Friday, September 07, 2007

Joltin' Django hearts Hamburger Helper

I have a confession: I love Hamburger Helper. No, I freakin' love Hamburger Helper. If'n I ever decide that I would look quite smashing as a 400 lb. tub, I will go on an all-Hamburger Helper diet -- Cheeseburger Macaroni or Double Cheeseburger Macaroni, of course.

All kidding aside, let me say this:

Whenever I want something fast and simple for dinner, I'll whip up a box of Helper, open a can of peas, and drench the whole shebang in Trappey's Louisiana Hot Sauce. Heaven in a single skillet, indeed!

Speaking of Hamburger Helper, the learned souls at UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families conducted a study and determined that "the difference in time to prepare dinner between a household that relied on convenience foods like boxed mixes [see Hamburger Helper] ... and a household that made everything from scratch, was not statistically significant."

Not statistically significant?!

Over the past, oh, dozen years, I reckon that I've prepared a couple hundred meals from scratch ... and probably an equal number of boxes of Hamburger Helper. I know for a fact that makin' Helper takes all of about 15 minutes:

First, you brown 1 lb of ground beef (6-8 minutes); then you add milk, mix and pasta (4 min.); and then you mix and cover (3 min.). I can't think of any scratch-made meal, other than a salad, that can be prepared as quickly.

Methinks the folks at the Center on Everyday Lives of Families are full of it. Full o' what, I don't know. Not Hamburger Helper, that's for sure.

1 comment:

Mister Jimmy said...

What, no picture?