Frozen Food ‘Cooking’-Advanced Skills a Plus

Last trip to the grocery store I decided to carouse the frozen section for quick fixes when faced with a time crunch, or laziness.
I had never bought a Chicken Pot Pie, but for some reason it sounded like a good idea.
It’s just a Chicken Pot Pie.  The whole point of frozen food items is to not really cook…just easily heat up a previously cooked meal. It turns out that the Chicken Pot Pie defies the general ‘frozen food stereotype’ and actually requires a series of ‘almost cooking’ steps.

1. The microwave instructions look lengthy, but I rarely actually microwave.  I skimmed to the ‘conventional oven’ steps
   
2. So next you take the pot pie out of the microwavable wrapper
   easy enough 
3. Wait…next you leave the pot pie in the paper tray?
   
     I felt that sounded dangerous—I mean putting paper in the oven
   *pretty sure I am wrong, because Marie Calendar wouldn’t want us to burn down the kitchen- right?*
4. Ok, well…
   Wrap the crust with aluminum foil??  Like just around the crust??  How much?? A thin layer??
   Am I supposed to wrap from the bottom to protect the paper from catching fire??
   I went with wrapping from the bottom, to not cause a fire…I don’t know if that was protocol.
   
5. Finally the Pot Pie was prepped and ready for the oven. 
6. After spending 46-48 mins in the oven you should check on your Pot Pie to see if it is ready for consumption.
   I don’t normally take the ‘CHECK that it is thoroughly cooked’ too seriously, because it is generally pretty basic.
   The Pot Pie instructions displayed a more detailed method to ensure ‘thoroughly cooked’
   
   
   
9. I did consider that a pot pie has more more features that make a visual prediction of ‘thoroughly cooked’ more challenging.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   I was scrounging around for the meat thermometer that is rarely put to use.
   That fact alone was a red flag that ‘heating’ a frozen Chicken Pot Pie sets a bar indicating there are in fact different levels of frozen food ‘cooking skill’
   Chicken Pot Pie – intermediate to advanced