Classing up Boxed Mac & Cheese

Yesterday I mentioned that I haven't blogged much about cooking lately and would like to get back to it. Blogging about cooking, that is. As I explained yesterday, I've continued to cook; I've just gotten out of the habit of writing about it.

One of my approaches to cooking is to balance convenience with flavor. Heat-and-eat type meals are ultra convenient, but their quality is generally poor compared to what I can pull together with some skill and a bit more time. I like to find ways to use packaged foods and "class them up" into fancier, more satisfying meals. In that vein I want to share this dinner of mac & cheese I made recently:



Yes, that's boxed mac & cheese at the center of the meal. Boxed mac & cheese is one of my comfort foods. I've enjoyed it since childhood, when my mom made it every week.

I've written before about how my mom's approach to cooking, which wasn't always good, was always to take a shortcuts to make cooking easier. What wasn't good about the way my mom did it was that she'd opt for "easier" every single time, using whatever instant, powdered, canned, or frozen stuff was available without regard to how much better the fresh stuff was. As I started cooking on my own I learned that fresh stuff often tastes better and sometimes isn't that hard. For example, at age 20 I discovered making mashed potatoes from actual potatoes wasn't that hard and tasted way better than freeze-dried flakes. Thus I synthesized a positive lesson from my mom: judicious shortcuts can save time and effort without compromising flavor.

Another lesson I learned as I lived on my own is that always buying the cheapest can be foolish. Sometimes you can spend a modest amount more to get noticeably better quality, reliability, etc. The boxed mac & cheese I grew up on was the cheap stuff. Y'know, the store brands that are bright orange. In college and graduate school I experimented with different brands of boxed mac & cheese, including different store brands. There's better stuff out there that doesn't break the bank.

Lately we've been kind of splurging with Annie's mac & cheese.



At the regular supermarket Annie's sells for well over $2 per box, but we buy these 12-packs at Costco where they cost less than half that. A few months ago Costco had them on sale, and we picked up a few 12-packs on sale at I think about $7 each. That lowers the per box cost to about 60 cents, making it highly price competitive with... well, just about anything.

I did more to class up this meal than merely buy yuppie-style boxed mac & cheese. When I make it I'm careful about making the sauce so that it gains a good texture and isn't thin or gritty. I stir in freeze dried chives for extra flavor. Then I make sides to go with it. ...Well, usually. When I'm pressed for time or energy dinner may just be a bowl of mac & cheese and a fork.

In the meal pictured at the top I continued my technique of judicious shortcuts. The lentils on the left are from a can. I bought a can of Progresso lentil soup when it was on sale. It's pretty bland, but that can be corrected with the help of a good spice rack. And lentils have an astonishing amount of protein. On the right is creamed spinach. I made that from a can of spinach, melting into it a few tablespoons of butter and aged cheddar cheese I sliced off a block.

All in all, it was an enjoyable meal. Often I'll enjoy something like this with a half bottle of wine. ...Yes, the half bottle of wine is probably more expensive than all the other ingredients added together!

Which States Have Covid Vaccine Apps?

Today I was chatting elsenet with a few friends in the EU about vaccinations. One of them shared an image of his digital vaccine card and remarked how easy it was that his recent booster shot just showed up in it automatically. It reminded me of a conversation a few months ago with an EU citizen executive in my company who talked about the similar ease with which he tracks not just vaccinations also but negative test records for all the travel between countries he does as part of his job. Here in the US my digital vaccine passport works well, too... but only to a point. While my booster shot appeared automatically in it, also, the problem is.... nearly every state has a different system.

Today I looked up how many different systems there are. The most recent article I found was from about a month ago, "Does My State Have A Covid-19 Vaccine App?" by PC Magazine (3 Dec 2021). A read through the article showed that there are about 17 different vaccine apps used by various states. 15 of them are unique; 1 is shared by 2 states, and 1 is shared by 4 or 5. It's not clear if the few states with common apps actually share data or just happen to have the same UI but disparate databases. I suspect the latter. That also leaves more than half the states with no simple electronic records available to residents. In some of those states the governors have simply refused. In several the state legislatures have passed laws, which the governors have signed, making it illegal to have a vaccine records app.

What's the impact of not having a consistent, easy to use system? Well, for one, it a major impediment to putting vaccination or testing requirements around high risk activities like traveling via airplanes, attending indoors concerts and sporting events, and even eating at restaurants. Covid-positive people there could turn them into super-spreader events.  Of course, stopping vaccination requirements is the point of the bans all these Republican controlled legislatures have created.

The completely inconsistency between states makes also it harder even for states, localities, and private businesses that do choose to set vaccination requirements. For example, when we visited Hawaii several weeks ago, we had to bring our paper vaccination cards 2,500 miles overseas with us to show as proof upon arrival. State officials would not accept California's electronic record as proof. Hawaii has its own state level system... which is only for state residents. Even locally in California, businesses I've spoken to that require proof of vaccination don't know about California's app. Everyone feels the best way to check is to ask for paper cards... which sounds like stories my dad used to tell me from the 1950s about his and his buddies being required to carry around their draft cards.