And add onions. Favorite thing to get at swim meets. And the walking tacos. Mmmmm... I'll buy the already fried fried chicken. Pretty sure it's death in a bag, but oh so delicious.
FOCUS: I just looked and my freezer is basically empty except for ice, a few bottles of vodka, and some frozen fish filets. When I started to really look into why I wasn't making any progress at the gym and revamped my diet, I just cut out most of that stuff. Id rather indulge with 6 tacos at a taqueria or metric ton of sushi if I go out. I used to eat Healthy Choice meals or Lean Cuisine, but then I realized that I was always hungry after and I wasn't trying to lose weight like a lazy 50 year old woman. I like to think I'm making amends with my body for my early 20s when I used to eat 5-10 frozen burritos a week, slathered in sour cream. Shit would have made Oliver Twist say "gross". Alt-Focus: -Sex in cars. I'm not in HS anymore, I don't want to be pressed against hard plastic when I'm trying to get swerve. -Tofu/Seitan...especially if its labeled "vegan chicken" or "vegan beef" -Indian Casinos. All the terrible shit about casinos without the excess oxygen, free drinks, or dealers who don't despise you
Marie Callender's individual chicken pot pies. Ever have a chicken pot pie with not enough crust, or, god forbid, it didn't even have a bottom crust? Nope, not here. It's a heart attack waiting to happen, and you better be into carbo loading, but if so they're worth it. I don't eat them that often but if I'm suffering from the laziest of the lazies then I know I can get something quick and filling.
Focus:This is my freezer currently: 180 lbs of various cuts of grass fed beef, 30 lbs of homemade sausage, 12 jars of homemade stock, various bags of frozen vegetables, bacon, copious bars of butter, frozen containers of chicken zoodle soup and about a dozen zip-lock bags full of a base tomato sauce. I'm like Aetius in the fact that other than frozen veggies, I can't recall something I bought from the freezer aisle. So for me, it's much easier to just grab a couple of items out of the freezer and throw them in a pot and make a quick meal, or if I'm really planning ahead, plop everything into a crockpot in the morning before heading to work. The only exception to this is my daughter absolutely loves her some frozen chicken nuggets, so I usually have a box or two of those to keep her happy. Alt-Focus:Blue cheese. I'd rather blow a syphilitic homeless guy than ever have to consume that filth again. And I don't care which form it is either; crumbles, sauce for wings, cut straight from the wheel, just not happening. It's one of the few things that will make me nearly instantly vomit.
For some frozen stuff that have the option of nuking or baking, like chicken nuggets or corn dogs, I do both - 30 seconds in the microwave, and then in the oven to crisp it up. It shortens the cooking time by half. With french fries and tater tots, I bake them, but toss them in a small amount of oil and salt before going in the oven - makes them taste better but not as bad as deep frying them.
Red Baron personal pizzas are my go-to frozen food. I always have two boxes in my freezer and will eat them when I have no idea what I want, but need to get food into my body fast. It has actual slices of pepperoni instead of tiny chunks of it, which I prefer. In college, I ate three-cheese French breads like my life depended on it. Jose Ole chimichangas are very good. I can't ever wait long enough for them to cool to eat them with my hands, so I fork and knife it. They have a good amount of filling and not too much tortilla, which is the way I like it.
Pillsbury Pizza Pops - pop em in the toaster oven and I'm good to go - the three cheese is the best, weirdly enough. Meat lovers just tastes like added salt and the consistency is a bit too vomit-like. I go on spicy jamaican patty kicks once and a while but after going through a few rolls of TP I get off that fast.
I can't remember the brand name but Sam's Club has these chipotle black bean burgers in the frozen food isle that make for a very tasty quick snack. I'm a meat eater but they are truly delicious with the proper cheese on top. I bought some smoked gouda once that was awesome on them.
I find it hard to describe how much I love fast and overly processed foods, and it seems the more shitty, the more I love them. This of course is tempered with a handful of abominations of which should not be ingested by man. There happens to be a Safeway right by me which means I've been turned on to their fine selection of frozen appetizers under the moniker of "Safeway Selects". I don't know how select these things are, but drunk at 11:30, I've found I can polish off a few boxes of whatever I've shoved into my buggy. Add in hot sauce and ranch and these things don't stand a chance of lasting longer than mid-week. Alt focus - microwavable White Castle sliders Congratulations - you took an already poor product with little to no travel ability, froze it and then sold it with the instructions to nuke and serve. I don't know what I expected I guess.
god help me but i'll eat the fuck out of those white castle burgers. i'm just glad they only make them in a 6 pack, and not a 12 or 15. the box says that 2 sliders is 1 serving, but i've never not eaten all 6.
I try to stay to the "outside edge" of the grocery store, but I can crush a big two-pound bag of the frozen cheese ravioli from Wegmans. Let's review my thought process when I see this stuff: - Is it pasta? Fuck yes it is. You know you're gonna throw some tomato sauce and parmesan on that shit. - Does it have ricotta cheese? You bet your ass it does. Creamy, cheesy goodness stuffed into a pasta pouch. - Cook time? Four to five minutes. This is going into my face-hole within ten minutes of making the decision to eat something. - Can I use it as the base for other recipes? Yuuuuuup! Layer these bad boys in a dutch oven with sauce, mozzarella, and meat. That's lazy lasagna. In conclusion: 10/10 would buy again.
Focus: Stouffer's is my quality go-to frozen food. Their pita sandwiches and similar items are good, though you have to live with chunks of meat instead of slices. White Castle's frozen burgers are good. Chilli's now has a frozen food line that I've found to be really tasty. On the other hand... Anti-focus: Boston Market, while I like their restaurants, seems to have farmed out their supermarket frozen line to the test kitchen from hell. Utter crap: The mystery meat they call meatloaf was barely edible (and I'm not picky), and the mashed potatoes just taste like shit (again, I'm not picky). Hungry Man is aptly named: You're still gonna be hungry. There's a few edible bits, and a lot of crap. Edit: Oh, how could I forget frozen pizzas? Tony's are cheap and good, I like Red Baron and regular Jack's, but what I really like, and I've only been able to find briefly once in the nine years I've lived in Vegas, are Jack's "naturally rising" pizzas. They cost a bit more, but the crust is the best I've had in a frozen pizza, and after cooking it keeps in the fridge much better than any other frozen pizza I've had. I wrote the president of the division of Kraft Foods that does their frozen stuff a few years ago, trying to pitch the benefits of selling Jack's naturally rising pizzas in Vegas. He didn't even have his assistant send me a form letter; just dead air. He must know he could kill my family in front of me, and I'd still buy his product when I can get it.
I also love the frozen taquitos. Chicken or beef, doesn't matter. I pat a little bit of oil on there, bake it, and serve it up with salsa and plain greek yogurt (to me it tastes enough like sour cream). Oh man, I need to go buy some. I have some homemade salsa sitting in the fridge and it is saying that it is done with the tortilla chips and wants something more substantial. My salsa is pretty feisty.
Other than frozen vegetables like peas and corn, I stash a lot of meat in my freezer. The majority of space is for things like that. Occasionally I'll have some of those frozen chicken pot pies for el husband because they are pretty good and the alternative is fast food. I started making my own pot pies to freeze and they are really good, but we haven't quite figured out the best temp/time to cook them at. Once we figure that out we'll be golden. I have a lot of pastry wrapped ideas that I want to cram in my freezer but I've got to get over that hurdle to make it worth my while. My main "set it and forget it" recipe entails taking a pork butt or shoulder, dropping it in my crockpot, and letting it cook on high all day. I make carnitas and BBQ sandwiches with the meat and can store the cooked meat in the freezer for later, too. One shoulder or butt yields way more meat than 2 people can even hope to consume.
Foster Farms Crispy (chicken) Strips: The big ones are good (twss). However, there are a lot of small pieces, which would be fine except they're fucking inedible. The shit-ass meat gets ground up and breaded to become these tiny chicken bits, and tossed into the bag to mostly fill it along with a few strips that will be good once nuked for 3 1/2 minutes. Not worth the price.
I'm sorry... this guy is a "frozen food reviewer" and then gets outraged when frozen food isn't very high quality? If you can't figure out that a $2 box of frozen chicken nuggets isn't exactly going to be organic, then I don't know what to say to you. ALT-FOCUS: I think I posted this way back on the RMMB, but it's not something I will ever forget. These things set off a category 5 tropical storm in my digestive system. I must have just gotten a bad box, because I'm sure what those things did to me would have killed any child under 12. My stomach sounded like two angry midgets wrestling in a kiddie pool, and for the next three days my shits (all 400 of them) looked like I was pressure washing the toilet with beef stew. Too much information? Naaaah.
I never mentioned these, did I? Just throw it in the microwave for five minutes, plastic wrap and all. Let it sit for a minute afterward, cut open the package and drop it on a plate. Boom, perfectly good Americanized Chinese food. Just stay away from the shrimp fried rice: I love shrimp, but holy mother of Jehoshaphat is their shrimp awful...
Freshman year of college, I probably ate like 5-7 of these things a week. Red Baron Deep Dish Singles. Spoiler There was this overpriced foodmart on the meal plan and I got the three meat versions all the time. I really haven't had frozen meals outside of the Chicago local Home Run Inn Pizza in about 4-5 years. I miss hot pockets from college and Tyson's wings, but for some reason the stuff I want to buy always feels like 2-3 dollars more than I want to pay. I'm not a cheapass, but it just feels like a lot for what I'm getting.