Mac-N-Cheese Please

Got Mac-N-Cheese? Alicia @ Welcome to My Planet and New Jersey Mom's Blog does. She's written about the trials of choosing that cheap and easy staple over a healthy, well-prepared, organic meal for their kids in her blogpost, Confessions of a Culinarily Challenged Mom.

Mr. Busypants eats more than his fair share of mac-n-cheese. He's loved and hated it his whole life. I say love/hate because he eats food in cycles. He'll eat one food obsessively and daily for six months straight, then he'll completely hate it and thus abandon it as a food he no longer likes.

I first noticed this occurance when he was 19 months old. One minute he was eating mac-n-cheese, and the next, he wouldn't touch the stuff. At one point, he was back on, but would only eat Auntie Annie's organic brand. Later he switched and will only eat Kraft.

For a while there, Kraft was great, but only if it wasn't "different." And God only knows what different meant because I sure couldn't figure it out. It got so bad that I would measure water to boil, cook the noodles for exactly seven minutes, and measure the milk and butter to ensure it would be the same every time.

Of course, it wasn't. Sometimes, it was still "Diiiiffffffferentttttt!"

In addition, under no circumstances were we allowed to re-heat and serve mac-n-cheese to the little king. That was also too "different." So I was reduced to dividing each 74 cent box of mac-n-cheese evenly and cooking them one serving at a time. It was a bone of contention in my marriage as my husband would ask: "Is there some reason why you're making an entire box of mac-in-cheese when you're going to throw the rest away?" He was right, it was a waste, but some days that extra step seemed monumental. Others, he was happy to eat his son's leftovers.

Lately Mr. Busypants has loosened up. Not wanting to see his sister get all the leftovers, he is now open to reheated mac-n-cheese. And since she'd gnaw your arm off if there wasn't anything else to dig on, I predict that the brand, cooking method, reheating controversy will be lost on little Miss Chattyshoes.

The irony of this post as that my two kiddos have just polished off a box of mac-n-cheese that I started making when I started writing this post. They've moved on to Oreos, but at least they're drinking milk.