January 16, 2023
After a brief exchange on Twitter, I took another look at some of the pre-packaged-meals companies.
There are two problems: First, they're expensive at about $12 per serving. That's about the same as going out to eat. Now admittedly going to a steakhouse would double that, but if you're doing this to save money compared to going out, it's not going to help.
Second, it doesn't solve the problem I have with cooking. I'm fine with going to the store, I hate the prep work. And all these companies (Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, whatever) send you ingredients to be prepared. I don't know about Hello Fresh, but Blue Apron doesn't even send all the ingredients so they're not even solving the going-to-the-store problem.
There is one company that makes TV dinners. They're... OK, I guess. But they have the same problem as regular TV dinners in that they're more like TV largish snacks.
Then there's Tovala, which sells ready-to-cook meals... that you have to cook in their $300 toaster oven. Apparently their fancy toaster oven switches modes in the middle of cooking, which is programmed by scanning a QR code on the meal package. They're the only ones aside from the TV-dinner people that do the parts I hate. But having to buy an expensive piece of equipment to be able to cook the meals is a hard no.
So it looks like there's more spaghetti and chili in my future.
Edit, Sunday afternoon: Heh, my brain churned on this for a while, and I remembered something we used to buy back in Pittsburgh. Basically a frozen stir-fry type of meal that you could chuck into a frying pan and make a 1-2 serving meal out of. A bit healthier than TV dinners and almost as easy. We called it "bachelor chow" after the gag from Futurama.
Turns out they still make something like it, though I can't remember if the ones I bought yesterday are the same brand as the ones from 20 years ago. We'll see if they're any good. They should be a nice change of pace at least.
