Have I ever mentioned how much I love Kraft Macaroni & Cheese?  Well, I do.  Always have…always will.  As a child, my preferred foods could fairly be described as, well…limited.  (Right now, my Mother is rolling her eyes and screaming “LIMITED?  DID YOU SAY ‘LIMITED’?  HOW ‘BOUT NON-EXISTENT?”)  Of course, she’s exaggerating, because that’s what moms do.  It’s a guilt thing…a microscopic organism that invades their body during conception of the first child, and NEVER. EVER. LEAVES.  I mean, c’mon, I did eat.  Yes, I visibly suffered through any meal that didn’t consist of Kraft Mac & Cheese, a hot dog or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but can you blame me?  I was a tortured child…subjected to weekly meals of meatloaf, stuffed bell peppers and porkchops and potatoes immersed in canned tomatoes and rice.  Had the child abuse hotline (and speed dial) been readily available in the 70s, I would have put them both to good use.  Instead, I waited patiently for the weekends and my favorite babysitter, Lori.  The one who took us to 7-11 for a sugar fix, Astroworld for an adrenaline rush, and, God bless her, to heaven with her perfectly prepared Kraft Mac & Cheese.  How she managed to magically blend just the right amount of milk, butter and fluorescent orange powdered “cheese”, I will never know, but I thank her for it today, with all that I am, and all that I will ever be.

My admittedly “simplistic” childhood palette was dealt a devastating blow in the fall of my eighteenth year of life.  It was my first year in college.  Texas A&M.  Krueger Hall:  a massive dorm connected to three others and joined in the middle by a sprawling cafeteria.  Here it was…standing before me.  A room full of choices and no maternal figure to force a balanced diet.  I was free to choose whatever my little heart desired.  Unfortunately (I would soon find out), my little heart desired a bit more than what was provided (a sea of muted tones, with the consistency of brain matter and the taste of burnt plastic).  Mommy?  Where are you Mommy?

The first year of college brings with it many-a-lesson:  (1) Choice: Start off week with Monday night buzzfest at Dudley’s pub…or attend Tuesday’s 8 a.m. Psychology class; (2) Cleanliness: Live in filth waiting for non-existent parent to remind you to wash pile of clothes or gather quarters and study for History exam in laundromat.; (3) Relationships:  Pursue hard-partying, self-involved frat boy or connect with lanky, kind, intelligent (and adorable) GDI (G-Damned Independent)…but most importantly (for me, at least), that first year of college brought with it the painful realization that my Mother, as much as I hated to admit it, had been right.  And (egads) I desperately missed her soupy pork chop concoction, the perfectly spiced spaghetti, the slow-cooked black-eyed peas and yes, even her onion-filled slabs of meatloaf.

As my fellow classmates packed on the Freshman fifteen, unphased by their daily consumption of prison slop, my frame began to hold much less.  My first trip home illicited the appropriate hand-over-mouth-gasp from my mother and the inappropriate diagnosis of a classic eating disorder (it’s the pyschotherapist in her).

“My God, honey…have you stopped eating.”

“Well, sort of,” I replied.  “But not for vanity purposes.”

“Tell me why, then!”

“I don’t like dog food,” I said.  “I miss your cooking.”

This was a moment of retribution only a mother can simultaneously revel in and abhor.  She spent the next three days toiling away in the kitchen, and, with reckless abandon, I gobbled down every last morsel placed in my path.

In the hmm hmm years since that semester of lessons, my palette has expanded to include just about every food imaginable…the more exotic, the better.  But every once in awhile, when I’m down or PMS’ing or just plain nostalgic, I’ll pull out the half stick of butter, break out the quarter cup of milk, stir in the fluorescent orange powder and shovel in as much Kraft Macaroni & Cheese as I can physically handle.  Then I lay back, hands crossed over distended belly, and dream of Laffy Taffy and The Texas Cyclone.

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