An Odd (Healthy) Choice

I eat a lot of Healthy Choice frozen food. I am a terrible cook and I'm trying to lose weight, so their products appeal to me.

One of their more respectably tasty entrées is their "Chicken Margherita", a nice little chicken and pasta dish. For years, it was served in the traditional small, flat box.

The packaging has recently been changed, however:


They have decided, for some reason, to make this a "Cafe Steamer" dish. This is problematic for several reasons.

The first is that it vastly increases the size of the packaging, to the point where I can't fit more than one in my freezer at the same time. Why is this?

Because each individual package is now two very large, thick pieces of plastic: A bowl the sauce sits at the bottom of, and a steaming basket that sits above it with the pasta, chicken, and bits of tomato and garlic.

This leads me to my second problem with this change: Did anyone think of how much more waste this whole process produces? To go from one flimsy piece of plastic to two very strong ones a) cannot be cheap and b) is just a wee bit earth-unfriendly.

And frankly, it doesn't really taste any different from the way it did when you just nuked the traditional flat package.

It does, however, lead me to the most amusing problem: Hilariously obvious instructions.

This is a picture of the directions on the back, which you can click to enlarge:



I direct your attention to the text in italics on the bottom right. If you can't read it from the picture, it says:

Meal can also be enjoyed by placing steamed food on a plate and topping with sauce.

Wow! You mean I'm not legally obligated to use this giant plastic thing included in the packaging? I totally thought that's what I was agreeing to by purchasing this Cafe Steamer.

Overall, it adds up to a needless, wasteful, and downright silly redesign of a product that was just fine the way it originally was.

A Delicious Breakfast of Failure

I was famished when I got back from the gym today, so I poured myself a big bowl of milk and Cheerios. I got about three bites into it when I realized, "Gee, despite the fact that it smelled okay, this milk tastes awfully sour."

I realized how sour as I was pouring the bowl into the garbage disposal. The milk wasn't pouring, it was oozing. Hopefully the few bites I had aren't going to come back on me later.

I was out of non-cereal breakfast food besides eggs, so I said, okay, I'll just make myself some scrambled eggs. So I scrambled up the eggs, and go to turn on the stove. Of course, the electric stove starter isn't working.

I broke out my headlamp and lookes behind the stove, and somehow it's managed to come unplugged. My arm is neither thin nor long enough to reach back to the plug on its own.

I MacGyvered up a poking stick from some vacuum cleaner parts, but I couldn't get enough leverage to actually push the plug back in far enough to get it working.

I tried to pull the stove out, but it's firmly wedged in. Finally, I gave up and decided to use my big long lighter to just light the damn burner.

I looked all over the place for the big long lighter. Couldn't find it. Finally gave up and used a normal lighter, almost burning my thumb off in the process.

But at least I had my eggs, which I ate while calling the landlord and telling him to send over some guys to help me plug the damn stove back in.

A Magical Place With Aisles and Aisles of Food

I realized tonight as I stopped off at the grocery store on my way home that it's been an astonishingly long time since I actually went to the grocery store for more than about five items.

Since my foot surgery, I've gotten highly addicted to getting my groceries delivered. It's so much easier than going grocery shopping that I hadn't been in quite some time, despite the fact that I think it works out to be slightly more expensive.

As I got out of work at a reasonable hour tonight and have been running low on many foodstuffs, I decided to actually go to the grocery store.

About five minutes after I walked in, I heard the voice of George Oscar Bluth in my head, saying, "I've made a huge mistake."

There was...so much food! And it was all on sale! I had to buy it now or I'd lose out on my chance to save $1.65 on a box of couscous!

The other problem was that I've gone into severe stock-up mode for the long winter of unemployment that's about to descend on me, and there were several items there that helped me in my goal of trying to keep my average meal cost hovering around $3.

I now have enough cheese to clog the arteries of even the most fastidious jogger, enough cans of Chunky soup to make a three-story pyramid, and bunches and bunches of Honey Bunches of Oats. Oh, and several boxes of couscous.

Luckily, I think I now have enough food to get me through about mid-January, except perhaps having to pick up the odd gallon of milk from time to time. Although I suspect I'm going to be awfully sick of Chunky soup by that point.

Cheap Eats

So I've mentioned my joking plan to subsist on cat food should the strike put me out of work to several people, and I've learned a couple of things about inexpensive food:

1. There are a lot more ways to prepare Ramen than you'd think.

2. People seriously will eat anything when they're stoned. More than one person mentioned eating dog biscuits while high. One even touted the biscuits' high calcium content as a potential benefit.

Plain Cheese =! Anchovies

So I used to eat a lot of pizza, but as I've been trying to lose a large amount of weight, I've limited myself to one pizza per five pounds lost.

After a long break because I took so much time off the gym after my surgery, tonight was a pizza night. I was very excited about this, because I looooove pizza, and trying to be disciplined is...well, trying.

I called up Papa John's to order for pickup as I left physical therapy, since they're doing a $6.99 large one topping deal on pickup orders. Here is the relevant part of the conversation I had with the guy taking my order:

Him: And what topping would you like on your pizza?
Me: I'll have half pineapple and half cheese.
Him: Just cheese?
Me: Yeah, plain cheese.

So imagine my surprise after plowing through half my breadsticks and opening the pizza to eat when I found nasty-ass anchovies on half my pizza, the half that was supposed to be plain cheese.

Now I don't eat seafood at all (food poisoning when I was ten gave me what's basically a conditioned taste aversion), but even if I were to make an exception, it would not be for oily, salty, gross, horrible anchovies.

I suppose it's probably better for my continued weight loss that I ended up just trashing that half of the pizza. Still, it's a bit frustrating to have to throw half a hot, fresh pizza in the dumpster.

Fat Kitty

Using the tried and true method of "weigh self holding cat, then put cat down and weigh self, then subtract," I was aghast to discover that Chaplin now tips the scales at almost 17 pounds.

I put him on the "weightloss/hairball control" formula of cat food when he hit 16, and while he stayed at 16 for a while, I can't figure out why he's suddenly started gaining again.

The only thing I can think of is that since I'm now home to notice that his food dish is empty as soon as he finishes with it, I might be feeding him more.

Still, it explains why I fear my ribs are going to crack whenever he comes and sits on my chest.

I'll have to keep a better eye on his food, otherwise I'm going have to get him a little kitty treadmill.

The Little Victories

I love Chinese food. It took me two and a half years to find a good Chinese food place at my old apartment. So when I moved, I was sad, because all that effort was going out the window.

I was digging through the near-last of the boxes (I don't think I'll get to the last-last for several months) and found one of the menus, and got a wonton craving.

So I figured what the hell, called them up, and asked if they delivered to my new address. Then the skies parted, and a chorus of angels sang: They deliver to my new place.

That news made me more disproportionally happy than anything else this weekend.

The FDA Answers My Childhood Prayers

Why couldn't this warning have just been in place since 1981?