Steven Helmer Publications

  Creativity isn't always my strong suit when I cook since I tend to stick with meals I've made before. However, I was at the grocery store yesterday evening and had originally intended to buy a frozen skillet dinner (since my wife/daughter had martial arts classes until 8) and, after seeing the price of those, decided to make one from scratch. Cost-wise, there wasn't much difference in price. I would have needed to buy two pre-made skillet dinners since one just isn't enough for everyone and that would have cost me $15. The ingredients were around $16 (and I could have probably come in at less money had I gone with a different brand of shrimp). The ingredients: Frozen shrimp - no tail Elbow pasta 1 jar of Alfredo Sauce 1-pound bag of frozen broccoli. I fried the broccoli and shrimp together until the latter was fully cooked. I then boiled the elbow pasta separately and added about half the 1-pound box to the pan (saving the rest for another time) and mixed them with th...

With school back in session and both of us working again, my wife and I still need to get ourselves back into a routine when it comes to planning dinner. As a result of this, we needed to figure something out at the last second and neither of us was in the mood to thaw something from the freezer. Since the kids had already eaten at their grandmother's, I decided to just pick up something at the store. After walking around for several minutes, I ended up with this in the cart. The primary reason I picked this particular frozen skillet dinner ($6.99) versus several other choices was because it had the least amount of steps. Frozen dinners are meant to be convenient. If we have to go through a long process and prepare certain things separately (as is the case with a surprisingly large number of skillet dinners) then we might as well just make something from scratch. This dinner, in comparison, only had three steps and none of them were overly complicated. Preparing the dinner proved t...

I had to run to the store Sunday afternoon and, while there, picked up something for dinner. I couldn't make up my mind about what I wanted, however, so I wound up buying a couple different options, including the Gourmet Dining Chicken Alfredo frozen skillet dinner. I ultimately ended up making this product, which I purchased for $5.35, yesterday evening. We had had a barbecue earlier in the day and my wife and I were starting to get a bit hungry so I figured it would be an easy light dinner. After having it, my opinion of it was a bit mixed. As far as taste goes, I didn't have any real complaints. It was a decent-enough dinner given the price. And, it proved to be more filling than I was expecting it to be, though we didn't have any leftovers and I doubt it would have been enough if the kids had eaten it with us. I had two major issues with this product. The first is I wasn't overly impressed by the multiple steps. I had to start the chicken cooking separately...