Back to frozen food again. I’ve been shunning Banquet meals lately in favor of both Marie Callender’s (finally spelled it right that time!) and Healthy Choice frozen meals. Just for variety of course. Although, lately my “picky” food side has been rearing it’s mid-life crisis head just a little too frequently.

Also, while Banquet is pretty much $1 each every day of the year, you kind of have to wait it out for Marie Callender’s and Healthy Choice to go on sale. On sale where I am is $2 per meal, although I’ve seen them as cheap as $1.50 on occasion.

I have lots of good memories eating the Marie Callender’s Turkey Pot Pie at both the restaurant location and straight outta the microwave at work. But I haven’t picked up one up in a few years, partly because I’d been so turned off from buying the “lesser” pies. But I saw these on sale the other day so I decided to pick one up to relive the good times.

One of the most interesting things about their pot pies is that the microwave instructiosn say NOT to remove the outer cardboard packaging. You basically just open it up but leave the pie inside. I have a feeling this is to get the crust nice and brown… the top of the cardboard container has a “reflective surface grid” as shown in the pic to right (I cut the box open). It faces downward onto the crust.

Whatever it is - it works pretty beautifully. The microwave time is actually one of the longest I’ve ever seen for a frozen dinner - something like 12 minutes on High! I’m always a bit nervous putting anything into the microwave for that long. I have had one instance in the past where the box got slightly “charred”, but this particular time there were no such scary moments. It does tend to smell a bit burnt, sort of like the smell you get when you microwave popcorn. But the pie itself looks quite nice.

Continue reading “Marie Callender Pot Pie” …

I have to admit that I only recently made a batch of Fried Okra because I had seen a snippet of Paula Deen making some on TV. By the way, I can’t stand Paula Deen… I’ve no idea why she got her own live show recently. But I do like some of the Southern recipes she talks about. And she’s somewhat more tolerable that Wolfgang Shmuck…

Sometimes people who read Cheap Eats think that I’m some sort of food or cooking expert. My god, nothing could be farther from the truth. This is the first time I’ve ever tried making Fried Okra, or for that matter anything with okra in it. It came out pretty decent, but I’m not sure how often I would make it.

I know that okra is often used to thicken stews and gumbo, and my mom used to make some sort of goulash type of dish that had okra in it. I have to say that I was never very fond of the mega-glutinous qualities that okra posesses. It’s like they have built in corn starch factories inside of them. Ok, I’m trying not to turn people off them by saying that the inside has the consistency of Slimy Boogers - but it can be extremely off-putting if you haven’t had it before. Although, if you’ve had Natto before, okra slime is a walk in the park…

Continue reading “Fried Okra” …

I know we’re only supposed to talk about frozen dinners on the “low” end of the food chain on Cheap Eats. What can I say, once in awhile we like to splurge. Rule number 1 of the upcoming Cheap Eats Manifesto (which has been on the back burner for 6 months now) is to Break All The Rules. Buying Marie Callender’s Frozen Dinners probably falls into that category since they’re not known for being that cheap.

Or are they? A few times, I’ve seen the full dinners on sale for $2 or less. That’s as cheap as the Healthy Choice meals when they’re on sale. I actually quite enjoy Marie Callender’s frozen meals quite a bit, and have even been known to frequent their restaurant. In the dot-com days, many a frozen Marie Callender’s Pot Pie found its way into the microwave where I worked.

Quick side note: I have been trying to teach my fingers to type “Marie Callendar” instead of “Marie Calendar”. Tough sleddin’ there … [edit: it seems I doubly cannot type/spell: Marie CallendEr’s]

Back to the merits of her frozen dinners. So far, the quality of most of the meals has been pretty top notch. I don’t believe it’ll win any healthy choice awards, but for me I’m not so concerned with that. In fact, I’m concerned with Price, Quantity and then Quality, in that order. And if you can get it cheap enough, the quality is definitely there and surprisingly the quantity as well.

One thing I notice about Marie Callender dinners is that they’re actually heavy. They’ve got some heft to them. The actual meal trays have compartments that are rather deep. This particular meal is their Country Fried Chicken (not Country Fried STEAK, mind you) and consists of a good piece of battered chicken breast, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. That’s right corn on the COB.

Continue reading “Marie Callendar’s Country Fried Chicken” …

Lately, I’ve been suckered in by one too many “frozen aisle” specials at my local supermarket. You know the ones I’m talking about. They have a floor-type freezer in the middle of the area near the milk, meat and/or seafood that’s filled with frozen food impulsive buys that are on sale. These are usually things like frozen dinners, frozen pizzas and of course Frozen Burritos.

I almost caved in and tried out some “mini-pizzas” for a buck each, but instead was waylaid by boxes and boxes of Tina’s brand frozen burritos. Actually, I would have passed but they were going for only twenty cents a piece which was difficult to resist. I picked up 3 “Red Hot Beef”, 1 “Bean and Cheese” and 1 “Spicy Bean and Cheese” for an even dollar for 5 burritos. Come on, tell me that’s not cheap eats.

But as always, you get what you pay for. I remember coming home from high school and microwaving one of these beauties. Part of the fun was trying to get the timing on the microwave correct so they didn’t explode, spilling out their bean contents like nuclear waste. Equally difficult was avoiding the “lukewarm center” phenomenon. I tried poking holes to no avail. But that was before I learned the “30-second and flip” method.

Basically, you just microwave it on high for 30 seconds and then let it rest for about 15 seconds. Then turn it over and repeat. (These instructions were actually on a package of CostCo shredded beef frozen burritos that I meant to write about but haven’t gotten around to.) After about 4-6 iterations (2 to 3 minutes) you get a pretty well done burrito that’s cooked on the inside and hasn’t leaked at all. This had the disadvantage of making you do a lot more work for a 20 cent frozen burrito. But come on - we could all use the exercise.

Continue reading “Tina’s Red Hot Beef Burrito” …

After Healthy Choice won our frozen dinner poll, I resolved to check out the brand since I haven’t had much experience with it. I’ve always pretty much passed it over since I could give a flying bowl of ramen about health food. Supposedly, anyway. Lately, I’ve noticed the disturbing (or perhaps much needed) trend toward healthier foods appearing in my posts. We shall see…

But really, the real reason that Healthy Choice is sorta off limits for Cheap Eats is because of the price. But actually, at $10 for 4 (supermarket hint: no need to buy FOUR unless you really need them all), these aren’t the worst.

And the verdict for the Healthy Choice Salisbury Steak is very good. Pretty darn amazing actually, but that’s because I’ve mostly used Banquet as a comparison. At two and a half times the price of a Banquet Fried Chicken Dinner, you’d expect this had better be good. And it is.

The front of the package shows a thick salisbury steak lovingly glazed with mushroom gravy along with seasoned red skin potatoes and mixed veggies. A crumb-topped apple dessert hides out in the back. I never expect actual frozen dinners to look like their pictures - false advertising is a must in this industry. But this actually looked appetizing.

Continue reading “Healthy Choice Salisbury Steak” …

Hello, what’s this. I seem to have left our Frozen Dinner poll running on autopilot for a couple months without switching it out. That might be for the best, because it actually took this long to get a sufficient number of responses. I guess frozen dinners aren’t the must-have, technological wonder-food that they were in the 50s anymore…

Anyhow, color me surprised (mangled Heatherism). Dark horse candidate Healthy Choice Frozen Dinners ended up beating out the competition. I had thought for sure that either Michelina or Banquet would have taken the honors. Though, it was quite close between those top 3… they were all within 30 votes of each other. Swanson frozen dinners brought up the rear. I wonder if that has anything to do with my giving their potpies the cold shoulder.

As I’ve said many times before, the Cheap Eats site is about cheap food, not health food. Though, over the course of the year, I’ve managed to sneak in quite a few more healthy choices. That has something to do with the fact that I’ve been having stomach issues the past 2 months. (I can hear the peanut gallery saying “See, I told you all those boxes of macaroni and cheese and instant ramen meals would catch up with you.”)

Continue reading “Healthy Choice wins Poll” …

Wow, I was SO disappointed with these Swanson Pot Pies. I remember eating these as a snack when I was a kid and thinking that they were the best thing in the world. I think they were also only 33 cents or less at the market.

So twenty years later I decided to give them a try again. They couldn’t be THAT bad right? Plus, even with inflation the price of one of these cheapie frozen pot pie ranges from 49 cents to about a buck. Good cheap eats right? Not even close.

Oh, full disclosure: in my salad days at an unamed dot com (where we used to fold 100 dollar greenbacks into paper airplanes, light them on fire and throw them off the balcony), I used to buy the expensive Marie Calendar Chicken Pot Pies and those were pretty durned good. You put them in the microwave for like 5 minutes and the crust is actually nicely browned and crisp and there’s like big chunks of chicken, carrots and potatoes.

The Swanson Turkey Pot Pie, when put into the microwave, nicely exploded into a Simpson-esque radioactive pie disaster. I followed the directions correctly, scoring the top of the pie carefully to vent the steam but that didn’t help at all. Well before the recommended cooking time, I heard sputtering and popping in the microwave. I looked inside and the contents had started to come out all over the plate. I had to keep going though, because the inside was still cold.

Man, this was pretty nasty looking… and you know at Cheap Eats we aren’t that particular. It tasted even worse. The crust was pale and unappetizing. (Later, I over-nuked another one by a few minutes for good measure to try and get it brown. No luck.) Let me tell you what the crust tastes like: it tastes like library paste. Don’t ask me how I know what library paste tastes like.

Continue reading “Swanson Turkey Pot Pie” …