Amherst meets reality

In our first post, we stated our aim to continue posting three different gourmet meals every week, in a fit of over-achieving ambition worthy of our Amherst days. Now, we present a post more fitting for life in the real world where you have to get up before 10am and life isn’t a magical fairyland designed explicitly to nurture and pamper you. This post features boxed macaroni and cheese.

Do not be deceived, though. This does not represent us throwing in the towel of wholesome living and accepting the reality of industrial food. Rather, the moral of this week’s post is that just by taking a few extra minutes to sautee some onions and mushrooms in butter and add them at the end after following the instructions on the box, you can still create a delicious meal that leaves you feeling nutrionally balanced and at peace with the world.

It works with other dishes and other vegetables too (yes, we realise that the vegetable-ness of mushrooms and onions is debatable). We recommend either sautéing them in butter or oil, or just boiling them and having them on the side. Sometimes we do this when we get a huge order of BBQ ribs with onion rings from our neighbourhood delivery store. That way we can enjoy the delicious beauty of greasy takeaways without the accompanying awful feeling of lacking plant nutrients.

Speaking of ribs: next week is Canada's largest ribfest! We've been looking forward to it all year, so you can trust us to give you the scoop next week.

*note from Sawa: 

I discovered Annie's mac & cheese on one of our annual ultimate frisbee excursions to Savannah, Georgia. I loved Kraft's mac cheese growing up in California, with its extreme cheesiness and day-glo orange, but back in Japan it wasn't very popular among my friends when we had sleepovers. I mean, sleepovers in grade school = mac & cheese, right? It took me a while to figure out that it wasn't just the unfamiliar cheddar taste, but the color that put most of them off. Perhaps they'd take better to Annie's, with its milder and definitely less colorful sauce. 

In any case, this is still my go-to dish when I'm alone for dinner and just don't feel like cooking. I love how versatile it is, since you can add pretty much any leftover veggies to clean out the fridge! Unfortunately, our local Costco seems to have stopped stocking these, so tonight I'm making mac & cheese from pasta, white sauce and cheese (oh my, think of that). Will update results next week!