"frozen food" news and stories

With the Manhattan gripped by frigid temps, it seemed like an appropriate day to sample Fresco by Scotto's new frozen dishes for Midwest delivery giant Schwan's.

Back in 2009, Schwan's approached the telegenic cooking family about replicating dishes from their Midtown eatery for its customers. "So the conversation starts, 'We could really use a Fresco in Minnesota.' And we're like, no way, too cold for us," Elaina Scotto explained, perhaps eating her words a bit today. "So they said, 'What about doing your great dishes, in a frozen food format, and we can ship it anywhere in the United States?'"

We review the Fresco by Scotto dishes after the jump.

Dumb products show up in the supermarket every day (honestly, does anybody really need a box of frozen crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?), but the folks over at Buzzfeed have a list of 15 products that take stupidity to another level. The microwaveable pork rinds and pickle juice popsicles are bad enough, but the breaded Obama Fingers are borderline offensive. However, we'll put in one tiny dissenting vote about the bubble gum ice cream -- most kids we know go wild for the stuff.

Read the full list of 15 WTF Frozen Foods at Buzzfeed.

Whole Foods is no stranger to veggies – even the frozen kind, and it's no stranger to healthy food. And for folks who can't quite get the two of them in synch, the natural-food grocery giant is now doing the thinking for you -- this week officially launching a new line of eight frozen vegetable blends designed to pack specific nutritional punches.

Beans and Greens, for instance, is a high-fiber-and-iron blend of kidney beans, great northern beans and kale. Leafy Greens is a high vitamin A mixture of collards, kale and mustard greens. Garden Blend hits vitamins A and C with carrots, broccoli and sugar snap peas. It also includes single veggie packages of collard greens and blue curled kale – two of the most nutrient-dense vegetables around.

"There was definitely a plan to make sure we were hitting nutrient density and creating a product that was more than just a bag of frozen vegetables," said Chris Slick, Whole Foods' Senior Global Coordinator for Exclusive and Store Brands.

The Pictsweet Company announced today a voluntary recall of certain codes of store-brand products containing frozen green peas, after the company learned that some of the packages may contain glass fragments, which may cause injury if ingested. No injuries have yet been reported.

Products subject to this recall were distributed only to Kroger stores in the Southeast United States and to Walmart stores throughout the United States. Find a complete list of items after the jump.

We all know that fast food never looks the same as it does in advertisements. But what do TV dinners look like compared to the photo on the box? Adriana Velez from The Stir took five popular brand-name frozen dinners and put them to the test. Do Smart Ones lasagna varieties really stack up to be three inches high? Is your frozen dinner as shiny as it looks in the photos?

Head over to The Stir for before and after photos of frozen entrees.