Have you tried NO KNEAD? This method is both fool-prove and stupid easy. No stress, no physical effort. Patience required while the bread works its own magic. This is our go-to method.
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Remembering Lucca Ravioli in the SF Bay Area. Those were good! I swear I was eating those as a toddler.
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What do people think of Stouffer’s? A friend and her husband love the mac and cheese, and the meatloaf. I’ve had the spinach souffle in the distant past and loved it.
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Definitely agree on the Gorton’s. I always enjoyed breaded frozen fish sticks and fillets as a kid - kind of a treat growing up in a poor household - and at least for a while as a young adult in the Army. But I’ve rarely bought them thereafter.
Maybe 6 months ago my local grocery had all things Gorton on BOGO, so I loaded up with a couple types of fish fillets, a box of sticks, and I think it was 3 types of breaded shrimp (thinks to self: Gee, why am I always so tight on freezer space?).
The filets were mushy and watery just as you say, whether in oven or air fryer.
The shrimp were average-decent.
I’ll have to think on other stuff that might fit your category.
Edit - oh, now I remember the brand. Chung’s frozen egg rolls, veggie and chicken varieties. Also overloaded because BOGO (this is really the only time, other than New Year’s Eve, that I buy pre-prepped frozen stuff). I’ve tried these microwaved, oven, air-fried, and micro-defrosted then finished in the air fryer. Bad texture, but also the taste was very “off” on both the veggie and the chicken-veg. I remember someone recommended Chung’s pork eggrolls in one of your other threads but the store only had the veg and chicken at the time, so I didn’t get to try those.
Nah, man/woman, I get that you’re probably exaggerating for emphasis, but when you’re burning +5 Kcal a day, you take what you can get. C-Rats were horrible (esp. if you had to eat cold grease) but they were calories. MREs throughout the 1980s weren’t much better (same comment about cold greasy) but got a bit better by early `90s.
Disclaimer - not a combat vet, all stateside duty stations, but spent plenty of time eating that stuff on annual bivouacs.
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Oh, those too! A daughter asked me to get them for use in frozen smoothies. Not good at all. She made one smoothie and said she was done with the bag. I thawed some and tried on a salad, and tried to make guacamole. Not good.
The dumb thing about the Trader Joe’s Chinese main meal items I have tried (beef broccoli, Kung Pow chicken) is that you cook it in a pan. It probably takes only a few more minutes for me to make it from scratch. The orange chicken cooks up fast and easy if one is into deep fried candied chicken. Not much different than someplace like Panda express, which is not a complement.
I agree they are all too sweet.
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Frozen foods (other than ice cream) that are not garbage.
Marie Callender’s chicken pot pie
DiGiorno’s Rising Crust Pizza
Hungry-Man Salisbury Steak dinner (the standard and forbearer)
Costco lasagna
When it comes to frozen Meals I think most people have reduced expectations, me included.
We find T.J.'s Indian Meals to be tasty, not full of odd Ingredients, quick and easy.
Frozen Mandu and other Asian Dumplings (oddly Ajinomoto Gyoza Dumplings are pretty good)
Stouffer’s Spinach Souffle (hold over from when I was a kid)
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Was a big hit at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. So many people were baking bread based on news feeds while stuck at home. I have said this many times but it was one of the few positive things to came out of the pandemic
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Agree about dumplings, potstickers and their ilk. I always stock up at H-mart and also on pelmeni and pierogi at the local Russian Gourmet (although last year they removed the word Russian from the facade so now it is simply ________ Gourmet)
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I recently commented is a different HO thread about Banquet Chicken Pot Pies, bought 'cause sale & cheap & I used to eat them years ago BUT misremembered the brand. Swanson’s was edible. These were not-- bought 2, tried one-- three bites 
& into the trash it went!
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don’t buy a ton of frozen prepared foods, usually only if there is a deal and i’m curious about it. i do buy frozen potato (fries, etc.) and the Lynden Farms varieties (my groc. out stocks them) are uniformly bad to me (with the exception of the hash browns, which are okay if you cook them twice as long as is recommended). i’m sticking with McCain.
Maybe this belongs more in the TJ Yea/Ney thread but I do not like their beef stout pie. Husband and I both threw in garbage. It was almost all crust and bad crust at that. I like crust but not that. I think there are some pies that were traditionally made with assumption you would not eat the crust. That the crust was just to hold the ingredients together until one was ready to eat. Something miners would take on the go. If so, perhaps that was the intent of this pie but I don’t think so. It was so long ago I’m not sure they still sell them.
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Talluto’s frozen ravioli and manicotti are about the only frozen foods I buy! They are great
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They really are something.
Agreed about those frozen dinners. I loved them when I first moved out on my own then stopped eating frozen dinners for awhile. I tried a beef wellington after not eating frozen dinners for awhile and it tasted like a salt lick. I also recall trying a frozen dinner when I first started working - I think it was Stouffers or Swansons - it was so long ago I don’t remember the brand name. I just remember the food tasted like the cardboard box it came in. Some of our grocery stores sell Soup’s On brand of soups that used to make an awesome hot and sour soup that I really like but they don’t seem to make it anymore. One catering company makes Indian prepared dinners (butter chicken and chickpea masala are my two favourites) and they are available at most grocery stores.
A lot of independently owned stores in Ottawa (delis, Italian, etc.) make really good prepared dinners. The Italian grocery store I go to makes awesome meatballs. I would like to try their lasagna next. One butcher I go to has pot pies made in store and they are all delicious.
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I bought a few of the Indian dinners sold at Loblaws this week (not President’s Choice brand) . We will see.
I also bought a PC chicken suisse, which looks like cordon bleu. I haven’t bought the frozen ones in a long time. I also bought PC Yuzu chicken breast product, and a new deluxe Delissio pizza with more of a Detroit-style crust.
I think M & M changed hands.
Here, too. I get those instead of frozen dinners. Even the most mediocre of them is immeasurably better than the frozen ones. I can usually have 2 meals from 1 dinner.
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The Indian meals I buy are made by Rinang Foods and I’m pretty sure you can only get them in Ottawa. They are really good.
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