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When I was younger I loved Banquet frozen meals. Salisbury steak, fried chicken, pot pies. Sure it wasn’t the highest quality food and was no doubt loaded with sodium and preservatives, but who cares about that when you're young?
When I was younger I loved Banquet frozen meals. Salisbury steak, fried chicken, pot pies. Sure it wasn’t the highest quality food and was no doubt loaded with sodium and preservatives, but who cares about that when you're young?
The thing I loved about pot pies then was the crust was uncooked, so you could make it as light or dark as you wanted. Today all the pot pies come microwave-ready with the crust already browned. I liked it light golden brown, and you can't do that anymore unless you make it yourself.
Banquet pot pies and dinners were reserved for those rare nights my parents were going out for dinner. I can still remember the tinny taste of the mashed potatoes and corn. As a kid I liked them. The pot pies were a favorite. It's been years since I've had either.
Once in awhile we had the salisbury steaks with gravy. It was a package of 6 in an aluminum pan. My mother would also occasionally serve the beef with gravy as sandwiches for an easy meal.
I feel sorry for all of you that suffered through bad school lunches. My public grade school cafeteria had real cooks that served homemade desserts, real mac and cheese, grilled cheese, chili and pizza made from scratch, etc. Even decades later the now adults that attended my school at that time period talk about the cookie bars and brownies. Once we went to connected jr. high and high school the quality went down a lot.
When I was a kid (we're talking 50-60 years ago, black&white TVs, 4 channels, dial phones, and an "Internet" was something you caught fish with), we'd often have TV dinners. Convenient, quick, and easy. There were two main brands, you could usually find equal number of each on the stores' freezer shelves: Swanson and Banquet.
Swanson was pretty good, at least to a 10-year-old who was more hungry than discriminating. Banquet was dreadful.
To this day I've never figured out how Banquet stayed in business. Actually found one on a freezer shelf a while back and tried it. No, it wasn't a 60-year-old leftover, it was recently made.
And it hadn't changed a bit. Edible only if starvation was the alternative.
I think Swanson got bought by someone. But I've found a few Swanson products, whose quality seemed OK. Nothing to write home about, but OK for frozen food.
I liked the Swanson dinners when I occasionally got one when mom and dad went out for the evening. I got to eat it on a TV tray in the living room, too!
I liked the Swanson dinners when I occasionally got one when mom and dad went out for the evening. I got to eat it on a TV tray in the living room, too!
That was super fun! Along with the Jiffy Pop (stovetop) popcorn afterwards.
I feel sorry for all of you that suffered through bad school lunches. My public grade school cafeteria had real cooks that served homemade desserts, real mac and cheese, grilled cheese, chili and pizza made from scratch, etc. Even decades later the now adults that attended my school at that time period talk about the cookie bars and brownies. Once we went to connected jr. high and high school the quality went down a lot.
Same here, they were cooked meals made in the school cafeteria . Because we live on the border with heavily Catholic presence, it was usually enchiladas with red sauce. They were great , IMHO. They also made homemade bread which you could smell throughout the school. They made a zucchini side dish with chili and cheese that I have the recipe which it great.
I was a music teacher in the same district for many years and they meals were still home cooked up until my last couple years.
I thought Banquet TV dinners and potpies were crap. Even by kid standards, they tasted like MSG gravy, no matter what meal. The potpies had only a top crust (unlike Swanson’s), and the tiny cubes of “meat” felt and tasted like finely ground-up fat, skin, gristle, with some kind of gelatin added to make the dross more uniform and “tender.” GROSS.
All of the Banquet and Swanson products were too salty, period. The little dessert portions in the TV dinners were always too sweet and/or gloppy.
When I later tried Michelina MW entrees, they were OK. Not great, and too little meat. Then later they must’ve cut corners even more and I stopped getting them.
Some Stouffer and some MC items are pretty good, but you gotta know which ones by trial and error. And all still too salty.
For supermarket-sold frozen potpies, I stick with smaller brands (yes, they are way more expensive than Banquet) that make high-quality versions using actual meat pieces instead of chopped-and-compressed-and-molded mystery cubes.
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