Here To Eat: Ace Eats America 10 Plates at a Time

Price: $2.00 + $3.00 for beef
Rating: * / *****

During my weekly trip to buy water, I noticed that it was raining. I was the one cussing at the sky because it ALWAYS rains a day after I wash my car. That's not the only reason I hate rain, though. When I was little, my mother said that rain was Buddha peeing on us. I'm not exactly sure why she thought that was a good idea, but it was probably a big contributor to my hatred and fear of it. A fear shared by many other southern Californians, who all huddle together like ants and cry in unison to the beat of the droplets. But I digress...while I was driving, I saw a huge torrent of water on the right side of the road next to the sidewalk. And there was a guy who was careening his car into the water every time he saw a pedestrian, thus completely soaking them in the dirtiest water this side of the Mississippi.

Needless to say, I found it rather peculiar. I can't really explain it, but I imagine that he was singing "I make it rain on dem ho's" and taking it a little too literally. Either way, it immediately reminded me of this meal. Sure, the reactions of the people was twistedly funny, but if it happened to me, I could think of no better revenge than serving him this meal. Revenge, they say, is a meal best served cold. I disagree: revenge is a meal best served lukewarm with Hamburger Helper. Holy shit, there were a lot of comma's in this paragraph. I apologize.


Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit as far as revenge goes(I'm a stickler for giving the guy a paper cut in the eye myself), but this meal was an all around disaster. What should be a cheap and easy meal that can serve a family turned out to be an ugly mess that I wouldn't even feed to the dog. And if you're one of those weirdos that considers your dog part of the family, I wouldn't even feed it to you either. It was bad in every aspect, and the worst part of it is Hamburger Helper can't even get their proportions right.

This recipe calls for a pound of beef. It sounds like a lot, I know. But I figured they knew what they were talking about so I asked the butcher for a pound of beef and threw it in the pan, thinking that the meal would come out like in the picture. You know...correctly proportional. But like most things in this cruel world, that's just a little too much to ask for. There was about 5x more beef than there needed to be and it was rather grotesque to eat and to look at. What started off as Hamburger Helper turned into Hamburger: Now w/ Some Shitty Noodles In It Too and made it a catastrophic culinary creation.

Not only was it then way too beefy, I found that the few noodles in it were rather chewy and gummy. That is a bad combination, but adding more water and cooking it longer didn't seem to help too much. To add insult to mortal injuries, the sauce was horrifically salty. So much so that I couldn't stomach a few bites of the finished product without having some bread or taking a drink(alcoholic preferably if you're planning on actually finish this thing). I thought about Hamburger Helper as a brand for a few moments, and came to the conclusion that what I was really paying extra for was just the name of the brand, because I could've done this with any other noodles-in-a-box for half the price and with better results.

I always suspected that the Hamburger Helper hand was a two-timing piece of trash who would just as soon strangle me as serve me a hot and tasty dinner. Next time you see him on television, you can be sure that I'll be at home screaming at the family and warning them of their impending disappointment. And you can be sure that the disappointment will subsequently lead to the dissolution of the family unit(you ever see the same family in two commercials? Didn't think so). You heard it here first: bad Hamburger Helper causes divorce and domestic abuse. And remember, everything you read on the internet is true.

Posted by Anthony Nguyen on Sunday, April 22, 2007 at 11:18 PM | Permalink