We've all been there. We're tired, we don't want to cook, but we want something in our stomachs. That's just life for you. We lean on frozen food to accomplish the task. A little time in the microwave, or if you have the patience, in the oven for a goddamn hour or something. People like that should really just cook something. If I am eating a frozen meal, I already know it's going to be substandard in every arena, so why wait an hour for it? Nuke it for 5 minutes, take your bland concoction to the TV, and watch a comedy show for the 5 minutes it takes you to eat it, after you drench it in various sauces to make it taste like something, ANYTHING! Then you go to sleep absolutely unsatisfied and wondering if the problem is you or the food. Tip: it's the food, you're fine, I hope. I have been trying various frozen meals for my lunch, as I usually cook a meal not made of pig anus for dinner, but, as stated, they are cheap and easy. I've had some completely terrible ones I bought on a whim. I will explain them and the nature of just how bad they can be.
Ranked in no particular order, but I will say that you should not buy any of these.
Home Bake Chicken Parmesan
Inflicted on the public by Kraft/Heinz, and that might make you think, "Well, they make mac and cheese and Heinz 57 sauce. I'm sure they can make a chicken parm pretty good." No, they cannot. I got this for a couple of bucks, thinking "hy yes, this might be a tasty lunch," but I was dead wrong. This is the kind that comes in a metal tray, so you cannot microwave it. You have to bake it. 30 minutes at 425 °F, it loudly says on the package. Very well, I shall try it. I jack off for a half-hour waiting for it to come to a conclusion, as I am rather hungry. Was it worth the time? Not at all. Chicken parmesan is supposed to be chicken drenched in cheese and sauce. There was barely any. There was no cheese or sauce covering what I can only describe as oversized chicken nuggets, swimming in a kiddie pool of a minuscule amount of sauce and cheese. I had to swish them around to get anything on them. Then I turned to sauces. Okay, let's try BBQ sauce. No, that didn't work. Ranch? No, that made it worse. Hot sauce is somewhat acceptable, given that the heat makes me feel something, even if it's not a great pairing. Insert joke about relationships. It was just utterly underwhelming, as though it was built to disappoint.
Pier 33 Mussels
Perhaps I set myself up for failure on this one. Frozen seafood does not have a wonderful track record, but I've had frozen shellfish before, and it wasn't too bad. I was going to incorporate this into an also-frozen dish of buttered spaghetti. The spaghetti gets exempted from the list, as you can't really fuck it up—you would have to try hard! The mussels, however, do not get a pass. I've had great frozen seafood, but this? THIS? I may as well have just added rubber bands to my spaghetti. Chewy, which is understandable, but no flavor, and the "garlic butter" it comes with tastes like a truck stop urinal smells. Take a pass if you ever think frozen mussels might be nice for lunch. It's possible I did something wrong, but the only way I think I could have done it right is shooting them out of a potato cannon.
Banquet Salisbury Steak
Yes, I know. We grew up eating this, and I had fond memories of latch-key life in the '80s, like a lot of us did, where we'd make these in the 'wave and play Nintendo games afterward. I was feeling somewhat nostalgic, and bought one for my lunch. I do not know if something has changed in 40 years, but this was like eating a Dr. Scholl's insole covered in really bad beef gravy. I mean, yeah, it was only two bucks, so expectations were not exactly high, but I remembered it fondly, and like a deadbeat dad, it let me down. Unlike a deadbeat dad, it did give me a gift: the shits.
Guy Fieri's Bacon Mac and Cheese Dumplings
I am aware it is fun to pick on Guy Fieri. Guy is a total goofball, but he does like to eat, and if a guy (heh) who eats pretty much anything has a line of frozen food, you'd think that "Hey, he must have evaluated these and decided they were tasty," right? Well, he must have taken a sick day when they introduced this one. Sounds great, right? Bacon mac and cheese, in a lump of dough? How could that be bad? Well, it is. Your humble author bought them three times. "Maybe I am doing this wrong," I said to myself. This is why I tried microwaving them, then baking them, then just saying "fuck it, I am frying you assholes in my deep fryer full of pure lard." Nothing mattered. It was the same lump of crap, with smaller amounts of other crap inside it. I won't completely diss Guy, as some of his frozen shit is on board, but these things? Do not be fooled, let alone three times.
Marie Callender's Beef and Broccoli Bowl
Marie usually knocks it out of the park with her frozen stuff, pot pies, pasta, cakes, and pies. That's what we know her brand for. Unlike, say, Aunt Jemima or Betty Crocker, she was actually a real person, who looked like that aunt you knew hated you. However, she built an empire out of pies and cakes, and then frozen foods. Died at 88 in 1995, but left a legacy. I do not know if this would be a part of her legacy that she would approve of. Beef and broccoli bowl, you say? Why does it scarcely contain either of those? There's plenty of rice and this weird sauce, but very little of the ingredients that were supposed to be the star of the show. It's like if you went to a comedy club to see Key and Peele and John Leguizamo showed up instead.
Lean Cuisine Swedish Meatballs
Lean Cuisine should really sell all my complaints right off. They have a few decent items, but I want a meal, not a lecture delivered to my intestines. I love Swedish meatballs, but this is a far cry from even the ones IKEA is famous for. It's like if Swedish meatballs got really depressed, and started going to the gym to alleviate it, then they were just very lean and still depressed Swedish meatballs. It tastes like chewing. That's it. There is no sauce bandage to solve this one. It's hopeless, and it will die alone and unloved.
Therefore, if you're going the cheap route for your breakfast, lunch, or dinner, avoid the ones mentioned above. The level of disappointment provided by an unsatisfactory meal is worse than simply not eating. You might be hungry, yes, but you will not have sadness in your stomach.
Eat well, be well.
-Wombstretcha
Wombstretcha the Magnificent does not have the stomach of a goat nor COVID taste buds; he is a fresh-food enthusiast, writer, and retired rapper from Portland, Oregon.He can be found at his website, Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter/X/whatever as @Wombstretcha503, and on MeWe and (begrudgingly) Facebook, as "Wombstretcha the Magnificent."
