Why Are We Microwaving the Dessert with the Gravy?
Thoughts on frozen dinners, low-sodium diets, life with an Asian mother, queer activism, and a steaming side of fruit something-or-another.
So lately, my mother has been dealing with kidney disease, which is one of the more common diseases affecting East Asians. There are a lot of factors behind this, and that could be the subject of so many articles. But one of the most likely factors is the amount of sodium in our diets.
From pickled plums to soybean paste to dried bonito to soy sauce and everything teriyaki, Japanese food is a salty wonderland.
And so, my mother has been instructed to reduce her sodium intake. To help her, she has access to frozen low sodium, nutritionally balanced meals. Which sounds wonderful, right?
Except they are basically frozen dinners and that my mother is my mother.
My mother is an Asian mother, and no way is this Asian mother is going to eat microwaved meat loaf or Polynesian stir fry or turkey delight. It’s not because these meals look and taste like generic TV dinners. It’s that—
Okay, it’s because these meals look and taste like generic TV dinners.
And, at least to me, my mother’s cooking is like the exact opposite of generic TV dinners.
Let me explain.
As an Asian kid growing up with an Asian mother who cooked Asian food, you knew all about TV dinners. You yearned for these things. Swanson, Banquet, Hungry Man, Stouffer’s—because they were on TV, they were meals the American kids ate, and you were stuck eating your mother’s cooking.
You wanted frozen mashed potatoes. Instead, you got shoyu chicken or steamed ginger garlic fish or slow-cooked teriyaki spareribs or braised oxtail or hand-rolled sushi or…
Okay, we Asian kids were idiots.
Yeah. When I was a kid I would have traded all this for frozen mashed potatoes.
But we did not know this at the time. We were kids, okay? Impressionable kids. Asian kids who got made fun of every day because of how we looked and the food we ate.
Here we were eating homemade food on homemade rice. Meanwhile we were bombarded with images and commercials for TV dinners with all those exotic-sounding foods in those exotic-looking trays with those individual compartments.
This was everything. The American Dream in one convenient package.
A Swanson dinner represented so much of a life we could never have—a life where we could eat fish sticks or chicken fried steak and peas and carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy and some sort of warm fruit dessert.
Well, maybe not the warm fruit dessert, but more about that later.
Eventually we all grew up and I moved out of the house and was able to actually try these TV dinner things. By this time, the space age aluminum Swanson trays had become microwaveable high-density polyethylene, but the food was mostly the same.
And yeah. Mom had a point all along.
It’s funny hearing other Asians tell similar stories. We get made bullied and made fun of, covet this American food, and when we finally try it, it’s like—wow do I feel stupid, anyone have chili sauce?
It holds true from one group of Asians to another, even across generations. Apparently, my father has felt that way about Campbell’s soup.
Anyway, so my mother is given basically these healthy low-sodium TV dinners.
And she ends up passing them to me and says, “Here—you eat them. Look they’re almost expired.”
And me, being just as Asian as she is, doesn’t want to see food go to waste.
So, with her assurances that she’s keeping her sodium down and listening to her dietician, I take some of the frozen meals and now have a stack of TV dinners in my freezer—from my mother, who would never get us TV dinners when I actually wanted them.
Life is funny sometimes.
So here I am with a freezer full of these frozen meals. I’m fine with that, as I guess I should be watching my sodium intake, as well. I’m okay now, but my mother and I share the same genes.
Besides, these frozen dinners still fascinate me. Not as before, but as artifacts of American life both past and present. There's a lot of history in TV dinners, after all.
For example, since the microwave era, it seems that TV dinners have gotten moister—probably because that’s what microwaves do best. When properly prepared, there is this moist, warm main dish with a moist, warm side dish and a moist, warm vegetable. Sometimes the main course is extra moist so it can be eaten with a somewhat drier steamed rice, but everything ends up warm and moist.
And finally, there is moist, warm fruit compote, or moist, warm peach stuff, or moist, warm apple slush for your moist, warm dessert.
Microwave-safe and full of moisture. To be fair, you can still get a microwave fried chicken dinner (see the cover), but trust me, it's going to be moist.
By the way, unlike conventional ovens, microwaves do weird things with the dessert.
And so frozen dinners have become one of the more complicated products to microwave—not that microwaving food is ever Cordon Bleu difficult, but you’re not just plopping a burrito on a plate. There is a whole ritual of fork-piercing, spoon-mixing, compartment-peeling, and microwaving a second time.
But why does the dessert have to be warm and moist, anyway?
Especially since there are these things called “frozen desserts,” which are actually pretty good. You know, like ice cream and sorbet—which can also be made with fruit.
I’ve been doing queer activism for years. And one of the common dangers to queer activists is trying to be too many things to too many people. We do our best to adapt—we schedule and compartmentalize our lives.
But sooner or later, one realizes that it’s hard to do everything equally well. Eventually, quality of work suffers, as side projects can often distract us from our core objectives and goals.
Of course, this isn’t just a queer thing. It happens whenever we are overworked, pulled in too many directions…
Whenever we have too much on our plate.
I look at these frozen dinners as tragically heroic. Here they are, trying to change with technologies, adapt new techniques and protocols…all the while compelled to be everything at once: main dish side dish, vegetable, dessert.
Sometimes queer folks need allies, but sometimes it would be so amazing if someone just bought us ice cream.****
I wonder how much better these frozen dinners would be if they cut out the fruit compote and included some ice cream, or even a frozen fruit bar.
I mean the meal is already frozen, right?
Wouldn’t preparation be simpler? Would the entrées and sides be better cooked?
And gosh, a popsicle at the end?
Or ice cream?
Then again, maybe I’m overthinking all of this and should just start cooking some rice.
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Next Week: “Your Guy,“ Internet Security and Why Capitalism is Annoying Even if You’re not a Marxist. OR More poetry, this time from Ireland.
COVER: Jeffrey Coolidge/ Collection:Stone/ Getty Images (and yes I know that dessert is a chocolate cakey thing, but I'll bet it's moist.)
* Pic by me. Food by me and my mother.
** TV Dinner Tonight by Thomas Hawk (CC BY-NC)
*** Jamesmcq24/Collection:E+/Getty Images
****Maskot/Collection:Maskot/Getty Images