Cheesy Memories

Posted by gspeed on Sep 19, 2009 in Food | 2 comments

My tastes have become a little more refined over the years, but I’ve always appreciated cheese.

Nobody knew this better than my grandmother.

I recall her telling me how she spent a good 5 minutes rummaging through our packed fridge to eventually find a large block of what she assumed to be a hard, white cheddar-Perfect for a heaping bowl of homemade mac’n’cheese. She then spent another 30 minutes adding creams and spices to the bubbling mixture and had it sitting on the table for me when I got home from school.

“Here is some cheese noodles,” she said, pointing to the bowl sitting on the table. I knew it was really her way of saying that she loved me. Either way, I was excited over some mac’n'cheese after a hard day full of those intense 4th grade classes.

I ate the whole thing. No surprise there.

It wasn’t too bad, but I don’t know if I ever told Grandma that what she’d actually found in the fridge wasn’t cheese, but a pound of white chocolate brought over from Germany.

It was the WORST mac’n’cheese I’ve ever eaten in my life.

But it’s one of the few meals I’ll never forget.

The food wasn’t even that bad. It had the right consistency-warm and gooey-just…with a certain sweetness to it.

They even sell chocolate pasta now. I guess grandma was ahead of her time without even knowing it.

It helped to pretend that it was really cheese I was eating, though. I’ve now learned that closing your eyes and thinking of cheese improves most situations.