My week-long experiment with processed instant lunches: tag eins.
I'm not the type willing to sacrifice my health for scientific advancement. I am, however, an utterly and totally a cheap arsehole. So, with the last vestiges of a healthy mind, I will drive into the river of pre-packaged insanity and hope that, somewhere downstream, I've at least saved a couple of dollars.
A brief backstory: I lived with three roommates. Two of them -- who consistently claimed that nothing in the freezer was theirs despite it being packed to the brim -- have recently moved out. One roommate was replaced, while the other (who lived in the basement) has not yet been replaced: the landlords are gutting the basement. So the three of us spent all of Sunday cleaning, which included emptying out the freezer. Things that were definitely ours went on the top shelf, everything else went on the bottom shelf. And what do you know, about 70% of the freezer contents were sitting on the bottom shelf, except for a few things which couldn't fit so they went on the top shelf. I'll stop bitching, but basically, we have a lot of food which apparently never belonged to anyone.
One of the two ex-roommates was very big on boxed dinners -- lean cuisine, hot pockets, other 'food products'. Being unable to turn down a free meal, I packed up five of these meal . . . things, and brought them to work. Each day, I will shorten my lifespan eat these substances and summarise my feelings. I feel fairly confident that by the end of this week, I can make an honest assessment whether these things are worth the cardboard they're packaged in.
Monday
Stouffer's White Meat Chicken Pot Pie
disclaimer: this thing has a 'best before' date of December 2006, so I may not have seen it in its best light. My personal belief, however, is that the length of time might actually serve to inactivate many of the 'ingredients' that constitute this 'lunch', so I may live to eat another day. We'll see.
Described on the front as 'a golden crust surrounding pieces of all white meat chicken, peas, carrots, celery & onions, in a gravy made with real cream', the box features a lovely picture of what appears to be a chicken pot pie with a lightly browned, crisp flaky crust. Spilling out of this delightful crust is a medley of healthy looking vegetables and soft meat encased in a silky cream chicken gravy.
In order to cook this bastardly thing convenience food, one must place in the microwave for 6 minutes, unless one is using a medium wattage microwave, which then requires 7-7 1/2 minutes. Box must be rotated '1/4 turn halfway through cooking time'. I'll be honest: I ignored their instructions. I rotated several times, from the centre of the microwave to the outside, and from 1/4 turns to 1/2 turns. See, when I'm cooking something on the stove for 6 minutes, I'm watching it, evaluating it (heat higher or lower? More cream?), tasting it (needs more thyme!) and learning (over-boiling carrots -- always a bad idea). I'm doing something. I spent those same 6 minutes today standing in front of a microwave, watching time tick down, and occasionally opening the microwave door and moving a box around a glass plate. I'm not sure what I learnt, but christ it was boring. At least when I'm cooking on a stove and waiting for water to boil, I can leave it for a few minutes to go pee. With this thing, I had to wait around, just so I could be sure to rotate it at the appointed time. So I turned it around a bit more than asked, and more often than was expected, just to liven things up a little.
According to the instructions, once cooking had concluded, I was to 'let stand in microwave for 5 minutes before serving' ('5 minutes' was bolded and in bright red, in case I needed a bit of hand holding through the process). Since I work in an office with 50 people and 1 microwave, unless I wanted to be slaughtered, I had to remove my convenience product from the microwave. Hoping my chicken pot pie would not walk off my desk in my absence, I went to pee (don't tell me I don't share the innermost details of my life!). Upon my return, I consulted the instructions to ensure that it was now safe to consume.
I really can't say enough about the taste of this chicken pot pie. All my life, I had been searching for a chicken pot pie with a salty, pale pastry crust (which was about as crusty as cardboard after it's been left out in the rain overnight), a cream gravy filling which, coincidentally enough, was about as -- if not more -- salty than the crust, a few minuscule slivers of carrot bits (which failed to hold much resemblance by taste or by sight to the rich orange chunks of carrots featured on the cover), four peas (I counted), no visible celery, and some chunks of white meaty-ish things which I only assume were meant to be chicken. (Unfortunately, I was unable to ever confirm this assumption.) After all this searching, I feel that I can now die a happy woman. Actually, after looking at the calorie content, I'm quite sure I will die.
730 calories in this 283 gram (10 oz for those of you on Planet Dumb Measurements) chicken pot pie, of which 400 come from fat. Daily values? 67% of total fat, 89% (!!!) of saturated fat, 22% cholesterol, and 49% sodium. But don't fear, there's a whopping 16% of dietary fibre. How any company can get away with calling this thing a single serving is beyond me.
Inevitably, there must be a discussion about the ingredients. I will refrain from commenting on the ingredients themselves (having already snarked about them with a coworker), but I will say that chicken pot pies I have made in the past included the following ingredients: crust (flour, salt, butter, water), chicken breast, carrots, peas, celery, butter, onion, flour, salt, cream and/or milk, chicken stock, and seasoning, with possibly a few chunks of potato.
Today's lunch:
Pastry
Filling
The after effects: I'm left with a box I can't recycle, on account of the strange foil/paper thing glued firmly to the top of the inside of the box and the pale yellow gravy-salt which slopped down the side and rear of the box, a foil/paper pie contraption, whose function is ostensibly to prevent the chicken pot pie from slopping all over the box (which, you will note, it failed to do), a dirty plate to hold the pot pie so that a) the gravy-salt wouldn't dribble onto the kitchen counter, the floor, me, or my desk and b) it would allow me to carry this thing to a place of worship my desk without sacrificing the skin on my hand, and a dirty fork.
I also feel disgusting, slovenly, and completely unsatisfied.
A quick perusal of teh intarwebs indicates these lunches run about $4 to $5 a pop.
I'm left wondering where the convenience is. For whatever bizarre reason, this is a product of Canada, and I'm fairly sure the polar bears aren't finding the food miles too convenient. I spent 6 minutes watching and rotating this thing in the microwave, which was inconvenient -- and bloody boring too. I suppose the five minutes it spent resting in the box wasn't too inconvenient -- I did get to pee, after all, although in order to do so, I had to disobey the instructions (my co-workers would not find it convenient to have a microwave out of commission for 11-plus minutes at lunchtime). Eating it wasn't too convenient, nor pleasant. It was one of the worst things I have ever ingested in my life, and I used to eat dirt as a little kid. The inconvenience to my tastebuds for having to sample this vile amalgam of chemicals, and the inconvenience to my digestive system for having to process the chemicals, the inconvenience to my excretory system for having to dispose of the unwanted bits (which, I hope, is most of it), and the inconvenience to my vital organs for having to make do with carrageenan and propylene glycol when they were -- quite reasonably, I think -- expecting fresh and organic nutrients, leaves me with little confidence that these 'convenience foods' have anything to do with a healthy functioning body. The garbage, which lessens but does not eliminate washing up, does make me question where the convenience is. Is it in the cost? Because all I hear from people who refuse to make stuff from scratch is the cost. At $4.95 for something that I still have to heat and deliver myself, it's somewhat inconvenient.
Perhaps this will get better. Maybe it's like cooking, where after a while, you don't need instructions because you understand the food itself. Possibly I will find efficient ways to fill the time I'm otherwise standing around waiting, in much the same way I can organise cooking so that while I'm waiting for the water to boil, I can chop the veggies. It is within the realm of possibility that my body will adjust to getting 40% of my daily calorie intake in 5 minutes so that I will no longer feel quite so sluggish for two hours after lunch, and my stomach will learn to love BHA and BHT so that I can quell this uncomfortable nausea that makes me worry about not having a bucket nearby. And it is conceivable, in the same way as is the Immaculate Conception, that forking out $5 for a frozen meal will seem like a good deal compared to the cost of natural, basic, organic ingredients and the wealth of knowledge I have gained from cooking my own food and the understanding of chemistry, biology and nutrition that inevitably follows.
I ate an apple after lunch. It was a blemished and dented little thing, an organic Braeburn apple that I got in a 3 lb bag for $2 at Whole Foods. It was delicious.
A brief backstory: I lived with three roommates. Two of them -- who consistently claimed that nothing in the freezer was theirs despite it being packed to the brim -- have recently moved out. One roommate was replaced, while the other (who lived in the basement) has not yet been replaced: the landlords are gutting the basement. So the three of us spent all of Sunday cleaning, which included emptying out the freezer. Things that were definitely ours went on the top shelf, everything else went on the bottom shelf. And what do you know, about 70% of the freezer contents were sitting on the bottom shelf, except for a few things which couldn't fit so they went on the top shelf. I'll stop bitching, but basically, we have a lot of food which apparently never belonged to anyone.
One of the two ex-roommates was very big on boxed dinners -- lean cuisine, hot pockets, other 'food products'. Being unable to turn down a free meal, I packed up five of these meal . . . things, and brought them to work. Each day, I will shorten my lifespan eat these substances and summarise my feelings. I feel fairly confident that by the end of this week, I can make an honest assessment whether these things are worth the cardboard they're packaged in.
Monday
Stouffer's White Meat Chicken Pot Pie
disclaimer: this thing has a 'best before' date of December 2006, so I may not have seen it in its best light. My personal belief, however, is that the length of time might actually serve to inactivate many of the 'ingredients' that constitute this 'lunch', so I may live to eat another day. We'll see.
Described on the front as 'a golden crust surrounding pieces of all white meat chicken, peas, carrots, celery & onions, in a gravy made with real cream', the box features a lovely picture of what appears to be a chicken pot pie with a lightly browned, crisp flaky crust. Spilling out of this delightful crust is a medley of healthy looking vegetables and soft meat encased in a silky cream chicken gravy.
In order to cook this bastardly thing convenience food, one must place in the microwave for 6 minutes, unless one is using a medium wattage microwave, which then requires 7-7 1/2 minutes. Box must be rotated '1/4 turn halfway through cooking time'. I'll be honest: I ignored their instructions. I rotated several times, from the centre of the microwave to the outside, and from 1/4 turns to 1/2 turns. See, when I'm cooking something on the stove for 6 minutes, I'm watching it, evaluating it (heat higher or lower? More cream?), tasting it (needs more thyme!) and learning (over-boiling carrots -- always a bad idea). I'm doing something. I spent those same 6 minutes today standing in front of a microwave, watching time tick down, and occasionally opening the microwave door and moving a box around a glass plate. I'm not sure what I learnt, but christ it was boring. At least when I'm cooking on a stove and waiting for water to boil, I can leave it for a few minutes to go pee. With this thing, I had to wait around, just so I could be sure to rotate it at the appointed time. So I turned it around a bit more than asked, and more often than was expected, just to liven things up a little.
According to the instructions, once cooking had concluded, I was to 'let stand in microwave for 5 minutes before serving' ('5 minutes' was bolded and in bright red, in case I needed a bit of hand holding through the process). Since I work in an office with 50 people and 1 microwave, unless I wanted to be slaughtered, I had to remove my convenience product from the microwave. Hoping my chicken pot pie would not walk off my desk in my absence, I went to pee (don't tell me I don't share the innermost details of my life!). Upon my return, I consulted the instructions to ensure that it was now safe to consume.
I really can't say enough about the taste of this chicken pot pie. All my life, I had been searching for a chicken pot pie with a salty, pale pastry crust (which was about as crusty as cardboard after it's been left out in the rain overnight), a cream gravy filling which, coincidentally enough, was about as -- if not more -- salty than the crust, a few minuscule slivers of carrot bits (which failed to hold much resemblance by taste or by sight to the rich orange chunks of carrots featured on the cover), four peas (I counted), no visible celery, and some chunks of white meaty-ish things which I only assume were meant to be chicken. (Unfortunately, I was unable to ever confirm this assumption.) After all this searching, I feel that I can now die a happy woman. Actually, after looking at the calorie content, I'm quite sure I will die.
730 calories in this 283 gram (10 oz for those of you on Planet Dumb Measurements) chicken pot pie, of which 400 come from fat. Daily values? 67% of total fat, 89% (!!!) of saturated fat, 22% cholesterol, and 49% sodium. But don't fear, there's a whopping 16% of dietary fibre. How any company can get away with calling this thing a single serving is beyond me.
Inevitably, there must be a discussion about the ingredients. I will refrain from commenting on the ingredients themselves (having already snarked about them with a coworker), but I will say that chicken pot pies I have made in the past included the following ingredients: crust (flour, salt, butter, water), chicken breast, carrots, peas, celery, butter, onion, flour, salt, cream and/or milk, chicken stock, and seasoning, with possibly a few chunks of potato.
Today's lunch:
Pastry
- Bleached enriched flour (wheat flour, amylase, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), lard (contains BHA, BHT), water, non fat dry milk, canola oil, dextrose, salt, modified corn starch, corn syrup solids, maltodextrin, soy lecithin, caramel.
Filling
- Water, cooked seasoned chicken (white chicken meat, water, modified food starch, chicken flavour [dehydrated chicken broth, chicken powder, flavouring], carrageenan, whey protein concentrate, salt), whipping cream (milk ingredients, dextrose, carrageenan, mono- and diglycerides, cellulose gum, polysorbate 80, sodium citrate), carrots, peas, non-fat dry milk,
modified food starch, chicken base (mechanically separated chicken and chicken broth, salt, chicken fat [corn oil, propylene glycol, propyl gallate, BHT, citric acid {added to improve stability}], sugar, dehydrated onions, turmeric [for colour], flavoring), chicken fat (contains propylene glycol, BHA, propyl gallate, citric acid), onions, celery, salt, mono and diglycerides, dried egg yolk.
The after effects: I'm left with a box I can't recycle, on account of the strange foil/paper thing glued firmly to the top of the inside of the box and the pale yellow gravy-salt which slopped down the side and rear of the box, a foil/paper pie contraption, whose function is ostensibly to prevent the chicken pot pie from slopping all over the box (which, you will note, it failed to do), a dirty plate to hold the pot pie so that a) the gravy-salt wouldn't dribble onto the kitchen counter, the floor, me, or my desk and b) it would allow me to carry this thing to a place of worship my desk without sacrificing the skin on my hand, and a dirty fork.
I also feel disgusting, slovenly, and completely unsatisfied.
A quick perusal of teh intarwebs indicates these lunches run about $4 to $5 a pop.
I'm left wondering where the convenience is. For whatever bizarre reason, this is a product of Canada, and I'm fairly sure the polar bears aren't finding the food miles too convenient. I spent 6 minutes watching and rotating this thing in the microwave, which was inconvenient -- and bloody boring too. I suppose the five minutes it spent resting in the box wasn't too inconvenient -- I did get to pee, after all, although in order to do so, I had to disobey the instructions (my co-workers would not find it convenient to have a microwave out of commission for 11-plus minutes at lunchtime). Eating it wasn't too convenient, nor pleasant. It was one of the worst things I have ever ingested in my life, and I used to eat dirt as a little kid. The inconvenience to my tastebuds for having to sample this vile amalgam of chemicals, and the inconvenience to my digestive system for having to process the chemicals, the inconvenience to my excretory system for having to dispose of the unwanted bits (which, I hope, is most of it), and the inconvenience to my vital organs for having to make do with carrageenan and propylene glycol when they were -- quite reasonably, I think -- expecting fresh and organic nutrients, leaves me with little confidence that these 'convenience foods' have anything to do with a healthy functioning body. The garbage, which lessens but does not eliminate washing up, does make me question where the convenience is. Is it in the cost? Because all I hear from people who refuse to make stuff from scratch is the cost. At $4.95 for something that I still have to heat and deliver myself, it's somewhat inconvenient.
Perhaps this will get better. Maybe it's like cooking, where after a while, you don't need instructions because you understand the food itself. Possibly I will find efficient ways to fill the time I'm otherwise standing around waiting, in much the same way I can organise cooking so that while I'm waiting for the water to boil, I can chop the veggies. It is within the realm of possibility that my body will adjust to getting 40% of my daily calorie intake in 5 minutes so that I will no longer feel quite so sluggish for two hours after lunch, and my stomach will learn to love BHA and BHT so that I can quell this uncomfortable nausea that makes me worry about not having a bucket nearby. And it is conceivable, in the same way as is the Immaculate Conception, that forking out $5 for a frozen meal will seem like a good deal compared to the cost of natural, basic, organic ingredients and the wealth of knowledge I have gained from cooking my own food and the understanding of chemistry, biology and nutrition that inevitably follows.
I ate an apple after lunch. It was a blemished and dented little thing, an organic Braeburn apple that I got in a 3 lb bag for $2 at Whole Foods. It was delicious.