TV Dinner Inventor Dies, Is Slotted Into the Aluminum Beyond

Ah, those tiny squares of carrot interspersed with green peas, the hunk of tough turkey with gravy, the dollop of mashed potatoes, each bit in its own silvery aluminum slot--the first tv dinners were the brainchild of  a Swanson executive whose company was overloaded with a half million pounds of  surplus frozen turkey.  In 1952 Gerry Thomas who died July 18 at age 83 dubbed the  food-filled tray a "tv dinner " and made history.

Those first tv dinners took an unthinkable 25 minutes to thaw out in an oven. Foodie recalls having one once with a baby sitter--it may well have been 1952!-- while  being allowed to stay up way too late to watch Fredric March in the film "Les Miserables." 

Comments

[Cynthia]

As a child, I thought TV dinners were quite wonderful. I don't think I really considered that quality of the food as much as I was delighted by the all-in-one-package aspect of it. It was like having a good pocket knife with lots of blades.

As a young adult, I was amused when I took a British friend to the grocery store, and found him enamored of the "television suppers," as he called them. He wanted to skip going out to dinner in order to have one. They just seemed so American!

I think it is interesting that the invention was triggered by a surplus of turkey. I had always thought that it was more along the line of a reaction to increasingly busy lives. But it would not be the first time that a surplus was the mother of invention. In the late 1800s, due to the shaky economy of a Cuba fighting for its freedom from Spain an American businessman, Franklin Baker of Philadelphia, found himself being paid in coconuts -- thousands of them. Baker turned to a coconut drying technology that had worked in Ceylon, and the Pennsylvania entrepreneur was soon supplying Baker’s Coconut for a boom of its own creation. More than a hundred years later, Baker’s is still America’s best known brand of shredded coconut.

Necessity's child, indeed.

[barb]

I also loved them as a child -- particularly the chicken dinner. But I have to admit that Swanson's chicken pot pies were da bomb at our house. Ah, such innocence and 50s bliss. OK, so I still have a pot pie once in awhile, on a cold winter night when I'm feeling especially nostalgic for simpler times. Gotta have it with cheap white bread though, slathered with slightly hard butter pats.

[Cynthia]

Yes -- I can remember the bread tearing as one tried to spread the cold butter across the delicate white surface.

And there really are some times when only white bread will do: hot turkey sandwich, for example, with sliced turkey and lots of gravy. I'm certain that these things taste better with white bread because of the nostalgia, but sometimes only white bread works. My mom used to make me these great chopped black olive sandwiches, and they just had to be on white bread.

And as far as pot pies, I have friends who still consider them the best possible comfort food.

One thing that makes me smile as I consider all this is that I know people who would not think of eating a TV dinner, but who consume endless numbers of Lean Cuisines or Healthy Choices, all of which, though packaged now in plastic trays, are direct descendants of Mr. Thomas's invention.

Well, I'll stop now, as I'm making myself hungry AND nostalgic.

[Foodie]

Speaking of white bread, my sister in law's husband makes a killer eggplant sandwich every summer, layers of eggplant breaded and fried up the naughty way, with a big ring of raw onion, a thin slice of a real tomato, mayo and WHITE BREAD. Cause when you squeeze this monster together the oil drips into the bread, oh my gawd.....
That's why we eat one dainty spinach leaf for dinner, of course, ladies.

So does Marie Callendar still make a decent commercial pot pie?

[Cynthia]

Oh, my, that eggplant sandwich sounds good.

I'm glad that they have discovered that having something taste really good actually boosts your immune system. Of course, that doesn't cancel out the calories, but that's what the spinach leaf is for. ;-)

[Mary]

As a child when mom and dad were going out for the evening it was a treat to have a Swanson pot pie. I still get them from the store from time to time...and they still taste as good. I don't care for the new ones that can be cooked in the microwave, oven baked is the way for me!

[Foodie]

Hey, Cynthia--where do we read about "them" saying eating something that tastes especially good boosts the immune system?

[Cynthia]

Alas, I've read so many health and nutrition newsletters in the last few months that it is hard to pinpoint exactly which ones were reporting this -- but it was more than one. It appears that eating things we like combines some of the benefits of aromatherapy (as smell is a big part of tasting) with those of mood elevation (killer T cells, in particular, become more active when our moods are more positive). It appears to be something of a corallary to the French paradox -- people who eat sensationlly good, rich food and don't die as fast as we do. It's because most Americans are pumping down garbage, while they are eating, well, sensationally good, rich food.

There is a doctor in Chicago who is doing a great deal of research into the long-term health benefits of smell, and most of the smells that have turned out to be effective in treating people have been food smells.

Of course, in addition, thre is the joyous fact that some of the most desirablly flavored foods -- including chocolate and garlic -- are massively endowed with antioxidants. But that's another issue. There, it is the antioxidants that are beneficial, not just the pleasure.

Obviously, benefits would be would be outweighed by disadvantages if one carried this too far, but the key is making sure what we eat tastes really good.

[Foodie]

Just noticed a story about the pharmaceutical benefits of chocolate--more when I pin it down.