Then we microwaved ready meals, and ate them perched on those groovy leather banquettes, watching Casualty.
But microwaves, ready meals, and less formal eating arrangements meant households became less likely to invest in the hostess trolley.
It has been sucked into the precarious arena of mass-produced microwave-ready fast food, where flavor is often sacrificed to convenience.
It calls itself an online grocer, but the company also delivers single-portion microwave-ready meals, like balsamic-roasted seitan ($7.99) and garlic-chili wild Alaskan halibut with coconut rice ($9.99).
She did not mean merely the ability to go where she pleased, but also the geography the car enables — the villas with their backyards and modern conveniences; the superstores selling microwave-ready food; the new golf courses.
And then there's American reality: the pita pocket wolfed down at the wheel of the S.U.V., the 600-calorie cinnamon roll with a nonfat decaf latte, the microwave-ready lo-cal gourmet treats, lite beer, grease-and-glue pizza, chocolate chip bagels, the chain-linked epidemics of obesity, diabetes, arteriosclerosis and cancer.
The quick-serve meal business is dominated by Hormel Foods, which bought Flint Hill Foods in 1998 and gained its microwave-ready meat line, and by Tyson, which in 2001 acquired IBP, a beef and pork producer that had marketed a line of quick-heat meats under the Thomas E. Wilson brand.
Rest assured though, I'm not at home alone at night tucking into a lonely microwave frozen ready meal for one, lamenting what could have been.
Last Thursday, I huddled around a big bowl of microwave popcorn ready to dismiss ABC's new show about young, good-looking lawyers as dangerous fiction that falsely lures smart college kids who sucked at math to pursue law.
Only do this, if the microwave is ready to be thrown out.
