Day 221 - Vegetable Panang Curry

When I was a kid, sometimes we got lucky and were served a TV dinner for supper.  Now that I am an adult, I realize those nights were probably times my mom was exhausted and not in the mood to cook meat loaf or cheesey chicken (which was her specialty).  But at the time, it felt a bit like hitting the jack pot to get that metal tray, piping hot, placed in front of me.  Oh that metal tray…  With the separate areas for the turkey with gravy and piping hot mashed “potatoes”.  Ahhhh…  Fancy!

Now I am an adult.  At least age-wise I am an adult.  And I do not find instant potatoes with a thin layer of crust on the top appealing anymore. 

BUT I HAVE FOUND A TV DINNER REPLACEMENT.  Trader Joe’s has an amazing assortment of frozen foods.  You could spend an hour just strolling down the frozen section, filling your cart with boxes and bags.  And one box you should put in that cart is VEGETABLE PANANG CURRY with Jasmine Rice.  It’s great!

Put this box in your shopping cart, stat!

It takes a total of 4 minutes in the microwave to cook (as opposed to God knows how long my mom had to leave our TV dinners in the oven way back in prehistoric before microwave times…).  The box has one serving so it was perfect when I gobbled it up just now for a very late 5:15 PM lunch. 

The Jasmine Rice is wonderful.  It is steamy, fluffy, with just the right amount of “stick”.  Veggies include zucchini, onion, asparagus, kale, green beans, snow peas, baby corn, and spinach.  See – it’s a far cry from the watery fake potatoes in the TV dinners of my youth!  And the curry sauce is fantastic.  The only bit of negativity is that the asparagus in this dish is sometimes “woody”. 

Here it is on a plate - I was a bit messy when I dumped it out cuz I was starving

Overall this is a terrific saucy, ricey dish and should be eaten by YOU (unless you are not a fan of slightly spicy stuff, then skip this and eat something boring).

Note – this is VEGAN, so if that’s your thing they gotcha covered.

Price – $2.69 (I think…)

Rating – 4.75

Day 34 - Asian Vegetable Stir Fry

This is not the type of thing we normally buy – pre-cut veggies all set to stir fry.  For us, a big part of the “fun” and deliciousness of cooking is the prep – chopping, measuring, etc.  And paying extra for someone else to do the prep work just seems silly, especially when we actually ENJOY that stuff.  But, for the sake of the blog, we bought this to see how it was.

Find this in the produce section

First off, it was not expensive when you consider all the stuff packed into it:  green peppers, broccoli, red peppers, white onions, snap peas, snow pea pods, bamboo shoots, bok choy, baby corn, mushrooms, red onions, carrots, and water chestnuts.  That is a ton of veggies for a stir fry!  When you are a household of two (as we are) and make a stir fry from scratch, you buy all those veggies and use little bits of each, leaving lots of half eaten veggies in the fridge.  So the idea of all of this variety in one pack was actually pretty appealing.  The package recommended cooking the veggies with a meat or tofu, and we almost never cook tofu, so we thought, “What the heck!” and did it with tofu (which will be reviewed on another day).

Veggie stir fry in action - in the wok

Packaging close up

Impressions – for me, the stir fry had a surprising lack of flavor.  I am not sure how all of those delicious vegetables could be mixed up together and the end result have LESS flavor than any of the individual veggies on their own…  I thought the whole point was that the WHOLE IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS…  Even the onions were mild.  I wish the mix would have included some GARLIC – that might have livened things up.  We made it in a wok using Extra Virgin Olive Oil and soy sauce, but perhaps we should have added our own garlic.  After eating a couple of bites, I added sriracha sauce to mine to give it some pep. 

The label says it is “about 6 servings” – for us (two tiny people) it was TWO SERVINGS.  I guess if you eat like a Cabbage Patch Doll, it would be 6 servings. 

Price – $3.99

Rating – 2.75