People don’t normally crave frozen dinners—they are usually relegated to punch lines in old movies and shows about dinners eaten on TV trays in the living room.
I don’t like to cook. I don’t find joy in crafting flavor combinations or making lots of different dishes and knives dirty. I’ll leave that for the Jeremy Allen Whites of the world. And the geniuses at Kraft or Kellogg’s.
If I could make one meal at the beginning of the week and eat it every day for lunch and dinner I would be very bored. But at least I wouldn’t have to cook! This utilitarian mindset brought me to the recent discovery of frozen dinners…for lunch!
I used to buy a frozen dinner at Aldi if I was grocery shopping right around meal time—that way when I got home I could microwave it quickly and eat it right away. It’s almost like getting fast food out somewhere, except it counted as groceries in my budgeting spreadsheet.
Now that I’m married, my lovely husband likes to make me dinners, likes to learn new recipes and ways of cooking. Tragically, he has a day job that prevents him from spending his days making me tasty treats. I have to settle for yummy coffees and pastas. With breakfasts and dinners covered, that left me scrounging around in the afternoon hours for hummus and popcorn and whatever cookie dough we had leftover in the fridge. Enter frozen dinners.
Frozen dinners mean I am eating a real meal for lunch, especially one that doesn’t require more than one dirty dish and fork. And one that came together in less than ten minutes. Please note, this is not a plea for whole-food meal recipes that also can come together in under ten minutes. It’s a review of this week’s frozen dinners:
Marie Callender’s Traditional Lasagna With Meat and Sauce Bowl
This seemed like the most comfort food-y option, so I picked it out first. It took practically no time to microwave, but was too hot to eat though, which sort of defeats the efficiency argument for frozen dinners. While this was very yummy, I added a handful of spinach while stirring which was a great choice for added fiber and color. The only con was the melted cheese stuck to my fork and required some real elbow grease to remove.
Healthy Choice Simply Steamers Grilled Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo
This one is a classic option, one I’ve had before. I found that this meal pairs well with a red—specifically cranberry ginger ale. But tragically I forget there isn’t pasta in this one every time. And every time I open up the steaming bowl, I stir it up and wonder where the pasta is! My mistake!
Healthy Choice Simply Steamers Chicken Fried Rice
Another tried-and-true option, although what I really want when I pull this one out of the frozen aisle is a microwavable alternative to the Trader Joe’s mandarin orange chicken. I’d love to A) not have to make so many dishes and utensils dirty in the cooking process, and B) not have to wait half an hour for lunch to be ready! But this will have to do until I can craft an email to Trader Joe’s about my dilemma.
Healthy Choice Simply Steamers Chicken and Vegetables Stir Fry
This one is great, just pure chicken and vegetables. I especially enjoy the crunchy edamame. But tragically, once again I forget that there is no rice, leaving my tummy longing for something more than just pure chicken and vegetables.
Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers Chicken Alfredo
I saved this one for last, mostly because it was on the bottom of the stack, but also because it had real pasta—unlike the others. I added a handful of spinach, for color, but despite my alterations this was my least favorite of the bunch. The pasta was great in the sense that it was in fact pasta, but there was a supreme lack of flavor. However, it is impossible to tell if this reaction was accurate to the taste, or if I was just tired of eating frozen dinners for lunch all week.
Noticing a lot of Healthy Choice–branded items? No, I’m not sponsored (yet!). Those just happen to be the ones that fit both my macro goals and sounded delightfully delicious to my tummy as I stood in the Food City frozen aisle for fifteen minutes.
However dystopian it might seem to look up from one’s laptop, realize it’s lunch time, walk to the freezer, open it to reveal stacks of frozen dinners, pick one, and pop it in the microwave, it is a lifestyle I can handle. I choose to see my frozen dinner addiction as a harmless utopia, contained to the hours of 11 to 2 p.m., allowing me to conserve my creative powers for crafting cute ornaments, learning how to use a sewing machine, and writing important, meaningful articles such as this.
Carlisle Patete (‘22) came to Calvin University from the mountains of North Carolina and graduated with a double major in film & media and creative writing. After brief stints in Los Angeles and Chicago, she now resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she enjoys sweet tea on her front porch and identifying every tree and bird she runs into on any hiking trail.
