Happy Holidays and best wishes for a Happy New Year from all of us at M’tucci’s.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s with a mother who didn’t like to cook meant that I ate my share of TV dinners. The convenience of these dinners was definitely the big selling point, with taste ranging between pretty good and awful. Swanson and Banquet were the big players, then Celebrity chefs got involved in creating their own line of frozen meals.

So, using the science from Swanson and the inspiration of Wolfgang Puck and others, M’tucci’s brings you our own selection of microwaveable, ready to eat meals. Each is only $9. As you can see, these are not your standard frozen turkey dinners, especially since ours are not frozen.

Clockwise from top left:
Spinach, Roasted Mushroom, Ricotta Cannelloni with Alfredo Sauce
Roasted Herbed Meatloaf, Balsamic-Tomato Sauce, Mashed Potato, Sweet Peas & Caramelized Onion

Five Cheese Tortelloni with Angus Beef & Sackett Farms Pork Bolognese Sauce

House Applewood Smoked Bacon, Roasted Chicken, Smoked Gouda Mac & Cheese with Truffled Bread Crumbs

Porcini & Red Wine Braised Brisket, Creamy Pecorino Polenta, Fire Roasted Corn

Chef Cory’s Sackett Farms Braised Pork & Green Chile Stew

TV or Frozen Dinners were invented in the 1950s and gained popularity as more women entered the workplace (or if you had a mother who didn’t like to cook!). One story is that a Swanson salesman noticed that the company had 270 tons of turkey unsold after Thanksgiving, sitting in refrigerated railroad cars. Since the refrigeration only worked while the cars were moving, the train shuttled back and forth between Nebraska and the East Coast until executives came up with the idea of a packaged meal.

The other phenomenon that added to the popularity of the meals was the new national past time - watching television. In a recent story in Smithsonian magazine, they reported:

“In 1950, only 9 percent of U.S. households had television sets—but by 1955, the number had risen to more than 64 percent, and by 1960, to more than 87 percent. Swanson took full advantage of this trend, with TV advertisements that depicted elegant, modern women serving these novel meals to their families, or enjoying one themselves. “The best fried chicken I know comes with a TV dinner,” Barbra Streisand told the New Yorker in 1962.”

The meals will be available for take out from all M’tucci’s locations beginning tomorrow, 12/26. We think you should pair them with the new M’tucci’s wine from California.

M’tucci’s Wine is Here!!

M’tucci’s wine is now at all locations. Early in 2020 we started working with a California wine maker to craft wines especially for us and for our menus. There will be full report with tasting notes in next week’s La Gazzeta di M’tucci’s.