I would have never, in the US, considered it gourmet, but it was a fine mid-week side dish. However, after a while and living with the real versus the fake, it's not surprising to find it tastes of cardboard! The box would have been more appetising!
I've found that with a lot of US food I used to like: grape soda (now sickeningly too sweet), Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup (smells HORRIBLE, tastes only slightly better), and don't even get me started on Chef Boyardee!
There wasn't a lot of packet things when I first came here, so I had to learn to make things from scratch--which in and of itself wasn't a bad thing. Sadly, packet rubbish is becoming far to common these days.
