James Etheridge

Jackie and I went out for Mexican recently.  We both ordered Speedys and while eating, a thought struck me.  “Guess what my introduction to Mexican cuisine was,” I said.  “I don’t know,” she replied.  “Some place in Dallas?”  “No,” I chuckled, “it was Swanson TV Dinners.”  “Ugh!” she grimaced.  “We never ate TV dinners.”  We certainly did, growing up and beyond.  Both my parents worked and my father was old school.  Men didn’t cook, other than on the grill.  So many nights, Momma would get home, pop three TV dinners in the oven and that was what we had for supper.

Actually, they weren’t really bad, as far as I remember.  I guess as a kid I really didn’t know any better.  The Mexican dinner contained two tamales and an enchilada, rice, refried beans and an “authentic pepper sauce.”  Being a Southern boy, that was world cuisine!  Was it truly authentic Mexican?  Not by a long shot, but it was somewhat of a treat because it was different from anything I had eaten before.

The first Mexican restaurant I ate in was in Dallas, when I was nineteen years old.  My cousin took me to some place in a sketchy neighborhood on the south side of town. It was a stucco building painted turquoise.  I took one look at it and said, “I’m not too sure I want to go in this place.”  “Come on,” he said.  “The food is great.”  The booths looked like they were out of a diner from the Fifties, which they probably were.  There were big rips on the seat cushions.  A TV up in the corner was playing Mexican soap operas.  The menu was in Spanish and I don’t think anyone who worked there really spoke English.  We both ordered tamales and drank Carta Blancas.

The food was fantastic and the tamales were nothing like the ones in the Swanson TV dinners.  I was hooked.  Tamales are still my favorite Mexican dish.

Another entree in the Swanson lineup was Salisbury steak, better known as mystery meat.  Authentic Salisbury steak is made of ground beef and spices.  There is no telling what the Swanson version was made of, although I do have to admit it tasted pretty good, at least back then. The dinner also contained what I suppose passed for creamed corn, a brownie and whipped potatoes that looked and tasted more like paste.  There were two small salt and pepper packs included in the package, neither one near enough to give the potato paste any semblance of flavor.

Then there was the fried chicken dinner.  It came with a thigh, a wing, a drumstick, a medley of peas, carrots and corn, the same potato paste that was in the Salisbury steak dinner and some sort of gluey apple pie.  The chicken wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t like Mema used to make.  A couple of the other Swanson dinners available were turkey and roast beef.  I remember that the turkey was pretty bland and the gravy in the roast beef had enough sodium to choke a horse.  I was a kid and had no idea what sodium was.  All I knew was that it was brown and tasted like pure salt, probably to preserve the meat.

As I grew into late adolescence, TV dinners were my standard diet whenever my parents would go out of town.  Momma would buy a few, put them in the freezer and that way they wouldn’t have to worry about me setting the kitchen on fire.

I moved out of the house when I was twenty.  The contents of the fridge in me and my roommate’s apartment pretty much consisted of a pack of bologna, a jar of mayo, a jar of mustard, a two-liter Coke and a case of beer.  The freezer contained ice and TV dinners, perfect sustenance for a couple of swinging young bachelors who didn’t know any better.

Speaking of bachelorhood, my friend Tim graduated from Wheeler High in East Cobb.  The senior boys in the Cobb County school system had an elective class available called, and I kid you not, Bachelor Living.  DeKalb County didn’t have any such class.  All DeKalb County offered was Home Economics and no boys took that. Only one guy I knew of took Home Ec and he became a hairdresser.

When you look at it though, Bachelor Living would have been a great class.  I suppose the idea was to teach a boy how to function on his own between the time Mom suggested he move out and get a place of his own and when he met a lovely young lady and settled down.  Tim didn’t say if the teacher who taught the class was a bachelor or not, but I don’t think he became a hairdresser.  He did say that they learned how to make a pizza and watched filmstrips on how to sew buttons on a shirt, do laundry and iron.  He didn’t say whether or not they were taught how to peel the foil off the gluey pie on a TV dinner and stick said dinner in the oven.

In 1973, Swanson introduced the Hungry Man dinners.  These were super-sized TV dinners and geared toward burly guys with thick necks.  The Hungry Man commercials rank among my all-time favorites.  I have included two with this post.  They feature two big guys discussing what they had for dinner.  One had a Hungry Man, the other a slice of quiche or finger sandwich.  The tagline was “It’s Good To Be Full.”  The marketing strategy apparently worked, because Hungry Man dinners are still in the freezer section of supermarkets today.

I cannot remember the last time I ate a TV dinner.  My late wife Marie and I ate them for a couple of years after we got married because we both worked, got home around seven o’clock and were too tired to cook.  Besides, we were on a limited budget and TV dinners were a meal at a reasonable price.  Sometime in the Eighties she got on a Lean Cuisine kick.  Lean Cuisine was the polar opposite of Hungry Man.  They were light, supposedly healthy, bland and not very filling.  So much so that I would get up around midnight, make a big sandwich and eat it over the sink with a glass of milk.  So much for Lean Cuisine.  It’s Good To Be Full.