Death in a box

I count myself, at the very least, a moderately intelligent human being. So I should have probably deduced that a boxed meal called "Hamburger Helper," whose mascot is a disembodied hand with a face, could probably not be rendered tasty by any changes that I might employ.

I purchased a new George Foreman on account of my old one being constantly and irreparably infected with months of unwashed beef cookings. First, it was the Destroyer, and now someone else has taken up his standard of leaving noxious beef remnants all over my poor Foreman. (On a side note, it seems that the beef eaters are always the ones who refuse to clean their cow drizzlings. Chicken eaters seem to clean up after themselves.)

So, I purchased the new one and told the person I thought was responsible for all of the Foreman beef sludge that the new one was a chicken only device. So today I arose, and the new Foreman was covered in coagulated cow fat. I was pissed, because I wanted to do something with chicken.

I had 2 boxes of Hamburger Helper that have been rotting on my shelf for the last 8 months, which I inherited from Andre when he moved back to Reno. Never one to just randomly buy a lb of hamburger, and thinking that someday I might just grow desperate enough to eat said boxed meals, I never used them nor threw them away. So today I thought that perhaps if I used chicken instead of beef, the meal might be rendered more tasty. Chicken is always an upgrade from hamburger. And pasta, chicken, and cheese sauce...how could that be a bad idea?

Since the Foreman was filthy, I had to resort to using a microwave to thaw, and then a skillet to cook the chicken. Ultimately, the sauce was disgusting, and the chicken was like eating rubber cubes, and sort of tasted like tuna. Rubber tuna cubes, pasta, and a disgusting cheese sauce. Again, I don't know why I expected any different.

I guess I learned that when a meal is already potentially disgusting, adding a healthier ingredient won't magically cause it to be delicious, and will in all actuality probably render the meal even more disgusting. Hamburger Helper was engineered to be unhealthy and full of red meat. I was a fool for trying to make it otherwise.

I would have felt guilty feeding that to a homeless person, so instead shoved it down the gullet of the garbage disposal. I almost felt bad doing even that, as the rotting, mephitic refuse that I normally stuff down there is a definite step up from the death in a box upon which I wasted a pound of chicken.