Wednesday 16 January 2019

Eat the Stores - Ready Meals


Eating the stores last night meant having this out of the freezer.  

It was a Mac n Cheese ready meal.  Now I remember why I don't buy ready meals that often ... even when they are reduced with a yellow sticker as this one was.

It looked promising on the cardboard sleeve, and even look quite large and appetising inside it's black dish while it was still frozen, then I reheated it in the microwave ... once the vegan cheese was melted the whole thing seemed to shrink before my very eyes. 

My first thought was what can I put into it now, while it's still hot to make this more filling.  There was no time to cook up some veggies, and to be honest I've not been in a veggie mood this past couple of days or the veggies would have been cooking alongside it. Then I spotted some leftover boiled potatoes in a Tupperware box in the fridge.  I chopped them up smaller and stirred them into the piping hot sauce.  It made it more filling and helped soak up some of the excess cheesy sauce, but it was still not the gorgeousness that a homemade Mac n Cheese usually is.

It'll be a while before I buy another ready meal for sure.


🥘


12 comments:

  1. I agree 100% Sue - on the very rare occasion when we buy a ready meal (usually because we've gone shopping in a rush, unprepared, and we're hungry), heating and eating it reminds us why we don't normally buy them!

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    1. It'll be a while until I get another that's for sure!

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  2. I always find them disappointing. The photo on the sleeve looks so good but the inside just doesn't match up in appearance or in expected flavour.
    xx

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  3. I can't remember the last time I ate a ready meal, but it is for the reasons you mention. I feel much the same about takeaways, the idea of having one is always better than the reality. It's a shame as they often look promising. X

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    1. The only thing I eat from the Chinese takeaway is the plain boiled rice and a portion of curry sauce. It doesn't pretend to be anything it's not and is reliably tasty when we're feeling totally lazy and can pick a takeaway up on the way back from the cinema. We live too far away for the home delivery service and it's too far to go out just for a takeaway.

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  4. Sue, I remember my daughter's friend buying some ready meals at University, she'd be so disappointed when it didn't look like the picture and much smaller than she hoped it would be. My daughter taught her to look for the weight on the box if it's only 250g then it's not going to be filling etc. It's also the taste that's not always appealing too, don't let me wrong I've bought some ys 26p meals that should have been £3(no way are ey worth that). I like to batch cook making extra portions to freeze as home made ready meals. I'm glad that you thought in your feet and added the potatoes out of the fridge, it would have been very small with out them from the picture. I'm doing us cauliflower cheese from the Tesco 29p ones boight just after Christmas loads of lovely extra mature cheese from the fridge and a dash of English mustard in the sauce, serving with mini roast potatoes and onions also from the 29p Christmas veg offers. Loving your posts such an inspiration xx

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    1. I learnt all about ready meals and their portion sizes and weight gaining credentials when I lived without a cooker for two years after my first marriage broke down ... so I should know better !!

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  5. There are days I wish I could eat ready meals - and then there are times like this I remember why it's not such a big loss after all. I can't eat them, because most of them have either onions (chives and leeks count as onions) or chicken which I can't eat.

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    1. I should imagine it's really hard to avoid things with onion (or things from the allium family) in them. I know it's bad enough avoiding dairy, but these days virtually every recipe starts with onions.

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  6. So true. Ready meals are rarely anywhere near as nice as they look on the box. Spookily I read this after weighing out macaroni for a mega mac and cheese I'm making for the rest of the family to eat while I'm out tonight. Hope it ends up tasting a bit better!

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    1. Gosh I bet yours was a lot tastier, larger AND healthier than mine. Although to be fair I was impressed with the vegan cheese on mine, sometimes that can be a bit yuk to say the least!

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