Fear No Freezer
A few years ago when I embarked on the new American pastime of dieting, the weekly diet regimen that my online "trainer" spit out always included a few frozen meals to save time or provide variety. I always spit back a request for another option that I could prepare myself, because frozen meals had never been a part of my life and, I thought, never could be. I had eaten one frozen dinner in my life, as a child at my best friend Kerry’s house, with rather unfortunate results.
I met my best friend Kerry on the first day of kindergarten at Blessed Sacrament School. We were fast friends, cute little opposites, one blonde and one brunette, in our plaid school uniforms. We quickly formed a kiddie mutual admiration society, each of us sure that the other led a life that would bring much more happiness. I had the big family, the noisy house, the stay-at-home mom, and the homemade cookies. Kerry had two older brothers who ignored us, her own room, a working mom, and best of all, HoHos and Pepsi for after school snacks.
Before I met Kerry, I had never had a HoHo, and to the best of my recollection, the entire 18 years I lived at home with my parents, I never had a HoHo served to me. From the first time I peeled off the foil and bit in, I could not understand why the HoHo was not much more famous than its cousin the Twinkie. Similarly, soda (and it was always generic soda, nothing as famous as Pepsi), in my parents’ house, was a beverage served primarily on Sunday evenings in an 8 ounce Dixie cup. We were Kool-Aid kids, and while I can now appreciate why Kerry would find the endless array of colors and artificial tastes that came from our Kool-Aid jug a treat, at the time I could not imagine why she would come to my house for Kool-Aid when there were always Pepsis stashed under her parents’ kitchen table.
But the HoHos and Pepsis were merely my first exposure to the wonderful world of prepared foods at Kerry’s house. All of the things Kerry’s busy mother was willing to try, my mother studiously avoided in favor of more cost-effective, nutritious, and I must admit, tasty food. Every time I visited Kerry, her kitchen revealed a new advance in the prepared food arena. One morning after a sleepover, Kerry pulled a carton of pre-made pancake mix out of the refrigerator and then proceeded to pour perfect circles onto the griddle as she promised me the best pancakes I’d ever had. The results, needless to say, were quite disgusting, but the idea that the pancake mix was there whenever she wanted it made me envious nonetheless. Her mom bought the dainty little Entenmanns’s soft chocolate chip cookies, Pringles, Mama Celeste Pizza for One (abundonza!), Captain Crunch, and basically was willing to try every food advertised on television.
However, nothing found in her parents’ cabinets or refrigerator seemed as fascinating or full of promise as the frozen TV dinner, another modern advance that my mother steadfastly rejected. Every now and then, as I was leaving Kerry’s house to go home for dinner, I would overhear that her parents were going out and that the kids were going to be served fried chicken TV dinners. These TV dinners were the originals, invented before cable TV and microwaves, that came in boxes adorned with life-sized photographs of the food inside. I could almost taste the crunchy fried chicken, the creamy mashed potatoes, the perfectly cooked green beans, and, the grand finale, the heavenly chocolate cake. I could imagine Kerry and her brothers carefully taking their delicious steaming trays of food up to the TV room to watch a riotous sitcom (another commodity in short supply at my parents house, but that’s another story). They would laugh together, enjoying their delicious dinners in front of the TV as I was forced to sit through another round of steak and potatoes and broccoli at the dinner table with my family.
I was absolutely determined that one day when I came to a sleepover, the TV dinner would be mine. Unfortunately, the sleepovers were always on the weekend, when Kerry’s mother didn’t have to work and thus would usually cook. I know most kids would have been happy with the hamburgers and french fries I was served, but I could get hamburgers and french fries at my house. What I wanted was the gourmet treat that I knew was lurking behind their freezer door.
I’m sure I pestered Kerry about it, asking all sorts of questions about the TV dinners, how delicious they must be, what an improvement on home cooking they must represent. Thinking back, I don’t think Kerry ever romanticized the TV dinner, but then again, Kerry didn’t get much homemade food, and was not raised by a mom who was also a caterer, so her critique of the TV dinner probably would not have been especially instructive anyway. But she was my best friend, and so eventually she harrassed her mom sufficiently to schedule a sleepover that included TV dinners. I arrived with my sleepover bag and we played for a while in her room until finally we were called down to dinner. I was overcome with excitement that finally I would be allowed to enter the sophisticated realm of dining portrayed on TV commercials.
The first shock for me was that we were not heading for the TV to eat our TV dinners on TV trays as I had imagined. We all sat at the dining room table with placemats and napkins, and said grace just like we did at my house. Then with Kerry and her parents closely watching me, I dug into the most anticipated meal of my short life. I knew from the moment I picked up the “fried” chicken that something was desperately wrong. For one thing, the “crispy” coating wasn’t crispy at all, and for another, underneath the “crispy” coating was a layer of whitish-yellow gelatinous goo that I could not identify as being either part of the chicken or part of the coating. I gamely took a bite and got it down with a big swallow of milk (no Pepsi that time, darn it), but as a child I was cursed with an overly sensitive gag reflex, and I knew that if I took another bite of the chicken, my digestive system might stage a revolt. My next strategy was to cut the chicken off the bone, scrape of the coating and surround it on the fork with mashed potatoes. Sheltered child that I was, I had never had instant mashed potatoes and the first forkful sent my mind reeling, “What in God’s name was that?” At least I knew that if I ate my green beans, Kerry’s parents couldn’t be too angry, because every parent likes to see kids eat their vegetables. But again, my mom, who looking back now must have been some sort of hippie, had never put before me a green bean that she had not personally plucked from the produce section, snapped, and cooked to perfection. The salty, tasteless, mushy olive green mass that I had put into my mouth, was determined to come out and I could do nothing to stop it. I managed to get my napkin up to catch the mouthful and stifle the gag, but immediately I knew that I was not going to be able to eat my dinner, that I wasn’t even going to attempt the cake (mainly because you can’t have dessert if you don’t eat your dinner) and that I would be wasting the meal I had lobbied for months to get my hands on.
And from that day until recently, I never ventured into the frozen foods aisle for a frozen meal. As the freezer cases filled with new varieties, new companies, new “healthy choices”, I knew that lurking somewhere inside each cardboard box, under each cellophane wrapper, or within each plastic tray was the same goo that scared me off so many years ago. I wanted to save myself and my now dormant gag reflex from a return to that night at Kerry’s dinner table. However, sometime over the past few years, sometime after my third child arrived, sometime after yet another cereal dinner while my husband was out of town, I finally relented and decided to give the old TV dinner one more try. I carefully inspected the hundreds of options in the freezer case and after a ridiculous amount of time, chose the one I felt was least likely to put me off frozen food for another 25 years. That evening, after four minutes of anticipation as the meal rotated in the microwave, I peeled off the plastic, put my “TV dinner” on a plate, carried it to the coffee table, and turned on the TV. It did not resemble anything my mother would have ever served me, but it was, in fact, a pretty good dinner.
I met my best friend Kerry on the first day of kindergarten at Blessed Sacrament School. We were fast friends, cute little opposites, one blonde and one brunette, in our plaid school uniforms. We quickly formed a kiddie mutual admiration society, each of us sure that the other led a life that would bring much more happiness. I had the big family, the noisy house, the stay-at-home mom, and the homemade cookies. Kerry had two older brothers who ignored us, her own room, a working mom, and best of all, HoHos and Pepsi for after school snacks.
Before I met Kerry, I had never had a HoHo, and to the best of my recollection, the entire 18 years I lived at home with my parents, I never had a HoHo served to me. From the first time I peeled off the foil and bit in, I could not understand why the HoHo was not much more famous than its cousin the Twinkie. Similarly, soda (and it was always generic soda, nothing as famous as Pepsi), in my parents’ house, was a beverage served primarily on Sunday evenings in an 8 ounce Dixie cup. We were Kool-Aid kids, and while I can now appreciate why Kerry would find the endless array of colors and artificial tastes that came from our Kool-Aid jug a treat, at the time I could not imagine why she would come to my house for Kool-Aid when there were always Pepsis stashed under her parents’ kitchen table.
But the HoHos and Pepsis were merely my first exposure to the wonderful world of prepared foods at Kerry’s house. All of the things Kerry’s busy mother was willing to try, my mother studiously avoided in favor of more cost-effective, nutritious, and I must admit, tasty food. Every time I visited Kerry, her kitchen revealed a new advance in the prepared food arena. One morning after a sleepover, Kerry pulled a carton of pre-made pancake mix out of the refrigerator and then proceeded to pour perfect circles onto the griddle as she promised me the best pancakes I’d ever had. The results, needless to say, were quite disgusting, but the idea that the pancake mix was there whenever she wanted it made me envious nonetheless. Her mom bought the dainty little Entenmanns’s soft chocolate chip cookies, Pringles, Mama Celeste Pizza for One (abundonza!), Captain Crunch, and basically was willing to try every food advertised on television.
However, nothing found in her parents’ cabinets or refrigerator seemed as fascinating or full of promise as the frozen TV dinner, another modern advance that my mother steadfastly rejected. Every now and then, as I was leaving Kerry’s house to go home for dinner, I would overhear that her parents were going out and that the kids were going to be served fried chicken TV dinners. These TV dinners were the originals, invented before cable TV and microwaves, that came in boxes adorned with life-sized photographs of the food inside. I could almost taste the crunchy fried chicken, the creamy mashed potatoes, the perfectly cooked green beans, and, the grand finale, the heavenly chocolate cake. I could imagine Kerry and her brothers carefully taking their delicious steaming trays of food up to the TV room to watch a riotous sitcom (another commodity in short supply at my parents house, but that’s another story). They would laugh together, enjoying their delicious dinners in front of the TV as I was forced to sit through another round of steak and potatoes and broccoli at the dinner table with my family.
I was absolutely determined that one day when I came to a sleepover, the TV dinner would be mine. Unfortunately, the sleepovers were always on the weekend, when Kerry’s mother didn’t have to work and thus would usually cook. I know most kids would have been happy with the hamburgers and french fries I was served, but I could get hamburgers and french fries at my house. What I wanted was the gourmet treat that I knew was lurking behind their freezer door.
I’m sure I pestered Kerry about it, asking all sorts of questions about the TV dinners, how delicious they must be, what an improvement on home cooking they must represent. Thinking back, I don’t think Kerry ever romanticized the TV dinner, but then again, Kerry didn’t get much homemade food, and was not raised by a mom who was also a caterer, so her critique of the TV dinner probably would not have been especially instructive anyway. But she was my best friend, and so eventually she harrassed her mom sufficiently to schedule a sleepover that included TV dinners. I arrived with my sleepover bag and we played for a while in her room until finally we were called down to dinner. I was overcome with excitement that finally I would be allowed to enter the sophisticated realm of dining portrayed on TV commercials.
The first shock for me was that we were not heading for the TV to eat our TV dinners on TV trays as I had imagined. We all sat at the dining room table with placemats and napkins, and said grace just like we did at my house. Then with Kerry and her parents closely watching me, I dug into the most anticipated meal of my short life. I knew from the moment I picked up the “fried” chicken that something was desperately wrong. For one thing, the “crispy” coating wasn’t crispy at all, and for another, underneath the “crispy” coating was a layer of whitish-yellow gelatinous goo that I could not identify as being either part of the chicken or part of the coating. I gamely took a bite and got it down with a big swallow of milk (no Pepsi that time, darn it), but as a child I was cursed with an overly sensitive gag reflex, and I knew that if I took another bite of the chicken, my digestive system might stage a revolt. My next strategy was to cut the chicken off the bone, scrape of the coating and surround it on the fork with mashed potatoes. Sheltered child that I was, I had never had instant mashed potatoes and the first forkful sent my mind reeling, “What in God’s name was that?” At least I knew that if I ate my green beans, Kerry’s parents couldn’t be too angry, because every parent likes to see kids eat their vegetables. But again, my mom, who looking back now must have been some sort of hippie, had never put before me a green bean that she had not personally plucked from the produce section, snapped, and cooked to perfection. The salty, tasteless, mushy olive green mass that I had put into my mouth, was determined to come out and I could do nothing to stop it. I managed to get my napkin up to catch the mouthful and stifle the gag, but immediately I knew that I was not going to be able to eat my dinner, that I wasn’t even going to attempt the cake (mainly because you can’t have dessert if you don’t eat your dinner) and that I would be wasting the meal I had lobbied for months to get my hands on.
And from that day until recently, I never ventured into the frozen foods aisle for a frozen meal. As the freezer cases filled with new varieties, new companies, new “healthy choices”, I knew that lurking somewhere inside each cardboard box, under each cellophane wrapper, or within each plastic tray was the same goo that scared me off so many years ago. I wanted to save myself and my now dormant gag reflex from a return to that night at Kerry’s dinner table. However, sometime over the past few years, sometime after my third child arrived, sometime after yet another cereal dinner while my husband was out of town, I finally relented and decided to give the old TV dinner one more try. I carefully inspected the hundreds of options in the freezer case and after a ridiculous amount of time, chose the one I felt was least likely to put me off frozen food for another 25 years. That evening, after four minutes of anticipation as the meal rotated in the microwave, I peeled off the plastic, put my “TV dinner” on a plate, carried it to the coffee table, and turned on the TV. It did not resemble anything my mother would have ever served me, but it was, in fact, a pretty good dinner.
posted by Shannon at 9:18 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home