the social contract.

as i read jean-jacques rousseau's the social contract for my ethics class, i eat sunflower wheat toast with nutella. i am pretty sure he'd approve.

additionally, i treated myself to an episode of the barefoot contessa this morning. her friends were on vacation and she made food for them to have when they got back! macaroni and cheese. lemon mousse. oh, to be her friend...

weeks ago.

i made the nytimes mac n'cheese recipe weeks ago. a fraction of the whole recipe. in my toaster oven. with a little too much cayenne.

years ago, michelle (zoe's mom) emailed me this recipe. she said it would make my heart stop a little. and it's become my favorite. it's delicious. and easy. and probably pretty fattening. i don't mind. it's not like i eat it every day, kids!

secretly.

once a year, usually in the darkness of winter, i eat a box of velveeta shells and cheese. i love it. it's got a weird packet of cheese that i know would survive nuclear fallout and pasta that cooks way too fast. is it because it is enriched? i have no idea. and truthfully, i don't really want to know.

but i always preferred velveeta to kraft mac n'cheese (which the canadians just call "kraft dinner"). i thought the powdery cheese, as a child, was even more bizarre than the processed velveeta. you can't use the whole packet; it's just too damn cheesey, but that means you can eat it again the next day. and then i am satiated for another year. i go back to over-thinking everything i put in my mouth.

oh! upon further research, i learned that velveeta is a kraft product. they just dominate the mac market. don't talk to me about annie's or any of the versions they probably sell at the cooperative. potentially tasty, also with a powdered cheese, but not the taste of my childhood. the taste of zoe's, maybe.