![](\"http:\/\/lh4.ggpht.com\/_yz59FVsseJY\/S-WF-CQeY9I\/AAAAAAAA_VE\/hQ8KeLFhrVk\/s800\/IMG_2652.JPG\")
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\nSo here it is. This is the Chili-Cheese Hamburger Helper-like recipe<\/a> that I stole from Suzanne McMinn’s blog “Chickens in the Road”<\/a>. About a woman who lives in rural West Virginia.<\/p>\n Like I said before, we grownups aren’t huge Hamburger Helper fans in the first place, but since our kids love it so much, we served this up and they enjoyed it just the same. At least this time I felt better about what I was serving my kids. Yes, I still served them up enriched macaroni (i.e., not whole grain pasta) but this time I know that I could control the sugar, salt, and I know that this dinner is trans-fat free (unlike Hamburger Helper)*. Also, the homemade version included a teaspoon of sugar in the seasonings, which I prefer to the high fructose corn syrup in the boxed seasoning packet.<\/p>\n It was certainly less salty than the boxed version, and the kids noticed that, but Jacob still ate more than the adult servings Dave and I had. Timmy did his usual: picked at the dish and only ate what we made him eat so he could have a dessert later.<\/p>\n In the future, I *could* incorporate whole wheat or veggie pasta, ground turkey instead of ground beef, and I’d like to try some of the other flavors. I plan to make up a packet and take it on our camping trip in a couple weeks. I look forward to attempting one of the Italian flavors.<\/p>\n *Note about the trans-fat. The box of Hamburger Helper I had last week had “partially-hydrogenated soybean oil” on the ingredients list, yet on the Nutrition Facts label it indicated 0g of trans-fats. This is misleading. What the “0g” actually means is that there’s less than 1\/2 a gram of the product in the package, so the company can round down. It’s a math trick, that’s all. There *IS* naturally-occuring trans-fats in beef and other red meats, but in trace amounts, and it hasn’t been proven to have the same harmful effects as the man-made trans-fats, which are produced to help shelf-stabilize foods with fat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Resubmitting to correct photo error) From 2010 05 01 Hamburger Helper So here it is. This is the Chili-Cheese Hamburger Helper-like recipe that I stole from Suzanne McMinn’s blog “Chickens in the Road”. About a woman who lives in rural West Virginia. Like I said before, we grownups aren’t huge Hamburger Helper fans in the first place, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[],"tags":[8,91],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-6Z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":430,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2010\/05\/hypothesis-successful.html","url_meta":{"origin":433,"position":0},"title":"Hypothesis Successful!","date":"02 May 10","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday morning I posted about the Hamburger Helper we were planning for dinner. I predicted that our dinner would be a beef-based gravy and it turned out that's exactly what we ended up with.I know I had promised just a comment at the bottom of yesterday's post about the outcome\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cooking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":429,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2010\/05\/what-does-natural-taste-like.html","url_meta":{"origin":433,"position":1},"title":"What Does "Natural" Taste Like???","date":"01 May 10","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Sunday I took both boys to the grocery store. \u00a0Dave was working at the train show, so I just took both boys along, which is rare for me. \u00a0I typically go during the week when I only need to take, at most, one of the boys. \u00a0So it had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dinner\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/01\/a-chillier-forecast-ahead.html","url_meta":{"origin":433,"position":2},"title":"A Chillier Forecast Ahead…","date":"10 January 08","format":false,"excerpt":"...which means \"goodbye\" to the grill for a few days. Don't like to grill when it's cold, but tonight's hot dog (for Timmy) and hamburger (for the rest of us) dinner was quick and easy.My latest addiction: the Pioneer Woman blog, added a bew-tee-full pot roast how-to guide this week.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cold weather\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":471,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2010\/10\/nebraska-discoveries-9-runza.html","url_meta":{"origin":433,"position":3},"title":"Nebraska Discoveries 20: Runza","date":"07 October 10","format":false,"excerpt":"Tonight for dinner, we went out. \u00a0It tends to be a necessity 1-2 times per week in the fall while the boys are in soccer 5-days per week (Jacob 3 days, Timmy 2). \u00a0I do what I can to cook but it's rather aggressive; when I do cook I try\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"food\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":102,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/03\/hey-im-trying-to-sleep-here.html","url_meta":{"origin":433,"position":4},"title":"HEY! I’m trying to sleep here!","date":"14 March 08","format":false,"excerpt":"In part because I'm sick of all the references to Terminix and Ant Farms for sale at the top of my page, and in part because I'm tired today, allow me to vent!For the unaware, Apex, NC is this \"special\" location on the former Seaboard Air Line RR: the highest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ranting\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":561,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/05\/the-runner-girls-spawn.html","url_meta":{"origin":433,"position":5},"title":"The Runner Girl’s Spawn","date":"09 May 11","format":false,"excerpt":"You can say I tried. I think Jacob might have a future in long distance running...Timmy probably won't. At a Mother's Day function this past week, one of Timmy's classmates' Moms tipped me off to a 1-mile\u00a0kids' fun run in Navarre Beach\u00a0last Saturday. \u00a0That night I headed over to one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"parenting\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-HHoFOYAZFyc\/TcdEr7U2hpI\/AAAAAAABVgI\/2xveyqEnig8\/s640\/IMG_4715.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}