A Week in Their Kitchen 5: Day-glo Mushroom Helper
What kind of wine does one pair with day-glo powdered cheese? WHAT, THERE’S NO WINE IN MY HAMPER? I didn’t think of that.
Ah well, it’s a working weekend for me anyway. Best to just hunker down with my Oreos and forget that it’s Friday night. And it’s sunny out. Let’s not talk about that.
Dinner tonight was not as thrilling as last night’s. Mike actually got into the mission and came up with the idea to use sauteed mushrooms, which are meaty-like, in the generic Hamburger Helper. W stuck to Cheerios.
As I sat glumly eating my salty orange mushroom pasta it occurred to me that PEOPLE ACTUALLY BUY THIS STUFF. It’s imported by Wal-Mart. They sell it in their stores. It isn’t exclusively for people who have no choice – many folks out there actually go shopping and spend their own dollars on this.
Maybe they’re all eighteen? I remember when Mike and I first moved out I lived for a good couple years on Pop Tarts, Eggo Waffles and Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni – all the stuff we weren’t allowed to have growing up. So then I started to grow out.
And yes, it’s cheap. So are beans. And rice. And barley. And a thousand or so other real meals I can price out in my head in the same ballpark as Hamburger Helper. But I don’t much feel like going off on another tangent tonight. I’m crashing down from my Oreo high.
It seems I let last Free Stuff Friday pass with nary a free thing, overwhelmed by a book manuscript deadline that’s still looming (silly me, I thought I’d be celebrating this weekend! Have I met me? Clearly not) and I do have a few things. But what I’m really dying to do when this week is over is bake. And reduce the ridiculous amount of food in my kitchen. Perhaps that should be the freebie du jour – a box of miscellaneous yogurt containers from my freezer and bags of unlabelled grains from my cupboard.
But I completely forgot that I bought a bowl at the Empty Bowls Benefit a month or so ago with the intention to give it away here, filled with cookies or something. And since I need an excuse to bake cookies, I’ll use FSF as such. A handmade bowl filled with homemade chocolate chip cookies (yes, I already chose) doesn’t sound too bad, does it? And if you’ll take a look at that detail, someone stamped MMMMMMM around the entire bowl. Appropriate, no?
So you know the drill – leave a comment, let us know what you had for dinner last night (or the night before, or what you’re planning for tonight) or tell us something else if you want. I’ll take anything, really. I’ll be reading them all tomorrow as the ultimate procrastination aid.
June 04 2010 | leftovers | 91 Comments »
