Macaroni & Cheese Update

By Bruce Carleton (from Punk Magazine #0)
First, let me state a given: by "macaroni and cheese" I mean Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. People often assume that if I would just try some "real" macaroni and cheese, I wouldn't want to waste my time with the boxed dinners. This has an exact one-to-one correspondence with a believer in one religion thinking that another guy would naturally want to convert, since, after all, he does believe in a god -- just not the right one. Wait a minute, I know I'm losing you here. Fortunately it's near the end of the magazine and you've probably already read the Top 99, so hopefully you're not ready to throw it away yet and you'll stick with me a little longer. I'm trying to say it's an apples/oranges thing.

Homemade macaroni and cheese is fine; it's just not the same species as Kraft.

I've been a Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (I'll just call it KMaC) fanatic ever since I was a human. Some of my earliest memories revolve around it.

(BONUS NON-PUNK PHOTO) CARRYING ON THE TRADITION: Ricky was only one and a half, but his love of KMaC needed no promting.

Like the time my mom tried to get me to eat cucumber for the first time. I wouldn't do it, and thus forfeited a second helping of KMaC. Mom claims to have no memory of it, but this incident was brought out in hypnosis.

I was often told (mainly by said mom) that if I was allowed to eat KMaC as often as I wanted to, I'd soon grow tired of it. It never happened, and at this latter stage in my life, I can be utterly certain it never will. When I was down-and-out on Forsythe St. and couldn't afford the $50 a month rent (thanks for that loan, John... did I ever pay it back?), KMaC came through. I ate it on average ten times a week, and never got the least bit fed up. For some reason I started keeping the boxes. One time Patricia house-sat for a few days (why would she want to do that? ...the place was literally a pit, except that it was on the fifth floor), and when I came home, she'd made a good-size coffee table out of them, without really putting a dent in the supply. I was unhappy at first at the lack of respect shown to KMaC, but I needed the table.

During my sojourn abroad I often had to go years... actually years... without KMaC. I would carry back a suitcase full on my infrequent rotations home or to Singapore, which had a relatively advanced level of civilization at that time (using the KMaC Index), but even with careful rationing this cache wouldn't last long. Finally they started getting it in Jakarta... just about the time I went to live in Vietnam, where of course they didn't have it. (Same thing happened with the Internet, although I'm not sure in what way the two are connected.) Once in a while, though, I was able to find it in the shops in Saigon. That was up until about three years ago, when it vanished completely from the shelves. I hope nobody would try to suggest that this was mere happenstance.

For this reason, and possibly one or two others, I recently returned to these shores, where I've been able to resume regular consumption of KMaC, as well as a few KMaC pretenders. So here's my update to the review in Punk #16.

Wild Oats Elbow Macaroni & Cheese "With Vermont White Cheddar"

This is pretty good, and it does come in a small rectangular box, but it's back to the apples/oranges thing. My mom talked me into buying it. (She still thinks I can be converted.)

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese "Can You Find The Blue Paw Prints"

This is one of the specialty series of KMaC products, like Pokeman or Bugs Bunny KMaC. To tell you the truth, there's really nothing special about them, and they usually cost more too. I admit the idea of having blue dog footprints in the dinner is a good one (although they tend to turn green when you put the cheese sauce on), but it's not worth the extra bucks. And this one probably wouldn't go over well in Indonesia. (Dog is haram meat, like pig. That's why Burger King and McDonald's sell "beefburgers" instead of "hamburgers." No respectable Muslim will touch anything with ham in it... even in the name. So I doubt if they'd go for a food with dog footprints in it.) It might do okay at first in Vietnam, though, until they figure out that the dog on the cover is misleading.

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Spirals

This is one of several shape variants. For the most part, shape doesn't matter, but this one is a bit lighter and smoother going down the throat than the regular. In fact, Spirals are the closest thing to the late lamented Kraft Egg Noodles and Cheese Dinner, which I haven't seen in well over ten years.

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

This is it. There's really nothing I can say, except "thank you" to Kraft Foods, Inc. for not calling it "Classic." One more thing: periodically, they run a contest whereby loyal KMaC users can get their pictures on the cover of the box. I can think of no greater glory (and no one more deserving than myself), but sadly I seem to have missed the cut-off age of twelve. Only my respect for Kraft keeps me from consulting with an attorney in this regard.

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