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| Almost perfectly square bread! (Peanut butter from my snack stash. I spread it with the spork) |
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| The trash left over |
My husband and me. Tonight. Chatting over the toddler jumping on couch risking life and limb as usual.
Mrs. Q: “Today I had Salisbury steak for lunch today.”
Hubby: “You know that was my favorite meal as a child.”
Mrs. Q, remembering: “Oh yeah…I think you mentioned that before.”
Hubby: “My mom would ask what I wanted for dinner and I’d reply, ‘Salibury steak TV dinner.'”
Mrs. Q: Laughing silently.
Toddler pretends to feed us food, “cold!” “hot!” “brr, cold!”
Hubby: “It was easy for her, just throw it into the oven. They were in foil then. The Salisbury steak was in the triangular part, the corn, the brownie, and the mashed potatoes were in little squares on top.”
Mrs. Q, chuckling: “You’d choose [other amazing food cooked by his mom] for Salisbury steak in a package?”
Hubby: “Yep. Crazy, right?”
Mrs. Q: “I’m blogging this!”
End scene
Just another crazy night in the Q household talking about food (even the toddler)
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I want to announce the winner of the giveaway of Lunch Lessons by Ann Cooper. I announced it a week ago when Chef Ann’s Great American Salad Bar Project did a guest post. There we 40 comments on that post and the random number chosen was: #15
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Speaking about Chef Ann, she will be in the Midwest at the 2010 REAP Food for Thought Festival in Madison, Wisconsin (September 24th and 25th). If you live in the area, you might want to check it out! Maybe I could swing a quick road trip up north… Man, I’d love to meet her in person!
I have to say one thing about the TV dinner… My mom wasn't big on cooking when I was little so I lived on TV dinners for a large part of my childhood (I was also a rather large child, ha ha). There was this disgusting grilled cheese thing that came with corn and a brownie that to this day I still keep an eye out for at the store. It was the greasiest, yellowist, most disgusting meal, that as an adult I can't imagine even attempting to choke down. Yet…I have such fond memories of it!
I've been looking for it since the late '90s so I doubt I'll ever see it again, which is fine by me. I would rather it remain a memory!
I have to say that I'm very disturbed by that prepackaging. As bad as I think the food that I serve at our school is, it at least looks more appealing when served out on a tray than in those little containers. We use what looks like an ice scream scoop to manage portions and we dole the mashed potatoes out with them. It looks like a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the tray and then we top it with a bit of gravy if they want. We usually only have it with our holiday meals. We have never served salisbury steak. I keep asking for meatloaf, but we haven't gotten that yet. Oh…my hubby has fond memories of TV dinners too. My mom would never buy them so I missed out I guess. (silent yay!):D
When my brother and I were very small all our relatives lived in other states. If we stayed home for Christmas, we had TV dinners so that both parents could enjoy watching us with our new toys and the day could be a relaxing one for everyone.
I think that lasted until I was 4 or 5 years old and Grandma came to live with us.
That is the only time I can remember ever having a TV dinner as a child.
So much starch. Nothing green at all!
wow…where is the vegetable?
Was the bread sweet? I can't believe how often you find high fructose corn syrup in it.
I remember begging (I mean on my 10 year-old knees in the grocery store begging) my mom to buy those "cool" TV dinners. She would always say in her stern Mom voice…"Those are crap and they're not good for us." She never did buy them. (Thanks, MOM!) I have to agree with her – they are crap. I've looked at the labels on the "healthy" ones and there are way too many ingredients I can't pronounce. Unfortunately, with all that packaging, it looks like you (Mrs. Q.) are eating a TV dinner every day for lunch! You really are "taking one for the team"…lol
I grew up on healthy home-grown food and (not surprisingly) never liked salisbury steak until I made in from scratch in my 20s. Its amazing how the food industry can take something so yummy and turn it into something so disgusting.
I used to love the salisbury steak too. AND the mashed potatoes in my high school.
Like someone mentioned, they used an ice cream scoop (they did that for the rice too, which was kind of sticky and for some reason I LOVED it), and added gravy if you wanted. I loved eating in the caf a la carte (meaning not the normal hot lunch, but a variety of different foods in our high school). Sometimes my meal was just mashed potatoes and a cookie.
Mrs. Q, I truly applaud what you are doing here…I have learned so much about school meals and food in general through your blog, and look forward to reading and learning more as you finish your last semester of eating school lunches.
I am a pre-service practicum student working in a NM elementary school this semester. Inspired by your blog, I also wrote a blog on school meals at this particular school. Please read if you have time; I know you have a busy schedule. 🙂
http://losmorgans.blogspot.com/2010/09/practicum-school-lunch-breakfast.html
I never liked salisbury steak TV dinners or school lunches. I guess I crunched down on chips of bone too many times (at least, I hope that's what that was). Even as a kid I knew that meat patty was ground up WHO KNOWS WHAT, maybe roadkill or someone's fingers from the TV dinner factory or something, who knows? (That's what us kids would joke about anyway.)
No idea what homemade Salisbury Steak would be like. Until now, I guess it never even occured to me that it existed. In my mind Salisbury Steak always equals Digusting Mystery Meat.
Not on topic at all, but the first time in my life that I had to go to the ER and get stitches was when I was a toddler jumping on the couch. I hit my forehead on the corner of the coffee table.
That's all. 🙂
Your husband's choice of Salisbury steak doesn't surprise me in the least 😀 – I cook most of our meals from scratch to avoid the preservatives and salt [can't have] in pre packaged food, but for some dang reason in the once and a while I buy "mystery" meat [which is what my family calls it] they gobble it up and exclaim "That was so good." It used to hurt my feelings, hee, but you simply cannot replicate the fakey goodness of salisbury steak. heehee [and we don't get the tv dinner type we go for the honker 6 pack family tray.]