Before the days when microwave ovens were in wide-spread use, the humble TV dinner ruled supreme in households wanting a relatively 'quick' food fix without the hassle or fuss of preparing a meal. These edible wonders were the product of 1950's marketing genius, however, the aluminum tray that accompanied these meals prevented their preparation in microwaves owned by the lucky few of that era... they HAD to be cooked in an oven.
As a boy, my absolute favorite meal was the Swanson fried-chicken dinner which featured three pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables and a small recess filled with spiced peach slices. I LOVED this meal because most every dinner was 'carelessly' packaged where the syrup from the peaches leaked into the compartment holding the chicken. When fully cooked, this gave the crispy chicken a wonderful, albeit unintentional, glaze of peach syrup.
To this very day, I crave fried chicken with a peach glaze. Mmmm...!
To our older Hangout members, do you have any favorite frozen meals from this bygone era?...
having worked at several cooking jobs after retirement..i really hate to admit this but yeah..when swanson tv dinners go on sale..2 for 7 bucks..i buy at least 4..the beer batter chicken..and the turkey dinner are my faves..although the dressing with the turkey is kinda disgusting..
handy if you live alone and dont feel like cooking and doing dishes after..my ultimate laziness was to use plastic utensils too..lmao,,i stopped doing that tho after i noticed one of the tines on my fork was missing..the next coupla days were a bit tense
having worked at several cooking jobs after retirement..i really hate to admit this but yeah..when swanson tv dinners go on sale..2 for 7 bucks..i buy at least 4..the beer batter chicken..and the turkey dinner are my faves..although the dressing with the turkey is kinda disgusting..
handy if you live alone and dont feel like cooking and doing dishes after..my ultimate laziness was to use plastic utensils too..lmao,,i stopped doing that tho after i noticed one of the tines on my fork was missing..the next coupla days were a bit tense
Thanks for the Sunday evening laugh... funny story!
My Mom was a great, simple cook and never gave the family TV dinners. The only time my sister and I had them was when my parents were going out and we were old enough to stay home alone without a baby sitter. We loved them!
My mom was/is a great cook and cooked 2 -3 meals almost every single day. Those TV dinners always looked so good in commercials and at the grocery store and I always begged her to buy them. One week, she said fine, I'm not cooking this week, pick out what you want. I made it 3 days before I begging her to cook again.....
having worked at several cooking jobs after retirement..i really hate to admit this but yeah..when swanson tv dinners go on sale..2 for 7 bucks..i buy at least 4..the beer batter chicken..and the turkey dinner are my faves..although the dressing with the turkey is kinda disgusting..
handy if you live alone and dont feel like cooking and doing dishes after..my ultimate laziness was to use plastic utensils too..lmao,,i stopped doing that tho after i noticed one of the tines on my fork was missing..the next coupla days were a bit tense
Thanks for the Sunday evening laugh... funny story!
We were at a festival eating at a communal picnic table when a bunch of bikers sat down to join us.
The monster across from us was totally inhaling his meal.
His buddy must have noticed our raised eyebrows.
He said " Don't worry, we'll count his fingers when he's done." !!
Yah, we all begged for the TV dinners until we actually ate one. Mom wasn't a fabulous cook (much better baker) but it was several orders of magnitude over Swanson's best.
We had a Zenith too...on a cart so that we could park it just at the kitchen door (which had saloon-style swinging doors) with the doors propped open. It burned one Saturday morning while I was watching cartoons...let the 'magic smoke' out of the thing.
Dad bought a Maggot-box color console unit to replace it. Had the "phantom" ultrasonic remote.
I do remember one other thing, still true in today's cardboard microwave versions. No matter how well you prepared these things, the instant potatoes were still frozen and watery. that is probably what I remember most. Hehe.
I feel that they have made a transition from ok/pretty good/edible to rarely even acceptable. Seemed to have followed the use of plastic (?) containers for microwave use. Stuff is too watery. Veggies are not fit for cattle or hogs with peas and carrots being hard colored 'things' etc.
Rice and beans are a poor imitation of what they should be.
But then .. that is just my take on the situation.
I don't miss the dinners, but I do miss the T.V. trays. Light weight, foldable, portable, easy to store and to use. Tommy, the starch in potatoes don't handle the cold, not even refrigerators, that's why people leave them overnight to soak in water when making hashbrowns and French fries.
I went totally whacko Saturday. I walked 2mi to the farmers market, bought a knapsack full of tomatoes and corn, walked back home...and on the way picked up a loaf of bread and a pound of bacon.
We had bacon and 'mater sammitches when I got home. Well worth every inch of the 4 mi walk!
Miz Diane banned TV trays from the house some years ago. However, I secretly kept one set. Now I have snuck one back in the house to use as a magazine rack next to the exercise bike. Shhhhhh. Don't tell her!
" Don't worry, we'll count his fingers when he's done."
lmao..i know that guy!..we now call him lefty
that jiffy pop popcorn thing triggered a memory..i seem to recall a bunch of monkeys making and eating popcorn..not too subliminal huh?..lol
i think that anyone that learned to cook from a parent that grew up during the depression is almost always gonna be a good cook just by default..some of the best tasting, healthiest meals came out of the depression era..
having said that however..there have been times where as i stated earlier..i just dont feel like cooking..swanson has come a long way since those first horrid tv dinners..in both taste and nutritional value..they should however include a drinking straw for the mashed potatoes
...TV "dinners"??...heck my parents never even got a TV until the late 60's, after the last of the kids had finished high school and headed off. I doubt that any of us feel we missed anything.
I remember when I was transferred to Renfrew Ontario. The local loblaws store sold Savarin Dinners ( which were a TV dinner ) for 19 cents. We used to stock up on them. Would probably have heart failure if we read the labels on those for fat and sugar and salt content....times change.
Every now and then, when I'm going to be "on my own" for dinner, I will opt for either one of two guilty pleasures: a McDonald's Quarter-Pounder with cheese; or a Hungry Man Turkey Dinner.
When I was a kid, the Swanson dinners were a special-occasion kind of thing, the "occasion" being that Mom was overdue for a night off from cooking. On some occasions, Dad took us out for dinner. On others, we had TV dinners.
There was a company that made a fish themed TV dinner. It had a crab cake, a slab of some white fish, some shrimp and scallops and one more thing of what I don't remember. I used to love to eat that one, but it totally disappeared.
"I heard the inventor of the microwave was touting his new creation & said.." I have invented a machine that can cook a whole meal in under a minute."
BUT DOES IT BROWN THE MEAT?
speakin of meat..heres one reason why ppl become vegetarian..
i used to absolutely hate grocery shopping with one of my exxes...it would take her longer to decide on which steak to get for supper than it takes some ppl to decide on purchasing a house...no matter...she would invariably choose meat that was always very bright red looking..fine and dandy..i did a bit of researching and to my horror..and yes horror is the correct word..i discovered that the meat packing places were treating their meat before packaging...with carbon monoxide...yes...the same stuff thats in car exhaust..it apparently keeps meat red looking...and ya wonder why cancer rates are so prevalent?
Though I loved the Swanson's chicken dinner in all its aluminum glory, the turkey dinner ran a very close second. IMHO, these dinners were MUCH better prepared in an oven rather than the microwave fare we get nowadays. And don't get me wrong, our family seldom feed on these quick-fix wonders; my mom was an outstanding cook and baker, an old-school, stay-at-home housewife who checked all the boxes. But on those off-times when mom took a break from the gas range, it was Swanson's for the entire crew.
The beans & franks were interesting, though the apple slice sauce almost always intermixed with the beans, making for a weird taste combination.
Though I loved the Swanson's chicken dinner in all its aluminum glory, the turkey dinner ran a very close second. IMHO, these dinners were MUCH better prepared in an oven rather than the microwave fare we get nowadays. And don't get me wrong, our family seldom feed on these quick-fix wonders; my mom was an outstanding cook and baker, an old-school, stay-at-home housewife who checked all the boxes. But on those off-times when mom took a break from the gas range, it was Swanson's for the entire crew.
The beans & franks were interesting, though the apple slice sauce almost always intermixed with the beans, making for a weird taste combination.
Ahh, memories...
Did I say 'feed'? I meant fed, as in past tense. I moved out on my own in the mid-1970s, got married, did the Air Force career thing, saw the kids grow up and leave the nest, then said a tearful good-bye to my wife when she succumbed to cancer. So I've been batching it these past six years and have since reacquainted myself with Swanson's and their kissing cousin Banquet. Funny how life doesn't turn out quite the way you imagined it.
When I look at a frozen dinner at the grocery store one of the first things I do is read the Contents and specs. It bothers me when I turn the package over and see 1/3 of the back covered in micro print supposedly listing everything in the meal. You need a magnifying glass to read it and you can't pronounce a majority of the words. I won't buy those .. but one of the words in large print is Banquet.
The hungry man etc dinners that I have looked at list a very large amount of calories and Salt. Probably enough salt for a week.
"I heard the inventor of the microwave was touting his new creation & said.." I have invented a machine that can cook a whole meal in under a minute."
BUT DOES IT BROWN THE MEAT?
speakin of meat..heres one reason why ppl become vegetarian..
i used to absolutely hate grocery shopping with one of my exxes...it would take her longer to decide on which steak to get for supper than it takes some ppl to decide on purchasing a house...no matter...she would invariably choose meat that was always very bright red looking..fine and dandy..i did a bit of researching and to my horror..and yes horror is the correct word..i discovered that the meat packing places were treating their meat before packaging...with carbon monoxide...yes...the same stuff thats in car exhaust..it apparently keeps meat red looking...and ya wonder why cancer rates are so prevalent?
No worries Dude.......
I'm purdy sure you will not find annah ..red meat ..in ah tv dinner... ;0)
It's all ..health food... Cooked in that aluminium pan... :0o
Snow's had a clam factory in Port Clyde for many years.I'm related to them from a few generations ago.
Geez, Steve, I never knew clams were made in factories! And that you're related to them!
We rarely got TV dinners - only as a very occasional change of pace.
I remember the Kraft TV commercials we sat through, though. They featured some of the most stomach-churning recipes you could imagine, usually involving Miracle Whip, Velveeta, and other horrifying processed products. How those recipes sold Kraft "food", I'll never know. This was on the CBC. Did they show those disgusting concoctions on U.S. TV?
Snow's had a clam factory in Port Clyde for many years.I'm related to them from a few generations ago.
Geez, Steve, I never knew clams were made in factories! And that you're related to them!
We rarely got TV dinners - only as a very occasional change of pace.
I remember the Kraft TV commercials we sat through, though. They featured some of the most stomach-churning recipes you could imagine, usually involving Miracle Whip, Velveeta, and other horrifying processed products. How those recipes sold Kraft "food", I'll never know. This was on the CBC. Did they show those disgusting concoctions on U.S. TV?
...and a Saturday afternoon watching... 
Mom wasn't a fabulous cook (much better baker) but it was several orders of magnitude over Swanson's best.
(Thanks for sharing those!)
And that you're related to them! 
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