Yeah, add in a can of refried beans and it’s approaching a real meal.
Also, ice cube trays are a cheap, handy tool you probably already own that you can use to portion and freeze things like a block of cheese, then just thaw and use a cube of whatever at a time.
Too bad. I also hate with a passion tossing food.
Quesadillas are tortillas and cheese. Tortillas, in my experience, never go bad in the fridge. I’ve had some that lasted the better part of a year, and while they do get a bit dried out, they essentially never go bad. Cheese freezes well and also lasts forever. That $4 will buy many more meals starting with basic ingredients than TV dinners. While I prefer pan-frying them, just nuking them is fine too. Get a liter of Valentina hot sauce for $2 while you’re at it (also good for months of meals).
A can of unseasoned beans is way cheaper than refried beans, and an envelop of “Mexican” spices costs about 40 cents. A packet lasts for about 4 cans on beans. You can mash them, or just leave them in their beany state, and mix in the seasoning. You’ll use less of the cheese, so it goes further, and the beans are cheaper. It’s pretty filling.
When I was home with a newborn, and needed fast, and utensil free, I kept a container of seasoned beans, and thing of soft tortillas, grated cheese, and shredded lettuce in the fridge. I could throw a burrito together in 30 seconds, nuke it for 30 seconds, and eat it with one hand while I held a nursing baby with the other. I alternated among burritos, PB sandwiches, and cold pizza. Drank a lot of milk, and ate a lot of fresh fruit.
I am the king of eating stuff that’s way beyond any sensible food safety standards, but I wouldn’t eat that - you made a good decision. If you’re in the US, you could spend a lot more than $4 going to the ER with food poisoning.
No, don’t regret it, really. Several days left out is not safe to eat any frozen dinner, preservatives or not. And if you need to go to the ER, it could cost you $4,000…a lot more than $4.
Preservatives retain taste and color, and they prevent moisture loss, so food doesn’t become stale. They don’t necessarily retard spoilage, and even if they do, to an extent, they are meant to do so under normal storage conditions. The main way that food prevents spoilage is by vacuum packing, sterilizing in the sealed package, and printing prominently on the label “REFRIGERATE AFTER OPENING.”
When foods are sold frozen, all bets are off.
We grill our quesadillas in a pan on the stovetop. It is actually faster and more energy efficient than doing it in the oven, and the tortillas brown nicely without drying out
Heck, you can even do a sort of quesadilla in the microwave, if you want. They don’t brown like the real thing, but you can get them crispy if you spray them with cooking spray.
Of course, I assume a “quesadilla meal” includes some sides. Still, you’d likely get more with a cheap can of Mexican rice and some refried beans. (Yes, I know you can make your own and be much cheaper, but it gets a bit more tricky in the microwave.)
Do you have a microwave? Then you can actually cook a meal, even with a low-power one. Microwaves aren’t just for re-heating. Kenmore Microwave Cooking is my go-to reference and while the pretty hardcover edition I have may be out of your budget I’d be happy to send you a copy of a few recipes and/or the charts inside for how to cook various common things like pasta, rice, or vegetables. I often use the microwave to cook items from raw to done like brown rice in preference to the stove top.
Of course, convenience food is just that - convenient. Cooking with a microwave can still take 30-45 minutes for some items. If your situation doesn’t leave you with the time to do that I understand.
You don’t have to live on “unhealthy crap”. What do you like to eat? By choice, not by budget. Let me know if you if want to give it a try.
Not enough preservatives for sitting out at room temperature for over 24 hours. Throwing it out was the right thing to do. As others have said, if you’re that hard up for money we can throw a Doper party/fundraiser for you (with the mods permission first).
Yeah. I do rice all the time in the microwave but I don’t have a recipe for “beans in microwave from scratch” despite inheriting my mother’s extensive collection of microwave cooking references dating back to the late 1970’s. I recommend using canned if you don’t have the time/facilities to do beans from scratch. Canned beans can be had cheap. I’m just one person, too, and a can of beans easily lasts 2-3 meals for me.
I’ve been on the wrong side of four dollars before, many times, but am good enough right now that I’d gladly chip in the same.
It sucks to have to wonder if you should throw something out or not, regret throwing it away later, etc. Saps your mental energy.
For what it’s worth, most frozen meals don’t have tons of preservatives, precisely because they’re frozen. No other anti-spoilage measures are needed.
Assuming the stuff stays frozen until cooking, of course. 
Hey, MortSahlFan, do own a hotplate? They are only about $15, and allow you to cook anything that can be cooked stovetop. They are like having a single burner from a stove top.
When we were kinda less well-off, we have a stove-oven, with the oven working just fine, but two of the burners had crapped out, and I couldn’t get them working. I tried bypassing the wires, and it was the plugs for the burners, which cost as much as a hotplate for new ones, and the whole oven was pretty old.
We bought a hotplate so we’d have three burners, instead of just two, which was good, because before we got the stove replaced, another burner went out. Anyway, it was just to limp up along until we could afford a whole new stove, which was like, 8 months, when we got out tax return with the EIC.
I know you are not in a position to buy a hot plate right now, but it’s something to bear in mind if you weren’t aware of how cheap they are. By allowing you to make you own quesadillas, burritos, etc., it’ll pay for itself in a couple of weeks.
Smart move, OP, tossing the garbage into the garbage. Do not regret it.
But I can’t be the only one wondering: How on earth do you drop two frozen dinners in the kitchen and not find them for two days?
mmm
My supermarket uses Shipt, and they drop off all the bags on my front porch. I think what happened was after I carried all the bags, one must have fell to the side, by this chair I use mostly to throw clothes on, kinda lodged between the kitchen and living room… I also have a big sheet to keep my living room warm (I use a space heater), found it too late.
To answer the earlier questions, yes I do have a microwave. Cold foods, dry foods.
Thanks everyone.
Amen! I have a twenty dollar copay just for a routine doctor’s visit. That would be FIVE of your dinners, and that’s before we even consider how sick you would be, what medicines you might need, and what further payments you might have not covered by insurance.
I’m confused. The dinners were on the floor in the kitchen area near the living room, and it took a few days for you to notice them?
Yeah, wedged in between boxes… They were still in the bags they came in with.
Yeah, I’m pretty laissez faire about leaving food out, especially when the kitchen is cool (food spoils a LOT faster at 75 than at 67, in my experience, those being typical summer and winter temps in my kitchen) but frozen dinners that sat out a few days are well beyond my threshold. Don’t regret having tossed them.
I do second the suggestion of buying some tortillas and canned beans and a block of cheese. Those all keep forever. And beans, in particular, are really cheap and filling and satisfying. And if you are feeling especially time-stressed, you can just open a can of beans and eat them. (and put the leftovers in the fridge, where they will keep several days.)
We’ve been experimenting with different kids of beans and pulses over the pandemic, and there’s a lot of variety just in the beans. I think of myself as carnivorous, but I’ve really developed a taste for beans.
I’ll chip in on a pay pal dinner or a small multipot and supplies.
I lived very lean for many years, so paying it forward.
Been there, ate the beans and ramon. I’ll pitch in as well. I was going to offer to buy you a cookbook, but you are online. You have access to so very many recipes using so many ways to cook. So, I’ll just pitch in for food.
As the good Dr Strangelove said nuking is fine.
Something paradoxical, for me anyway, was that switching from the “cheap” highly processed foods to the “expensive” good basic real foods turned out to be way less expensive. fresh fruits and veggies, unprocessed meats and so on actually turned out to be more satisfying, I got fuller faster and ate less. Leftovers were actually edible too, not just gross…whatever that glop was I ate last night.(cheap frozen pizza is still a secret vice though)
If you need help, ask, I’ve seen the folks round here do some pretty amazing things when a fellow doper is in need.