Today, a food metaphor that won’t make you hungry, courtesy of the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit:
Men Are Hamburger. Women Are Hamburger Helper.
Does hamburger need Hamburger Helper? Of course not. Hamburger can be made into a simple hamburger, or a hearty meatloaf. Bachelors and MGTOW are hamburgers and meatloaves.
Hamburger Helper, on the other hand, is nothing without hamburger. It will sit in the pantry, collecting dust and mites and attracting mice, while the clock ticks closer to the expiration date. Where’s the beef?
Cat ladies and single mothers are boxes of stale Hamburger Helper.
Now, Hamburger Helper is nice to have, if you like Hamburger Helper, and don’t mind all the salt. But hamburger doesn’tneed it. There’s a million other things we can do with hamburger.
Well, if nothing else I think this gives us a little insight into the MGTOW diet.
Pickle juice is excellent for brining chicken, and homemade dill pickle potato chips. This thread is making me hungry!
Another flaw in the MGTOW metaphor is that Hamburger Helper couldn’t care less if it’s never used. Because it’s inanimate. If we’re going down the path of attributing thoughts and feelings to food, we could just as equally imagine expired Hamburger Helper sitting in the pantry thinking “Whew! I really dodged a bullet! Thank goodness I didn’t get mixed with cheap meat and broiled in a pan and stuffed into someone’s face and sent on an unpleasant journey to a sewage treatment plant. Instead I got to have a dignified life and now I can spend my dotage in a landfill next to some nice popsicle wrappers!”
I mean, I guess when you see women as things, and get really offended when things don’t do what you think they were “designed” for, then you would assume that the “things” also feel really unhappy and unfulfilled if they miss their calling. But, like real things, womenthings don’t care about MGTOW’s nefarious “purposes” and would prefer to be left alone rather than try to fulfill their impossible and degrading requirements.
Basil is so good. My friend’s foodie husband got some sort of thing that makes foam. He made basil foam and put it on top of vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries. It was so good. In fact, it was probably like five years ago that this culinary event occurred and I’m still talking about it.
@JoeB excellent beginner spice rack! I would add seasoned salt-like the hot sauce, a little can make a big difference.
@JoeB There may be a genetic taste thing going on – I can eat gobs of raw basil and coriander by itself. I love garam masala, I love very intense tasting foods. While I enjoy fresh ingredients, I find the majority of meals to be bland without a lot of fresh or dried herbs. I like vinegar and I love balsamic vinegar.
I’m not sure what the situation is outside Australia, but here you can get quite good cask wines for about $5 for a litre. This means that cooking with decent wine is cheap – cheaper than many spices. So I also use wine in desserts, or meals, but the alcohol is cooked off. It is adding sugar, alas, so I should probably stop.
I gave my partner a genetic assay as a present once, and it really highlighted why our tastes are different – I hate food like white chocolate. His assay said he’d be likely to adore sweet, creamy food, but probably not like coriander that much. All of his ‘taste’ assays were surprisingly correct, we’d thought it would be bunk – he adores white chocolate and hates dark, and I’m the opposite. His assay said he’d hate bitter tastes, and I find them exciting. I don’t know if I exactly _like_ them, but I kind of. Can’t stop?
your commentary on this is so simply but it made me lol! well done.
also, this argument seems more pro-gay than most MRA types are. coupla hamburgers off doing their own thing…
what a bunch of nozzles.
well… that analogy was the dumbest thing I’ve read in awhile.
So are they, but maybe not the kind of things they want:
This attempt at a metaphor strikes me as the MRA answer to Steinem’s simile “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” but there is a very telling difference between the two. While fish don’t need bicycles, bicycles also don’t need fish, so while the quote may give a woman’s perspective, there’s nothing in it inherently disparaging to men. On the other hand, this MRA is literally saying women are worthless without men. How much would you guys bet he’s an “egalitarian?”
How do you make homemade dill pickle chips? I LOVE dill pickle flavored chips. I have to google this now. I don’t know why I didn’t before. Probably because I always assumed that you can’t do the powder thing but I digress. I’m going to make some homemade pickle flavored chips.
I eat spices straight from the jar. When we need thyme or chili flakes for dinner, we’re all out. I eat all the powders. I buy all kinds of different pepper mixes and eat them like candy.
Back when I ate meat, I used to once in a while go to a certain steakhouse and have a big kangaroo steak.
A few times a year, I will go to a candy store and buy all the most sour candies. Then I eat them all in one or two days, rendering my tongue and teeth useless for a week.
Sometimes I feel like I will die if I can’t have an energy drink. I once did a two hour walk in the middle of the night, to the nearest 24/7 gas station to get a Red Bull.
I often feel like I can only eat crispy and crunchy things. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to eat anything other than dry cereal, burnt toast and potato chips. Even thinking of other foods will make me nauseous.
Sometimes I eat several bowls of strawberry yogurt even when I’m already full. It just feels right!
Once in a while I will crave unsalted butter, just by itself. Giving in to this urge would be too decadent, even for me.
I chew on everything, including my arms.
Whenever there’s a new flavor of anything in the world, I can’t relax until I’ve tried it. When going to fast food restaurants, I must always try their new/limited item.
I hate entrées and desserts, love starters and sides.
I often feel like I can’t drink still water without throwing up. I prefer sparkling and flavored.
Pretty sure I must have an eating disorder?
Keep telling yourselves that we’ll miss you one day, MGTOWs. One day you might even believe it.
@Imaginary Petal Oh, yeah, Sour candies are the best for a several year late HS, early college period people were shocked if I didn’t have a big bag of SourPatch Kids, and were happy to provide alcohol if I did. I was older than most of them but didn’t have a fake ID.
So, Hamburger Helper isn’t something that you’d put in an actual hamburger? It’s just everything you’d put in mince-and-macaroni except the mince? A box of “and macaroni”, if you will? Huh.
(If we’re talking food quirks… I’m fussy about keeping my hands clean as much as possible, so I eat most of my meals with a knife and fork*. Hamburgers, pizza, tacos, whatever… I’ll find a way to make it work.)
* Or chopsticks, if that’s what’s available. Y’know… implements.
Genesis 2:20
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a Hamburger Helper suitable for him.
Genesis 2:18
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a Hamburger Helper suitable for him.
Eventually Adam got together with Cheesy Enchilada Hamburger Helper.
I’ve always hated Hamburger Helper. There is some spice or other flavoring that is present throughout the entire product line, and it absolutely turns my stomach. Therefore, women suck and can’t be independent. I guess. QED!
Criminy, now I’ve got that stupid Hamburger Helper jingle from the 80s stuck in my head.
Thanks MRAs.
I haven’t had meatloaf since I was a kid and even I know it’s got more than just hamburger. If that wasn’t the case I might actually want to eat it. Seriously, I hate meatloaf.
@IP
Part oral fixation, part impulse control issues, probably not (specifically) an eating disorder… Yay? At least I hope not. Already self conscious enough about some pretty similar things
Tho, that arm thing sounds like ‘stimming’. Not sure what that means, but I’ve heard that word around talk of self biting
This gluten free hamburger helper I made for dinner is fucking delicious.
Boom.
Here are some helpful kitchen hints. The first one is very dull, but they get better.
I tend to keep a container of milk powder in my pantry for recipes that call for milk. Milk powder is vile if you use it to make milk to drink, but you can’t tell the difference if you use it for cooking or baking, and this way I don’t need to worry about expiration dates. (I’ve thrown out so much expired milk that I just kind of gave up buying it.)
Hamburger Helper is a staple for working poor families who need to be able to feed a family on the cheap but who lack the time and energy to whip up meals from scratch. The objective is to take a small amount of a cheap meat and make a reasonably-edible family-sized meal out of it without requiring someone who just worked 12 hours to work for yet another hour to feed the kiddos.
The product has its drawbacks, but it is popular for good reasons and has helped many working parents deal with burnout. It fills a useful niche in American society and IMHO is a net positive good.
I can’t say that about MGTOWs, who could only create a net positive good by removing themselves from the universe under consideration, something they stubbornly refuse to do.
Few things grind my gears like people talking shit about single mothers!
Also, those brozos do realize that hamburger has an expiration date too and it keeps worse than Hamburger Helper?
Their analogy fails in its own right.
@Kat: Thanks for making me spit out my water laughing…good twist on that verse!
I’ve used vanilla soy milk in savory dishes. Vanilla is actually really versatile and can be used to enhance the flavor of savory dishes, though I don’t know how well it would work with hamburger helper. It’s fine in potatoes au gratin and bechamel sauce, though, IMO. YMMV. 🙂
You can make a hamburger with hamburger meat and hamburger helper but you won’t get a hamburger using hamburger helper alone. Give this fact I would have thought that in this metaphor women were hamburger and men were hamburger helper. You can make a human being without a Y chromosome but you can’t make one without an X chromosome.