The Wormwood TV Dinner

Serve when

Serve it on a tray, in front of the television, with nobody talking to anybody — the Wormwoods' idea of a family dinner.

In the movie

Theatrical

~00:19:21 The Wormwood family's idea of dinner: a microwaved tray meal — ham steak, a glazed pineapple ring, mashed potato — eaten in front of the television with the sound turned up and nobody looking at anybody else.

The Wormwoods' TV dinners are the film's real target long before the towering Bogtrotter cake — not chocolate, but neglect dressed up as a meal. Every tray is identical, eaten in silence in front of a game show, in a house where nobody has cooked anything for anyone in years. It's the joke that sets up the whole movie's moral inversion: the richest food on screen belongs to the poorest table.

Ingredients

1 ham steak
1 canned pineapple ring, with a little of its glaze
½ cup mashed potatoes
A few frozen peas or a scoop of corn
A maraschino cherry, for the top of the pineapple
A TV, already on

Method

Warm the ham steak in a hot pan just until glazed, or microwave it if you're committing to the bit.
Warm the pineapple ring in its own glaze and set it on top of the ham with a cherry in the center.
Reheat the mashed potatoes and peas or corn in separate compartments if you have a divided tray — the Wormwoods would never let their food touch.
Plate it all on a tray, not a table setting.
Eat it in front of the television. Do not speak to your family.