A little crunch in the Chicken Helper...

Alrighty, interesting story, if you care... I was making some Hamburger Helper last night. First thing I changed was the meat, because my wife didn't feel like beef, so we substituted chicken. All we had were chicken tenders, and I wasn't sure how many would have made up a pound - so I guessed. I think I was a little short of a pound in that arena. I was making the cheesey enchilada meal - which is very good, I might add. It doesn't use noodles, but rather an interesting form of rice.

To make a long story short, after following all the directions and letting it simmer for awhile, it still had a "soupy" consistency. I figured that probably due to switching to chicken and me maybe not using enough meat, I needed less water to make the meal. Oh well, couldn't go back, so I had to figure out something to contribute to help soak of this excess liquid. Ah, I though, I know. I'll just add some rice (since noodles seemed to be contradictory with the rice). So I grabbed some rice off the shelf - it looked the same as the rice that had come with the original hamburger helper meal.

So the rice did the trick nicely and helped soak up the excess liquid. When I told my wife what I had done, I'll admit, I was a little proud of my clever solution to the problem. She, on the other hand, was quite dubious, stopping short of laughing out loud (which was very tactful of her, I might add).

Finally we pray and eat, she allowing me to be the guinea pig for my creation. Not so bad, I say, just a wee bit 'o crunch to the meal.

Yeah, that's right, "crunch" and hamburger helper aren't really supposed to go hand in hand. I don't think I've ever chewed a Helper meal so much. I think we spent the first 5 minutes of our meal laughing between bites because it was just so, well, weird.

So, all you Helper manics out there, note that the rice which comes in the Helper meal is not the same as that which resides on the shelves in your kitchen. Though, if you want a meal with a little different "feal", you might want to try adding it in...