Eating TV dinners as everyone watched their favorite show on television is something that kids didn’t get to do very often. It was only when mom had worked that day or had too many other chores to do that she didn’t have time to stay in the kitchen to prepare a full dinner for everyone that night. But no one minded the change every once in a while. It was exciting to eat prepared food in aluminum trays that separated each food. The good ole days… Now TV dinners have changed and some would argue for the better.

The TV dinner has been referred to by many names other than just simply TV dinner. It’s also been called a frozen dinner or microwave meal or ready meal as a rule. Some people tend to like the convenience of preparing a meal in a very easy way and TV dinners give them this option. This is why they are still so popular today after all these years.

History of the TV dinner began over fifty years ago, when it was created unexpectedly as an answer to the turkey question. This wasn’t leftovers either from a big holiday dinner at Thanksgiving. It was more like what was to be done with 520,000 pounds of turkeys that were unsold and traveling back and forth in ten refrigerated box cars across the country.

C.A. Swanson & Sons, which is an Omaha, Nebraska, frozen food company, had to come up with a solution right away to handle the turkey dilemma. They had 520,000 pounds of fresh poultry that they had to get rid of somehow? But what was the answer? Swanson execs needed a brain child in a hurry. It was a man named Gerry Thomas, who was a company salesman that came up with the idea for how to deal with the turkey question. What was this breakthrough concept?

Thomas designed a unique aluminum tray with three separate compartments. He originally got the idea for this tray from the single compartment aluminum trays that were used to keep food hot by Pan American Airways.

Gerald Thomas put together a special turkey dinner inside of his designed tray and introduced it to the Swanson brothers. He also pitched something that would prove to be the start of a new craze. How’s about these dinners be connected with television? Since television was way popular and new to America too. The Swanson brothers accepted the new idea and 5,000 meals were produced for the first year. These first TV dinners sold for 98 cents each and contained turkey, cornbread dressing, buttered peas and sweet potatoes. Many were skeptical that that this food item would catch on.

It more than caught on in the United States. The sales of these TV dinners far exceeded the 5,000 thousand that were made, and in the first year, Swanson sold more than ten million of them. Thus the legendary TV dinner was born and soon became an American institution!

We make our own frozen dinners by making a huge crock pot full of stew and then freezing in meal size portions. These crock pot chicken recipes are a good place to start.