Well, I gave it a trail-try this weekend, and was generally pleased with the results. The meals prepared easily (and can be cooked in a 1-quart pot, with careful tending; you don’t need the 2-quart pot the package recommends.) The flavor of the Knorr meals was generally good. However, I probably won’t be using the Knorr meals, for two reasons:

1. The rice dishes didn’t have enough rice for my taste. When you read the ingredients, the “rice” dishes use a mixture of rice and vermicelli pasta. The proportion of vermicelli is just too high for my taste - the “chew” consistency is more like noodles than rice.

2. They make too much. The last time I ate them as my main meal, I could polish off the entire thing by myself. This weekend, I was full somewhere around the one-third to one-half area. The culprit is that my metabolism and daily mileage have both decreased since those days.

All in all, a successful experiment, which I’ll be modifying by starting with instant rice (probably half a cup or a cup), and adding meat and, usually, a sauce mix (think the hollandaise or bernaise, or perhaps a chicken gravy). I’ll end up with a virtually identical meal in a more realistic proportion. I’ll also avoid having to boil the ingredients (as in Knorr side dishes), since instant rice can be added after water is boiled. To make the sauce, I’ll need to add a titanium cup to the titanium kettle, but I can live with that.

We’re calling this a win.