A kit? For mashed potatoes and gravy? You people need a KIT to make instant mashed potatoes and gravy?
Strewth. What kind of yams-with-legs-and-a-head are you, that you need to go out and buy a “Lipton Instant Mashed Potatoes with Knorr Beef Gravy Mix” freakin’ kit in order to make instant mashed potatoes and instant gravy?
I thought the Chicken of the Sea Tuna Salad Kit was dumb, but this…
Geez.
Are you sure you can get the package open by yourself, now? Maybe they should market some kind of package-opening kit for you folks, or maybe some kind of Star Trek self-opening package. Push the button and out pops tuna salad.
Actually, they already have those. They’re called “restaurants”.
I buy the instant flavored mashed potatoes, but only 'cause I don’t usually feel like making them myself. Not that it’s hard or anything. Boil potatoes, drain, add a little milk and butter and go nuts with the masher.
Gravy? Don’t eat the stuff anyway, why would I make it?
Well, potatoes are easy enough to make, but gravy? If a person just wants some poatoes and gravy are they go to a restaurant and spend $6 for a meal (at best) - OR - buy and cook a $10 beef roast?
It’s the idea of the kit that I find irksome and incomprehensible. My kids all knew how to make instant mashed potatoes out of the box by the time they were four years old, and could open a can of gravy by the time they were five. What’s to know?
I find it deeply frightening to think about how many people like this must be out there, that Unilever BestFoods’ test marketing turned up, for them to put this–artifact–on the market.
Or shall we blame Sloth instead of Ignorance? People who are too lazy to figure it out themselves? That’s even scarier.
Bernse, where do you live, that they don’t sell instant gravy in little packages? Or “home-cooked” gravy in both jars and cans? It’s usually by the spaghetti sauce and tomato paste, at the grocery store, by all the packets of instant taco sauce, instant fajita sauce, instant spaghetti sauce, instant marinade, ad infinitum.
We got a whole bunch of these things free at the State Fair this year. They’re okay, but they’re still instant. I prefer home-made, but these will do in a pinch if I’m not making a roast.
Hmm…I can’t join in because I’d decided the world was going to end with ‘Easy Mac’…only to discover that several close friends living are on the stuff…
Ducky, brace yourself. It’s only going to get sillier. We have Kraft Easy Mac and Pisllbury Ready To Bake Cookies. And others, all at a ridiculous markup.
Me, I’m just waiting for the packaged, already cooked, pre-masticated pot roasts. Mmmm . . . digested . . .
OOOHHHHHH!!! I hate those things! Half the fun of making cookies is licking the bowl and the beaters…what’s the fun of slicing a log, or Goddess forbid, pulling apart the pre-formed cookies from the slab, or worst of all, sliding the Big Cookie out of the package into the oven!!
Lazy, I tell ya, lazy! Make the damn Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookies from scratch as the Deities intended, or don’t make them at all!
Ducky, I’m not sure you’re looking at the big picture here. Let me try to put this delicately: You realize of course, that “mashed potatoes” are properly made from “potatoes” (roundish, lumpy, and brown) and not “instant potato mix” (polygonal, stackable, and red), don’t you? And that “gravy” is properly made from stock, and spices, and a little flour? Not jars? Proper mashed tater construction is not really that hard, but some people, in the name of convenience (or “sloth”, if you prefer), sacrifice all that ‘licious home-cookin’ goodness and purchase the instant boxes and jars.
So on the one hand you’ve got people who buy taters and stock. On the other hand you’ve got people who buy boxes and cans. And on the third hand you’ve got people who buy boxes and cans that are attached. Aaaaaand you’re complaining about the people that take the easy way out by buying the attached boxes and cans, instead of buying the boxes and can seperately. Isn’t that a little… incongruous?
I hope my kids never even know that instant mashed potatoes or gravy in a can/jar exist! When they walk by it in the market, I want them to ask me how it’s even possible to get gravy in a can and why anyone would even want instant mashed potatoes.
I won’t even comment on Kraft “cheese” and pasta products…
The lady that won the largest lottery prize in Colorado (about 10 years ago) bought the ticket on a whim while visiting the store to buy a can of frosting! That set me off no end. I was baking cakes and making frosting from scratch when I was 8. She’s couldn’t be bothered to make her own, and WHAM! she’s $20 million richer. As you see, that still sets me off.
[cranky old man voice]: Why, when I was a kid, we didn’t have these fancy kits; We had to buy the instant potatoes and instant gravy in seperate packages, by gum.
