Join Me in Celebrating National Frozen Food Month!

When I was growing up, you could tell March was coming, even if you didn’t have a calendar. How? The grocery stores sold kites in the check-out lane. Sometime in the late 1980s, I remember seeing a logo in the front windows of Publix. It featured a penguin, and it heralded “National Frozen Food Month.” Oh, the irony. For those of us who live Up North, we’re just shaking the February snow from our boots. And here they want us to get excited about something frozen? Maybe they should move this observation to July.

Anyway, how does the Most Important Man! celebrate National Frozen Food month? Well obviously, he hops on the bandwagon. Here’s what’s gone from freezer to table at 54 Yale Street, during the month of March.

I don’t usually shop down there at the Food Hole. However, if I’m going to make meatballs or meatloaf, I’ll usually start there for the ground beef.

But since March is so special, I thought it would be a good idea to peruse the freezer case. This was $3.99, which is a damn good value for a frozen pizza. It features a generous amount of feta cheese, but not enough to make you reach for the Lipitor. As far as feta varieties go, it’s not particularly salty, and neither are the kalamata olives. I might even go as far to say it’s worth it to go back to the Food Hole for this, and overlook the frequent sightings of tattoo’d freaks using their WIC cards and wads of cash to shop there.

 

Fortunately, Trader Joe’s is expanding into enough cities that many people are familiar with their stores and products. What’s more fun to say than “Bibimbap Bowl?” Well, “Irish Wristwatch” is but you can’t eat an Irish Wristwatch. This was pretty good as well, and I’d get it again. I think I ate a small salad with it, which is not very Korean, but I didn’t get hungry 22 minutes after eating it, either.

 

 

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably realized that I’m not really a “meat & potatoes” kind of eater. When Margaret and I go to a Thai restaurant for the first time, one of us will always order the pad thai. It’s sort of a measuring stick for us. This pad thai is pretty good. It’s better than some pad thai dishes I’ve eaten in restaurants. But they were restaurants I never went back to. I’d get this again as well. It’s less than $4, but you’ll want to eat something else with it. It’s “vegetable” so you’ll be hungry later.

 

 

I’m going to go out on a limb and state that this is the best frozen dinner available in the United States of America. However, if you don’t like curry, you might want to revisit the Swanson’s Salisbury Steak, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables.

 

I’ve filled and emptied my fridge freezer twice this month. And for one week, I even had an assistant, my son the college freshman. He was home on spring break, and gladly lent his expertise. More later.