Chicken Fried Rice-a-Roni Fail

In my fatigued stupor this afternoon, I looked in my cabinet for anything that I could remotely call nutritious for my children and me. Or at least edible.

Okay, I'll be real. Eatable...

I was pleased to find that a box of Rice-a-Roni Fried Rice actually looked pretty good. Of course, I knew I'd have to beef it up a little, as it were, so I looked on the back for suggestions. Ooo! Chicken Fried Rice! And it didn't even look gross!

Bonus! The recipe called for two blended eggs to be added in the final moments and I just so happened to have two eggs from my last carton hogging the space set aside for my new carton. It was more than just dumb luck. It was serendipitous... It was divine! I forgot my weariness and set about cooking up this little miracle.

There was a tiny (I mean TINY) picture on the back of the box of the finished result. Oh, I thought to myself, you can even see the little bits of egg mixed in and it doesn't look horrifying! MA-GI-CAL!

So, I carefully followed all the directions. I was a little concerned that my chicken wasn't thawed completely when I put it in, but I reasoned that 15-20 minutes boiling away with the rice would fix that toot sweet!

When the 15-20 minutes were up, I opened the lid and looked at the beautiful miracle of foodness that was Chicken Fried Rice-a-Roni... All I had to do was put in the eggs. They were already mixed and ready to pour in. With all the confidence a recipe on a small cardboard box could give me, I carefully poured in the egg and proceeded to gently stir it around.

Much to my dismay, it didn't congeal into fluffy bits of scrambled egg...

It was sticking to the rice and noodles...

Sticking!

It was forming a slimy, yellow coating all over my beautiful fried rice...

I continued to stir, foolishly certain that at some point the egg would separate and magically become lovely bits of egg...

It was not to be.

The slimy eventually cooked away, but I was left with Chicken Fried Clump-a-Roni.

If I had poured a bottle of glue into my pan, it wouldn't have looked any less attractive... 

That little bit of white you can see almost in the center was the only bit I could verify was actually egg...

As far as taste goes, it wasn't bad at all. In fact, my son stated quite enthusiastically,

"We should have this EVERY day!"

Luckily, I could let him down easy. I had only bought one box.