Instructions for People Who Are Bad at Math

This evening for dinner I wimped out and decided not to make anything homemade. Lisa was gone to her night class, and honestly, the girls PREFER non-homemade food (though I can't really get too upset with them about that. When I was a kid, my dream meal at home was Spaghettios with Meatballs and my dream meal out was McDonald's).

I'm not here to talk about my kids' eating habits, though. I decided to make Pasta Roni Garlic & Olive Oil Vermicelli for dinner tonight. It's one of my younger daughter's favorites. I started to make a box of this and then noticed that under the Nutrition Facts the "Servings Per Container" was listed as "about 2." Knowing how much my daughter loved this, I figured a single box wasn't enough, and since I knew there was a second box up in the cabinet, I got it out and decided to double the recipe.

The recipe called for 1 3/4 cups of water and 2 tablespoons of margarine. I figured I'd just double the recipe, and so I got 3 1/2 cups of water and 4 tablespoons of margarine, and was all set to start cooking, when I glanced down at the box and saw this message just above the directions: "See below for special instructions when preparing two boxes." Uh oh, I thought. Do I need to do something different?

I scanned down until I found the "special" instructions, and this is what they said: "To Prepare Two Boxes: Follow Range Top Directions, except prepare 2 boxes of PASTA RONI Garlic & Olive Oil Vermicelli in a 3-quart saucepan with 3 1/2 cups water and 4 tablespoons margarine."

Uh, those aren't SPECIAL directions. Those are just the original directions doubled. I'm assuming that the directions are intended for "special" people who can't do basic math.

And so I thought I'd help the Pasta Roni company out. Here are "Special" instructions for preparing 83 boxes: To Prepare Eighty-three Boxes: Follow Range Top Directions, except prepare 83 boxes of PASTA RONI Garlic & Olive Oil Vermicelli in a 124 quart container (roughly a 30 gallon metal trash can) with 145 1/4 cups (about 9 gallons) water and 166 tablespoons (about 10 and a third cups) of margarine.

No charge for that one, Pasta Roni!

P.S. The pasta really is good...