. “Just put butter on it.” “Why? Is it hungry?” It always had to be probed with a fork to make sure nothing was lurking beneath the surface because a lot of the time… some things were. Strange things. “That’s a pea.” “Yes honey.” “Why is there a pea in my mashed potatoes?” “It must have shifted over there when they were shipping the box from the warehouse.” “But Mom, the vegetable is string beans. Where did a pea even come from? That box was sealed. I saw you open it” “Maybe there was a dinner being made next to it and it fell into this dinner.” “So…a pea, trying to escape it’s own horrible TV dinner, jumped over to this one? Did it shout ’ I’m free! I’m free! ’ right before drowning under the mashed potato hose? ( I could almost hear the pea screaming as the hose went \ ) I mean, that’s a pretty cruel way to die. Did it piss off a Peapod Mafia Boss?” Moving right along was the desert which you were not allowed to eat until you had eaten everything else. It looked good, it smelled good, but don’t touch it. Why? Because it was boobytrapped! That’s right… under that sweet muffin top was a fruit filling that was (seemingly) at a constant boil of 212 degrees. This temperature was seemingly maintained until every other item that was considered edible (a likely story) was consumed. It was so hot, it could raise a blister on a finger, so you’d better not get any of it anywhere near your mouth. Next came the string beans. For years I honestly thought that ‘string beans’ were called string beans because if you held one up, it would bend and flop over onto it’s side… like trying to hold up string. They were limp, green, tasteless, and most definitely Dead. One of the very few ways to get any flavor on them at all was to add ‘a condiment’… but in our house there were very few of them. There was Soy Sauce, which would make you stroke right out. There was salt, which for years was what I thought happened when you left Soy Sauce out too long in the sun. There was pepper. There were ‘cooking spices’ which we were forbidden to touch (“…because they’re for cooking, that’s why. Now eat your beans”). And there was ketchup. Yes, out of hunger and desperation I sometimes added ketchup to my string beans. It was better if you added a lot of pepper to the ketchup. (Decades Later- “Why do you eat so much salsa?” “Oh… no reason.” ) And then… you finally got to… the chicken. Honestly… WTF did they do to that animal? Did they kill it with some sort of experimental death ray? Its bones were rubbery and they… bent! You could literally bend the bones 90 degrees and they would not break. ( Yes, I wasn’t supposed to play with my food, but really… was this… food? ) That chicken also always had some kind of gravy/grease to it that thinking back was more like yellow sludge or slime. What was that all about? Did it lose a fight with “The Blob”? Nah, couldn’t be… The Blob would have eaten it. Then again, this was a Swanson’s TV Dinner chicken. Any respectable Blob would take one taste and just Know that it could do better. I had a mental picture of The Blob thinking to itself, “That’s Disgusting! I’ve got to get this taste out of my mouth. Anything… eat Anything else. Must get this taste out of me. Wait, is that Soy Sauce?” { And that, my friends, was how scientists finally killed “The Blob”. } So, after you’ve scraped the leftover yellow bits of blob off of the chicken, you’d come to it’s rubbery hide. Now, this was no ordinary rubbery hide. You’d have to literally saw for a minute… maybe two… to get through this hide. You had to do it very gently too, because if you used too much pressure, the plastic knife would snap and then that was it: no chicken for you! On some of them I wondered if this was actual skin or if some joker had put a diver’s wetsuit on the chicken. I even checked the back to see if there were marks left by an air tank. Could that chicken have SCUBA dived? For what purpose? And if so, where was it’s tiny mask? Lost in the potatoes no doubt. \< Splork!\> “Mom, how come you didn’t just leave me with McDonalds food?” “I wanted you to have Real food. You still want to grow up to be president, don’t you? Well, you’ll never grow up to be president eating McDonalds food. Only Idiots eat that…” ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2020, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/71 "2020-11-15T07:05:50Z")
My wife found some of these and they are just as good/bad as ever. Thank you, sincerely. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2020, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/72 "2020-11-15T07:24:23Z")
I took a close look at that Hungry-Man® frozen dinner in my freezer. It seems the Swanson name is totally retired – no mention of it anywhere that I can find, not even in tiny print. It is now a Con Agra product. They have taken over the world. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2020, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/73 "2020-11-15T19:58:44Z")
> [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](#): > > You were forced to eat those “Swanson” hell on earth monstrosities too? First, thank Og you survived. Second, while I admit my mother was not the best cook, when she and Dad went out to a cocktail party and left one of those, I always felt like I must have done something wrong. > > I mean, this is punishment, right? _golf clap_ That whole write-up was a masterpiece. ---
**Author:** ![dummygladhands71](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c0e974/32.png) [@dummygladhands71](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dummygladhands71)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2020, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/74 "2020-11-15T21:08:02Z")
Stuffers mac & cheese is still the best mac & cheese. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2020, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/75 "2020-11-16T18:58:13Z")
We never ate those dinners too much growing up in the 80s. I’m sure dad got them more often that I realized, as he was a shift worker. I DO remember when [Kid Cuisine](https://www.mashed.com/224161/the-untold-truth-of-kid-cuisine/) tv dinners JUST FOR KIDS came out in the early 90s. I HAD to try them! I don’t remember being fond of them at all. The desire quickly passed. Both sides of my family have a terrible history with heart disease. As an adult, I don’t go way out of my way to avoid salt but I never add salt to anything and I avoid frozen meals like the plague. Yes I’m sure there’s room in my diet for a lower sodium “healthy” frozen meal but what’s the fun in that? I just don’t go for them. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2020, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/76 "2020-11-16T19:33:47Z")
How healthy are these? Is there anything more processed than a frozen dinner? ---
**Author:** ![urbanredneck2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/5f8ce5/32.png) [@urbanredneck2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urbanredneck2)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2020, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/77 "2020-11-16T19:52:08Z")
I always liked the meatloaf or salisbury steak ones. Great for the single guy. No cooking prep. No dishes to wash. How about those little meat pot pies? Before I learned how much fat was in those I would eat them all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2020, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/78 "2020-11-16T22:28:31Z")
> [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](#): > > You were forced to eat those “Swanson” hell on earth monstrosities too? First, thank Og you survived. Second, while I admit my mother was not the best cook, when she and Dad went out to a cocktail party and left one of those, I always felt like I must have done something wrong. Yeah, well, my mom started having cardiac adventures early in life and when you have a dad going from work to home to home to hospital and four kids to feed in a hurry sometimes we got TV dinners. > [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](#): > > It always had to be probed with a fork to make sure nothing was lurking beneath the surface because a lot of the time… some things were. Strange things. > > “That’s a pea.” > “Yes honey.” > “Why is there a pea in my mashed potatoes?” I don’t remember finding a pea. I do remember solid “potato bergs” in the sea of potato mush. Ice-cube like lumps immersed in boiling liquid “potato” Yeah, weird. > [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](#): > > Moving right along was the desert which you were not allowed to eat until you had eaten everything else. It looked good, it smelled good, but don’t touch it. Dessert was a very, very occasional thing in my family growing up. Like, holidays only or birthday parties occasional. My parents would buy the dinners that _didn’t_ have dessert in them. So I guess I was spared that. > [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](#): > > One of the very few ways to get any flavor on them at all was to add ‘a condiment’… but in our house there were very few of them. There was Soy Sauce, which would make you stroke right out. There was salt, which for years was what I thought happened when you left Soy Sauce out too long in the sun. There was pepper. There were ‘cooking spices’ which we were forbidden to touch (“…because they’re for cooking, that’s why. Now eat your beans”). And there was ketchup. Yes, out of hunger and desperation I sometimes added ketchup to my string beans. It was better if you added a lot of pepper to the ketchup. Ah, you were lucky - I couldn’t eat ketchup because I’m allergic to tomatoes. Fortunately, I didn’t, and still don’t, have issues with salt so the soy sauce it was. Or butter. > [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](#): > > You’d have to literally saw for a minute… maybe two… to get through this hide. You had to do it very gently too, because if you used too much pressure, the plastic knife would snap and then that was it: no chicken for you! So THAT’s why the parents gave us real metal cutlery to go with the TV dinners! As an emergency measure they’re tolerable. Not something I’d typically eat by choice although some of the more “upscale” frozen dinners that purport to be healthy (for certain definitions of that word) aren’t too bad… ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2020, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/79 "2020-11-18T14:33:19Z")
Some of the upscale stuff is almost edible but outrageously expensive. I can make an excellent meal with a 1/2 lb fillet cut crosswise (9), a few carrots boiled and finished in the meat drippings (,50), Some mushrooms and beef broth for gravy (.75) and a baked potato (.75). A tasty dinner for 2 at $5.50 each. Sure the time is 30 minutes, but that’s time I’m watching the news anyway so why not be cooking while you watch the news and get a meal that’s great instead of maybe ‘not too bad’ at its best. And it’s cheap. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2020, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241/80 "2020-11-18T14:35:59Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > We still enjoy making the On-Cor Salisbury Steak with Brown Gravy tray and serve it with either noodles or rice. I had one of those just the other day. It’s the best 2 lbs of meat $3 can buy! 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-here-have-strong-opinions-on-tv-dinners/920241.md?page=5)