Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
A New Low?
Last night, I cleaned the kitchen as part of my post-pre-midlife crisis reconstruction. Never mind that the rest of the house is in shambles - baby steps, baby steps. So rather than maintain a tidy kitchen, the new rule is that cooking is verboten, at least until I have friends over just so that I can prove to them that I can clean a kitchen. They don't need to know that I can't maintain a clean kitchen.
So for dinner last night, I stopped by the grocery store and saw that there was a big sale on frozen dinners. Ever since I was a kid, I was enamored by T.V. dinners and all they promised: a complete, multi-course meal in one tidy, compartmentalized package. And here they were, five for five dollars! I could get salisbury steak, which was indistinguishable from the beef loaf, or I could get the barbecue pork ribs (processed pork pressed into shapes with smoke flavoring) all for a dollar a pop! As I am recently unemployed, I thought that I should examine this food avenue closely. I decided to do a comparison between the Budget Gourmet meals, a standard among post-collegians and a feisty up-and-comer, and Banquet, the number one selling brand which has been around for half a century and is owned by food monolith, ConAgra.
Last night's showdown was macaroni and cheese, an all-time favorite of mine. At 7:30, I popped in the two trays in the oven and set the timer. The Banquet mac and cheese showed promise as its ingredients were pretty much just pasta, cheese, milk products and flour, which are the basic components of any restaurant mac and cheese. It also weighed in at twelve ounces, 50% larger than the Budget Gourmet version. Lastly, it contained nearly three times the amount of sodium, so I thought that at the very least, it would be tasty in a really gross way. The Budget Gourmet recipe contained margarine (versus Banquet's butter), xanthan gum (a thickener made from fermented corn) and something called "flavoring." Also, all the sauce was piled up and frozen at one end of the tray while the bare pasta was on the other end. It looked like what a one dollar frozen meal should look like.
I started with the Banquet mac and cheese, which was done first. It had the creamy texture of box macaroni and cheese, but none of the flavor. In fact, it didn't even taste salty, just sort of generically saucy. There was no cheddar notes or any cheese notes for that matter. The Budget Gourmet fared much better, more closely resembling the Kraft version with more zest and a sharper cheddar flavor (thank you, flavoring!). Still, both pastas were overcooked and neither was very satisfying. I could palate them only when washed down with a couple glasses of Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington, which flushed out the coating of xanthan gum from my palate.
I wish that I had just cooked. It would have taken the same amount of time and would have cost the same, probably. Basically, you make a cup of bechemel (a cup of milk, a tablespoon of flour and a pat of butter, whisked and heated until thickened) and then you start adding grated cheese until it's done, probably eight to twelve ounces. If you put a blend of sharp cheddar with mild, that'll probably be best because if you use just sharp cheddar, the sauce is a little grainy. I also add a few dashes of tabasco sauce and a teaspoon of dried mustard to add some zip. Add the sauce to a pound of boiled macaroni and then either eat it or bake it and then eat it.
But I suppose that it was just as well that I ate my crappy T.V. dinners as I was watching the finale of Temptation Island 3, the visual equivalent to a Budget Gourmet dinner. It was tasty-ish, but not really and then I just felt guilty and bad about myself afterwards.
Last night, I cleaned the kitchen as part of my post-pre-midlife crisis reconstruction. Never mind that the rest of the house is in shambles - baby steps, baby steps. So rather than maintain a tidy kitchen, the new rule is that cooking is verboten, at least until I have friends over just so that I can prove to them that I can clean a kitchen. They don't need to know that I can't maintain a clean kitchen.
So for dinner last night, I stopped by the grocery store and saw that there was a big sale on frozen dinners. Ever since I was a kid, I was enamored by T.V. dinners and all they promised: a complete, multi-course meal in one tidy, compartmentalized package. And here they were, five for five dollars! I could get salisbury steak, which was indistinguishable from the beef loaf, or I could get the barbecue pork ribs (processed pork pressed into shapes with smoke flavoring) all for a dollar a pop! As I am recently unemployed, I thought that I should examine this food avenue closely. I decided to do a comparison between the Budget Gourmet meals, a standard among post-collegians and a feisty up-and-comer, and Banquet, the number one selling brand which has been around for half a century and is owned by food monolith, ConAgra.
Last night's showdown was macaroni and cheese, an all-time favorite of mine. At 7:30, I popped in the two trays in the oven and set the timer. The Banquet mac and cheese showed promise as its ingredients were pretty much just pasta, cheese, milk products and flour, which are the basic components of any restaurant mac and cheese. It also weighed in at twelve ounces, 50% larger than the Budget Gourmet version. Lastly, it contained nearly three times the amount of sodium, so I thought that at the very least, it would be tasty in a really gross way. The Budget Gourmet recipe contained margarine (versus Banquet's butter), xanthan gum (a thickener made from fermented corn) and something called "flavoring." Also, all the sauce was piled up and frozen at one end of the tray while the bare pasta was on the other end. It looked like what a one dollar frozen meal should look like.
I started with the Banquet mac and cheese, which was done first. It had the creamy texture of box macaroni and cheese, but none of the flavor. In fact, it didn't even taste salty, just sort of generically saucy. There was no cheddar notes or any cheese notes for that matter. The Budget Gourmet fared much better, more closely resembling the Kraft version with more zest and a sharper cheddar flavor (thank you, flavoring!). Still, both pastas were overcooked and neither was very satisfying. I could palate them only when washed down with a couple glasses of Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington, which flushed out the coating of xanthan gum from my palate.
I wish that I had just cooked. It would have taken the same amount of time and would have cost the same, probably. Basically, you make a cup of bechemel (a cup of milk, a tablespoon of flour and a pat of butter, whisked and heated until thickened) and then you start adding grated cheese until it's done, probably eight to twelve ounces. If you put a blend of sharp cheddar with mild, that'll probably be best because if you use just sharp cheddar, the sauce is a little grainy. I also add a few dashes of tabasco sauce and a teaspoon of dried mustard to add some zip. Add the sauce to a pound of boiled macaroni and then either eat it or bake it and then eat it.
But I suppose that it was just as well that I ate my crappy T.V. dinners as I was watching the finale of Temptation Island 3, the visual equivalent to a Budget Gourmet dinner. It was tasty-ish, but not really and then I just felt guilty and bad about myself afterwards.
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