Over break, claire-obscure and I were discussing some of the random terribly unhealthy comfort foods from our childhood for which, despite refining our culinary tastes through adolescence and young adulthood, we maintain residual cravings. This list includes things like Totinos pizza rolls, the cheapest tacos from Taco Bell (the ones that used to be something like 20 cents a pop, and now are like $.68, ridiculous I say), and Tuna Helper.

Many of you may know Tuna Helper as the lesser sister of the Helper family. It always takes a backseat to its more loud, obnoxious and uncouth relative, Hamburger Helper, always the one featured in Helper commercials. Think of Tuna Helper as the Nicky Hilton to Hamburger’s Paris. Less known and talked about, but much more attractive and dignified.

For whatever reason, my parents, having recently immigrated from Vietnam, were drawn in by the subtle come-hither gesture of the gloved and smiling hand. Eschewing the row of coarse, plain-Jane white and red Hamburger Helper boxes, they went straight to the row of Tuna boxes, blue as the ocean in which the fishes consumed with this dish splashed about for the duration of their lives.

They fed it to their children, and thus the tradition of Tuna Helper Sunday morning began when I was very young (my parents were never very strict about reserving breakfast foods for breakfast time or any of that nonsense). I was weaned on Tuna Helper from a formative age, and if ever a Sunday morning came when we didn’t feast on the salty, creamy, oceanic delicacy, I was upset to the point of tears and grumbling (mostly effected by my stomach).

Something in the helper sank deep into my blood over time - maybe the repeated weekly injections of 700 mg of sodium, or the chunks of dolphin inevitably trapped with its tuna cousins, or the addictive traces of mercury and other PCBs embedded in the fishy flesh - so that this obsession lasted, through various changes in personality, location, life philosophy and jean size. I’ve become a bit of a food snob, using mostly fresh, organic ingredients when I can afford to (even for my own cat). The boy and I will offer commentary on dishes at various Lawrence restaurants, remarking on the bland, unspectacular and overpriced dishes at Tellers, or the heaviness of the entrees at Free State. We don’t eat like royalty all the time, but we’re certainly no pedestrians of the palate either - the boy in particular likes making fancy and somewhat complicated dishes like blackened Jamaican jerk chicken or African peanut stew, or gnocchi with Maytag blue cheese and fontina from scratch (one hand tied behind his back for show, of course).

But my favorite is still, by far, Tuna Helper. I kind of secretly compare all creamy pasta dishes to the One, the Blue Box Standard. Almost all of them are not salty enough, not cheesy enough, not sodium hexametaphosphaty enough. I admit, when I make pasta with white sauce, I include lots of mushrooms and parsley and other stuff, but keep adding cheese and salt and other spices, tinkering around with different variables, until I can approximate the taste that takes me back to when I was barely tall enough to reach the stovetop and lick the spoon whenever my mother was looking the other way.

Though I am a die hard fan of Betty Crocker’s best product, I admit there are just two varieties of Tuna Helper that are acceptable: Creamy Broccoli (the best) and Fettucini Alfredo (which tastes like Creamy Broccoli but with different pasta). ‘Creamy Pasta’ is kind of bland and not really worth the $2 when you could spend it on the better-tasting ones. The ‘Tuna Melt’ and ‘Cheesy Pasta’ varieties are awful and taste like rancid socks aged for a month in a moldy gym locker. And the ‘Creamy Roasted Garlic’ is an offense to the human digestive tract far worse than E. Coli or tapeworm; it tastes nothing at all like roasted garlic, maybe roasted plague-infested mice would be more apt. And they don’t list it on their official website, but I’m pretty sure that at one point they had an ‘Au Gratin’ flavor and it, too, was bad - appropriately enough, it rhymes with ‘all rotten.’

No, badmetaphor.net officially endorses only the ‘Creamy Broccoli’ and ‘Fettucine Alfredo’ varieties; if you want to sample the others after reading this blog, be my guest, but don’t come crying to me when the sheer funkiness of whatever it is they put into those other ones has destroyed your intestinal lining.

Having said that, I can truly say that if I were trapped on a desert island and had any choice of an unlimited supply of food, but only one food, to bring with me, I would have that be Creamy Broccoli brand Tuna Helper. Forget truffles, I spit on your foie gras. All I need is a skillet, and possibly a stove and a power source, or failing that, something to light a fire. Oh, and a dairy cow, and a butter churn. And the island needs to be near tuna habitat. And an infinite supply of Lactaid to keep me from dying of dairy overload (that’s the cruellest part of this whole addiction - I can’t just gorge myself upon my favorite thing to eat, without being sure to puke, or worse, afterwards. Luckily drug companies have solved this dilemma).

Not many people understand, let alone share, my partiality to Tuna Helper. Paul, whenever he stumbles home from the lab and detects the peculiar whiff of tuna in powdered cheese and milk, immediately makes gagging noises and runs to his room with his shirt sleeve over his nose. The boy and my other roommate like Tuna Helper, but they’d just as soon eat Pizza Hut wings or mac n’ cheese or some other crappy food. My sister says she’s since gotten over the Tuna Helper thing (though she still maintains cravings for Totino’s pizza rolls. Mmm. Cheap, delicious and deadly).

No, the only other being in the world that fully shares my appreciation of Tuna Helper nights is one who doesn’t actually eat the Tuna Helper itself - my cat. The hopeful, expectant look on his face as he trots in at the sound of the tuna can opening is mirrored on my face as I get the pot ready to simmer. Like owner, they say, like pet.