Last week, I decide not to cook, and I forgot my lunch leftovers at work. So, I pulled out one of the frozen Marie Callender's pot pies I've had in the freezer for a couple weeks. These days, I try not to buy a lot of prepared frozen meals, but there are just those days when it's nice to have some for backup.
Pot pies are a comfort food for me. I remember eating many of those Banquet meat pies at home as a kid. I just loved eating the hot filling and flakey crust as I watched cartoons.
I've perfected the speed at which I cook these pies. The problem with the box instructions is that the microwave fails to cook the crust properly and the oven just takes too darn long. The best compromise I've found is to microwave the pie for 7-8 minutes and then pop it in the toaster oven for 5-10 minutes. It's great because the filling is hot and I still get my flakey crust.
As I popped my turkey pie into the over, my eyes caught a glance of the nutrition label on the back of the box. You know, that lovely black and white rectangle that reminds you whether you're eating healthy.
My first glance was the calorie content per serving, 530 calories. Things seemed to register rather slowly in my head because before I could decide whether that was a reasonable number of calories to be consuming, my eye had moved up to a little box that appeared to have been added in hindsight just above nutrition label. The box was sized just enough to fit the one line of text which read:
"This entire box contains 1060 calories."
Say WHAAAAAT! Holy cow!!! Okay, I know these pies can't be super healthy, but that super unhealthy. They are big, but I can't see feeling full after eating half of one. It must be all the cream in the sauce and the pie crust. I'm really sad because this means that I can't go buying these much in the future. 1060 calories is more than half of the calories I should be eating in one day.
No wonder Americans are so overweight these days, look what we're being sold in the stores! (Take a look at this obesity map CNN created.) You know people are living off fast food and frozen meals rather than cook something from scratch. Evil, evil food manufacturers.
I've been eating much healthier in the past week - lots of farmers' market veggies (heirloom tomatoes are awesome) and fruits. (Okay, I do have homemade chocolate ice cream in the freezer, but I only eat a scoop a day.) But gosh, sometimes I do miss that fattening and salty flavors.
2 comments:
You could just eat the pie and then go run a half hour run or something. Plus u say you don't eat these pies very often anyway, they're just a backup, right?
I used to LOVE the Marie Callender's Pot Pies. Until I made that same mistake of looking at the label, it was the fat content that drove me to never ever ever buy another one. So I got the Amy's Organic one recently. Tasted awful (well in comparison to the MC one). Lame crust.
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