Yup, been about 6 days since my last post. Between the July 4th weekend and about enough inspiration to get my lazy ass out of bed in the morning, this post is about all I can handle at the moment. Inspiration will return, I’m sure. Let’s take a quiet interlude and explore the evil & dark world of ‘frozen prepared foods’, like the ones we find at Costco and large retail super outlets.

You see, it all started here at work because were were hungry and the boss was willing to spend an amount of money on snack treats & sodas for us. That’s nice, huh? It is initially, but keep in mind, this food is only that in name. Sure it gets you through a tough hour or so, but sometimes it wants to be avoided. This is such a tale.
It was a blustery cool Thursday morning in July, maybe 10:30 in the morning. The tummy grumbles had started and it was too early to take off fer lunch. I’d been avoiding The Freezer and I have to say, I’ve done really well over the last week.
I was exceptionally hungry today. It was clearly time for an adventure, to The Freezer (T.F.)I flew.
T.F. looks like a big white coffin, one of those laying down commerical rigs and you have to prop the door open with one hand while you search out your snack treat with the other. Sometimes you have to use your head cause snack treats can be a wily prey. Since we’d only been shopping a week ago or so, it was glisteny full of frozen prepared foods. Baked Crusty Chicken Pocket Bakes, Cheese Steak ‘sandwiches’, some package that assured us it was a ‘burrito’, Taquitos ( don’t eeven know what that is, Bagel Bites (distant cousin to pizza, real distant), Eggo Waffles, Microwavable Corn Dogs (yum), single serving ‘pizza’, plus assorted icey creams & ices. Oh and don’t forget the lead based catalyst for our Two-component Polysulfide Rubber for deck seam caulking on boats. We have it all.
I’ve tried one of everything, except the Crassanwich breakfast food item. It was unopened, which means “I AM THE FIRST!!!”
I could have ripped open the clear wrapping on the box, but I chose to carefully cut it off with my pocket knife while checking out the picture of the Croissant, egg, cheese & ‘sausage’ breafast treat I was going to snack upon. This could be the one Item that delivers the flavor. This could be MY moment of quiet victory. I was open to anything at that point.
Well, years ago I learned that reading the instructions can be quite helpful. It’ll tell you how long it might take to cook and whether you need to open the ends of the package or not. That kind of stuff. I set myself to the task of rotating over and over the package, attempting to FIND the instructions. This was a tough one, the instructions were half on the side and you had to really struggle to lay flat the wrapper so you could read it. Plus putting it in 4 pt. type didn’t help. I should have taken warning signs here and stopped. Did I? No. I was shocked when it told me that I couldn’t cook the treat IN the wrapper. They forced me to find a damn paper towl and wrap it up. Sigh, this is NO convenience food. I complied and continued reading, gotta follow those instructions, pal. As if that wasn’t enough, this packaged ‘convenience’ food was designed to be fricken defrosted first !!! AHHAHHAHAHHAHAH, not possible. I popped it in to the 1000 watt microwave that Big D gave me and set it to 1 minute. The instructions said 50 seconds, I figured an extra 10 seconds for the ‘defrost’. I tested the sandwich with the ‘squeeze’ method to see if any lumpy frozen parts existed, a little. So another 10 seconds, perfection.
Yeah, almost. About halfway through the little package, I’d made up my mind. “This really isn’t very good,” I said to myself. As I popped the last bite I thought, “I don’t think I’ll have that again.”
You see, it really does need to be defrosted first. What happens is the croissant, egg & cheese turn in to a seething hot molten morass while the ‘meat’ retains ice crystals inside. I mentioned this to the crew and little Eddy said you need to disassemble the sandwich and heat just the meat first. Put it all back together, then heat as normal. Even so, not again. Not only did it not taste so great, icey or not, the convenience level is so low I don’t believe it is worth anyone’s time.
To sum it all up, frozen convenience foods are always and read those instructions. They’ll give you a heads up as to how something wants to be warmed up, frozen or not.
Seeya!