Where's the Beef? (Or, how much DO those frozen meals, cost, anyway?)

According to Refrigerated and Frozen Foods, Monogram Food Solutions has entered into a licensing agreement with NASCAR™ to produce and market NASCAR™-brand deli meats, smoked sausage and hot dogs. At the rate America’s fastest-growing sport is going, soon you’ll be able to wash your Mark Martin Dog or Jeff Gordon Smoked Sausage down with NASCAR™ beer, right before you pop your nightly NASCAR™ Viagra™ or Ricky Rudd Zoloft™. (Mark Martin photo courtesy of TheAutoChannel.com).

And Back to Work in the Frozen Foods Biz...

Over at the Diner, a young working mom posted a thread asking for quick and easy recipes, and affordable meals, saying she was trying to save on her grocery bills. Naturally, everyone’s first response is to tell her to stop buying frozen prepared foods and TV dinners, and to prepare meals from scratch, in order to save money. Even I – the official Doyenne of the Deep Freeze – was guilty of immediately thinking that cutting out convenience foods was the first order of business. But then I started to wonder – in this day and age, is that still true?

I’d posted a recipe for the young woman – my never-fails Enchildada Casserole recipe – along with some pricing for the ingredients. To my surprise, the ingredients added up to a whopping $15.00, give or take. This is for a (admittedly hefty) 9x12 casserole that feeds between 6-8 adults, including a side dish of refried beans and some chips. Assume 6 larger appetites, and this dish costs $2.50 per person. How does this compare to convenience foods in the cost arena?

Taking a quick look, like most things, it matters how carefully you shop. For example, Banquet’s 31-oz. “Crispy Chicken” has 8 servings, each just under 4 ounces, averaging $.67 (Sixty-Seven Cents) per serving. If you buy their Jumbo Pack, however, at 47 ounces, the serving size is slightly bigger, costing $.41 (Forty-One Cents) each, saving you over 20 cents per serving. Banquet’s Crock Pot Classics meals, another handy multi-serve dinner for busy moms, will run you, on average, between $.80 and $1.00 per serving, each serving ranging from 8 to nearly 10 ounces of finished Stew, Stroganoff, Chicken & Dumplings or other Crock Pot Classic meal.

Let’s check out Chicken Patties – I know a lot of working moms like to keep these on hand, both for quick hot sandwiches and for entrees. Banquet’s 35-ounce Original Chicken Patties come in a merely $.27 per patty. Tyson’s 10.5-ounce Breaded Chicken Breast Patties, on the other hand, are approximately the same size serving, but will set you back nearly $1.25 per patty – a whopping difference. The huge winner in the Chicken Breast patty contest, though, is Schwan’s, delivering up Breaded Chicken Breast Patties for merely $.17 a patty. Quick math? For a family of four, serving Schwan’s patties would cost Sixty-Eight Cents; to serve Tyson’s patties would cost $5.00. Obviously, smart shopping can save you a lot of dough.

Stouffer’s Large Family Size Chicken Alfredo will set you back $5.98 to serve 7 people (or $.85 per person), while Schwan’s Blackened Chicken Alfredo with Fettucini Noodles will save you almost $.20 per serving, coming in at $.63 each. Birds Eye’s Voila Classic line of the same dish – Alfredo Chicken – will set you back $1.33 for each 7-ounce serving.

Gorton’s products vary widely, so shop smart. Gorton’s Crunchy Golden Fish Fillets will cost you $1.81 per person for a 3.75-ounce serving, but their 18-ounce Crispy Battered Fish Fillets, on the other hand, will serve 5 people for $3.98 – about $.80 per head.

For those of you on the East Coast and in the South, keep an eye out for On-Cor’s line of classic family-size entrees. Ranging from Chicken Parmigiana at a high of $.69 a serving, to Salisbury Steaks in Gravy, Sliced Turkey & Gravy, Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Macaroni & Beef with Tomatoes and Sonora-Style Enchiladas with Meat and Sauce, all costing between $.50 and $.60 per serving, On-Cor is clearly a good candidate for families trying to keep their grocery bills in line.


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Find Frozen Food, Prepared Meals and TV Dinner reviews along with nutritional product information for all of them at The Icebox Diner.