Drew v. Food XII: Amnesia Lane Edition

The holidays are always rife with nostalgia for me. I’ve often thought about things like traditions and old movies and TV specials, but it has never been limited to that. For reasons other than my old age, my mind tends to wander into the past whenever there’s a long break from work, and random childhood memories of doing ordinary things will flow in and out like an ocean tide.

In honor of one such memory, I have decided to bring about the most ambitious crossover event in history by combining Drew v. Food and Amnesia Lane. In this blockbuster event, I will be covering a food that originated in a by-gone era yet still walks this Earth: Kid Cuisine.

My childhood, as I presume everyone’s did, went through different phases. And there’s one early part of it that has more mystique than the rest of it simply by virtue of how poorly it fits in with the rest of my childhood. That time span, and the house and town my family lived in during it, have an unusually strong draw for my nostalgia. So strong that ordinary, everyday things seem almost whimsical when remembering them. One such thing was the uncommon occurrence of having a TV dinner. So now, I’m eating one after a 30-plus year gap in order to see if it was all really worth it.

Kid Cuisine, as the name implies, was a TV dinner marketed toward kids. It did this not simply by name but also by using cartoon mascots: A child-like penguin named KC (probably not a coincidental set of initials) and an adult-like polar bear known only as The Chef. I’m assuming the animals were selected based on climate to fit the frozen food theme; perhaps Snowy would have fit in. In addition to the marketing, they had a gimmick where each dinner would also come with a card with illustrations and activities to keep impatient kids occupied while the meal was cooking.

KC would later go on to be EXTREEEEEEMifed in the late 90s, and The Chef would be dropped entirely, not unlike how Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s branding decided they’d make Wendell insane and shitcan the other two chefs. Nowadays, KC is still around but has no character at all; his umpteenth redesign doesn’t allow him to make facial expressions with which to convey a personality, so they use his accessories as a substitute for one.

Mascot design notwithstanding, the “All Star Nuggets” package was closest to the original meals in composition, so that’s the one I picked up. In addition to the more realistic, CG art direction, the inevitable march of progress also came for the activity card. Kids these days instead scan a QR code on the box and do the activities on their phones.

While a TV dinner is microwaveable by design, we didn’t have a microwave until I was almost out of high school. As such, I baked the Kid Cuisine in the oven in order to keep as close to the original experience as possible. That being said, it’s still not a perfect match; my oven is electric, whereas the oven of my childhood ran on bottled propane.

Now, let’s crack the box open and get rolling.

The rainbow sprinkles for the brownie are packed in with the chicken nuggets. Luckily, the plastic film has to be removed from the nuggets before cooking, allowing you to free the sprinkles and set them aside for later. The film remains over the mac and cheese, the brownie and the corn. There are many reasons why cancer is so common, but a significant contributor is that petroleum-based products (e.g.: plastic) + heat = carcinogen. I wonder how many little tiny seeds I planted in my childhood that may bloom with enough time. While uncovering the chicken nuggets might suggest that they are free of carcinogens and microplastics, you will realize a moment later that the tray is also plastic.

The only other step before going into the oven is to set the tray on a baking sheet where it will sit for the next half-hour at a balmy 350 degrees. After it’s done cooking, the rest of the plastic film comes off and the not-cooked rainbow sprinkles can be… sprinkled over the brownie.

With both the reminiscing and cooking out of the way, all that was left was the eating and reviewing.

The chicken nuggets didn’t have much in the way of flavor, but they had a surprisingly good texture inside and out. The breading made for a satisfying crunch and the chicken itself didn’t dry out.

While it’s tough to screw up microwaved corn, this dinner does avoid the blunder. It came out at more or less the temperature and consistency I look for in corn, and the pool of water left over from the cooking was just about minimal.

Mac and cheese is easier to screw up. The cooking time just wasn’t enough to get it to temperature or fully congeal the cheese. I understand that TV dinners are generally middling, but this was middling FOR a TV dinner.

I remember the desserts in Kid Cuisine being the most risky part of the meal. Often, they were puddings which, let me tell you, aren’t at a pleasant temperature after spending half an hour in the oven. Changing over to a rainbow sprinkle brownie certainly seems like an obvious improvement. As cooked, the top of the brownie looked burnt around the edges, and the sprinkle packet had far too many sprinkles than would actually stick to the top. The brownie did cook through and maintained its shape when removed from the tray, but was also soft and easy to chew. Taste-wise, it certainly landed in the ballpark of brownie, but there was something I can only describe as “off” about its flavor. I can’t put my finger on how exactly, but the flavor does meander a bit off the beaten path.

If this modern day Kid Cuisine is comparable to its ancestors, I would say that my parents probably didn’t hate me. It’s not the Platonic ideal of a TV dinner, but it is a strong competitor against the field. We’re not going for gourmet here, just cuisine. And while that does take a bit of the mystique out of my childhood, it helps to know it wasn’t entirely off base. At 450 calories, it’s definitely a bit light for an adult’s meal, but what kind of crazy person would be eating these as an adult, right?