I grew up on Hamburger Helper. The lasagna, cheeseburger macaroni, stroganoff, and pizza bake were among my favorite foods in the universe. When I think of my childhood, I think of these foods right up there with Pizza Inn and McDonald's and Hardee's.
The first disappointment came when Hamburger Helper stopped making the pizza bake. You've probably never even heard of it, but it was one of their offerings back in the 1980s. My grandmother used to make it for me. The package contained a dough mix and a packet of seasoning for the hamburger. You'd cook up the hamburger and add the seasoning, add water to the dough mix and line the bottom of a baking dish with it, then add the seasoned hamburger and bake it. My grandmother would always add cheese to it near the end, making it so incredibly yummy. I can still vaguely remember how it tasted. Man, it was good. I probably haven't had it in 15 to 20 years.
But hey, I still had the lasagna and the stroganoff and the cheeseburger macaroni, right? Plus, they added a four-cheese lasagna that had all the meaty goodness of the original lasagna with lots of cheesy taste. So life with Hamburger Helper was not entirely lost. Or so I thought.
I got suspicious when the Hamburger Helper boxes in the grocery stores had a little banner on them that said, "New and improved taste!" In my opinion, there was no way to improve Hamburger Helper. The first one I tried was the lasagna. The noodles were completely different - thinner and flimsier than before - and the seasoning seemed watered down and less zesty. It was in no way improved. Same for everything else - while the flavor of the cheeseburger macaroni seemed the same, those noodles had also been replaced. It just wasn't the same.
And so, I still eat Hamburger Helper, mostly because it's convenient and inexpensive and still tastes somewhat decent, but I am definitely disappointed. I yearn for the days of pizza bake and the "old and un-improved" lasagnas. But, like my childhood, I guess they are gone forever.
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