Bring on the TV tray!

Pre-made meals or "TV dinners" are a multi-billion dollar a year industry in the US.  Fast, and easy to cook you can just pop your meal into a microwave and have a hot and semi tasty meal ready in minutes.  Many of them are even better if cooked in the oven, though that can take a half hour or more for them to be ready.  These meals are so popular that grocery stores now devote multiple aisles to them and thanks to microwaves becoming main stream and the crazy advancements in food preservatives and preservation we can buy pre-made frozen almost anything.  Cookie dough?  Check.  Breakfast sandwiches?  Check.  Pizza, curries, steamed vegetables?  Check, check and check.

Many of the most popular meals are ones that take a bunch of time or a bunch of effort to prepare on your own, or are just good old comfort foods.  Mac n cheese ranks right up there as something that every brand has at least one or two varieties of on the shelf. 

TV dinners of the past were often known for not being very healthy.  Something like mac n' cheese isn't known for being super healthy in the first place so this doesn't bode well for someone like me deciding it's smart to eat dozens of kinds of macaroni and cheese.  Thankfully some strides have been made with these frozen meals though they include mostly cheeses (or I dearly hope they do) and starches, when eaten in moderation won't pickle a liver like eating McDonald's did to Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me.

So I begin my trip down the frozen rabbit hole with what has to be the cheapest complete frozen meal I've ever seen.

The Review

Brand:
Michelina's Zap 'ems Gourmet Macaroni & Cheese with Cheddar and Romano

Price:
$0.88 at Lucky's (this was on sale, regular price would have been a huge $1.09)

Packaging Description:
None

Preparation:
*Before placing this in the microwave you're supposed to peel up one corner for ventilation.  The meal sits in a paper tray, with a paper cover and though the packaging says to peel the lower left corner, the upper left would work as well.  It didn't peel well and I had to rip the edge to actually be able to  peel it up to allow for ventilation.
*Microwave for 3 1/2 minutes
*Take it out and peel up the cover more.  You'll see that the pasta is on one side, the cheese sauce the other.  Take a fork and mix everything up.
*Once mixed to your liking place the cover back down as best you can and microwave for another minute thirty.
*Let it sit to cool and solidify for a few minutes.
*Commence with the nomming!

Taste:
This smelled mac n' cheesy (well, smelled like a Kraft or other similar boxed variety) so it had earned some points from me already.  The price point and the fact that every meal by this maker was by far the cheapest in the freezer section had me VERY worried.  Testing the sauce on it's own was also a surprise.  Not bad.  Tasted cheesy and wasn't too salty or off setting.  I dug into the dish and after two or three bites had come to see why this was such a budget price.  The noodles were like rubber.  I'm not sure if it's because they were over cooked at the factory before I then boiled them back into a state of animation, or that the cheap pasta just sucked.  The pasta never got better, but the cheese sauce made it bearable.

Final Score:

I wasn't expecting much from this meal and it lived up to my very low expectations.  The packaging was difficult to open, the pasta was like a chewy rubber.  The cruddy noodles really killed the meal.  The cheese sauce, though nothing amazing was  cheesy and there was enough for the dish, just not enough for me to overlook the pasta and give this a passing grade.  This is truly a budget meal and if you've got to stretch your food dollars far, this will help you, though it won't be a  tasty trip in the long run.

Nutritional Facts:

Serving Size 1 Package (213g)

Calories  260  Calories From Fat  60
Total Fat 6g (9% Daily Value)
Saturated Fat 2.5g (13% DV)
Trans Fat 0g (0% DV)
Cholesterol 10mg (3% DV)
Sodium 500mg (21% DV)
Total Carbohydrates 39g (13% DV)
Dietary Fiber 2g (8% DV)
Sugar 3g
Protein 10g