Sunday, December 1, 2013

I Might Love Macaroni and Cheese

I have a thing for macaroni and cheese. It's not a fetish, exactly, more of just...a love. A deep, creepy, stalker love, granted, but isn't stalking the truest expression of admiration? Although, I suppose since macaroni and cheese is generally quite incapable of independent movement I'm not so much a stalker as a kidnapper. No, not a kidnapper. I don't sit outside the playground trying to lure delicious bowls of macaroni and cheese into my creepy van. We'll come back to titles later.

At any rate, I woke up this morning with an undeniable craving for macaroni and cheese. I had to have macaroni and cheese. But not just any macaroni and cheese. No. I needed the Great Value (aka: Walmart) Rich and Creamy boxed macaroni and cheese. Thing is, I want it circa five years ago, and as we all know, grocery store brands are notorious for changing their recipes as soon as they have you hooked.

In an attempt to satisfy my craving, I perused my collection of macaroni and cheese. (That's it! I'm a collector, not a stalker kidnapper.) Nothing in my collection could even come close to the tangy deliciousness wrapped around chewy macaroni noodles that lived in the red box back in 2008.

You want to know what the really embarrassing part is? I have more than one of each of these mac-and-cheeses in my kitchen cupboards. I almost don't have enough space in there for the Oreos.


Disappointed and still hungry, I reluctantly put on a pair of real pants and made my hair look semi-presentable and went to Walmart. Except that I remembered that it was the weekend and I needed, like, ten things from Walmart and Walmart never has any baskets, which meant I'd either have to juggle or use a cart, neither of which I'm particularly good at and both of which would probably have disastrous (albeit comical) results. So I changed my mind. I went to Target. When I got to Target I realized I forgot my list of the other nine items I needed, so I just grabbed what looked good (came home with a candy bar and some cinnamon flavored gummy bears....don't know how) and selected a box of macaroni and cheese.

Before I tell you about this particular box of macaroni and cheese, I would just like to say for the record that Target has a terrible macaroni and cheese selection. Terrible. They have, like, three kinds. It's sad, really.

But anywho, about this macaroni and cheese. It was tangy. It was creamy. It was even chewy, thanks to the funny-shaped noodles, I think.

It also tasted a little over-processed, but what do you expect when you're eating neon orange ooze out of a tin foil pouch? All in all, it was an adequate replacement, and--hold on to your hats, here--a craving quencher.


You know what's ironic? I had the opposite problem as a child. Yes, I still loved macaroni and cheese (what kid doesn't?) but I only liked one kind at a time. One. That's it. And it was always the store brand, because I was a broke kid. At first I loved the Food Lion brand, then they changed it, and then I loved the Walmart brand, and then they changed it, and as far as I know the Giant brand has always sucked. Once somebody gave me a box of Spongebob macaroni and cheese that had blue cheese sauce, and I thought that was pretty sweet, but mostly only because I was allowed to eat blue macaroni and cheese for dinner. Maybe that's why I eat thirty-seven different kinds of macaroni and cheese now: I've never truly had a favorite. Sad thing is, I could never pick a favorite now. I wouldn't want to hurt another brand's feelings and then live through the rest of eternity without tasting the deliciousness of that brand again.

I'm not expecting any of you to have a love of macaroni and cheese to match mine, I only hope you will accept me for who I am, and let me love my many favorite macaroni and cheeses.

Also, my inner junkie wants to know: what kind of macaroni and cheese is your favorite? Any recommendations for me?

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