Terrible Food Day

So, I thought it would be a good idea to have Terrible Food Day for my daughter (and, by extension, me). My wife is always buying these healthy things with buckwheat and chia and tiny rocks, and while I appreciate her earnest healthward leanings, I recognize that when you are seven years old, tofu and gravelly grain is not the most appealing.

I started talking about TV dinners to my daughter. The cobbler! You put a TV dinner in the oven and if you wanted the (arguable) meat to be hot, that cobbler was going to be fused like magma. Pirate Picnic--that was my favorite when I was a kid. Games on the box! Nestle's Quik mix included! This is what life was like before Atari.

The excitement was palpable.

So we ventured forth to our local grocery store. I was anticipating a rich array of choices. But the only real TV dinners I could find were Hungry Mans. And I don't think a 50 pound person needs 2 pounds of food. (Incidentally, while we were discussing what terrible food choice we would make, a hungry man approached the Hungry Mans and changed his mind when he heard us. Sorry, Swanson.)

Apart from that there were some Banquet choices, only one of which had a dessert in it, and that one looked pretty terrible. In the end she opted for a kind-of TV dinner featuring chicken nuggets and some macaroni and cheese that was frankly unholy and did not taste even a little like cheese.

I myself opted for the Stouffer's turkey tetrazzini, a foodstuff I consumed throughout high school and college at a truly alarming rate. And I tell you it hasn't changed. In fact the particular box I purchased may have been from 1992--how could you tell?

I also tried to flesh out Terrible Food Day with Chikn-in-a-Biskit crackers. My daughter ate one and sputtered "aaaagh! salty!" I assured her that the chemical reaction taking place in her insides was not just salt--it was Nature's Perfect Food: MSG! And lots of it! But no matter how I tried to explain the wonders of Flavor Enhancer, she would not be swayed.

So anyway, I may have affected her eating habits in a good way by making her eat stuff that tastes even worse than quinoa. She liked the orange soda though.