Cheese

I have a love/hate relationship with cheese.

I love it on pizza.  I hate it if it smells funny.  (Romano, I'm looking at you.)  I love it in enchiladas.  I hate it if it is too hard.  (That would be Cheddar.)

Back in college, I was so convinced that cheese was bad, I actually tried the fat-free variety.  It was tasteless and rubbery, and didn't satisfy properly.  I soon caved and learned that eating healthy is the key to weight maintenance...not getting rid of cheese in your diet.  I still cringe at the thought of eating fat-free cheese.  Something is just wrong with that.

The dichotomy extends into macaroni and cheese, too.  I was raised on Kraft, which for a while was okay, but I'd only eat it with a fork.   Why?  So the cheese sauce would drip off of the noodles and into the bowl.  It just had too much cheese.  Someone tried to serve me Velveeta brand once, but I turned up my nose.  To this day, I'll eat homemade mac and cheese if someone serves it to me, but I find it too cheesy, too rich, and just plain overbaked. 

When the kids came along, I certainly wasn't going to try to make homemade macaroni, so I tried Annie's, a brand that the kids and I both love.  I still eat it with a fork, but I find the taste and texture much more palatable than any other boxed variety.  Usually, Melina eats Annie's; in fact, she loves it.  But today, at the grocery store, she saw a Deluxe Kraft version that reminded her of the homemade version she had out to lunch 2 weeks ago.  Can we try it, she asked?  Uh, well, okay, I replied.

Let me tell you this.  I can't figure out how or why the Deluxe Kraft version is out there and selling.  It creeped me out to squeeze the cheese onto the noodles, and when I tasted it (since I always taste something before I give it to my kids), I almost spit it out.  The meal was the equivalent of making noodles and melting American cheese on top.

Which brings me to a question I have always had:  How can American cheese, the processed slice of dairy and chemicals, actually be called cheese at all?  There is no love/hate about that orange square; it falls wholly in the hate category.

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