Mac & Cheese Mistake

Cheese is a luxury nearly all Peace Corps volunteers cherish; a rare, usually pricey, treat.  That said, please don’t pass judgment on the following behavior…

The other day, Adrienne and I decided to make Mac & Cheese for dinner, using one of the precious boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese that Adrienne had brought back from home.  The electricity here has been ridiculous lately, going out several times a day for anywhere from 5-10 minutes to several hours.  Of course, right as I threw in the pasta to boil, the power went out.  I entertained the idea of lighting the charcoal outside to cook the pasta, but it seemed like so much work and quite the process, all just to boil some noodles.  Adrienne and I joked about how the power would probably come back right as the charcoal was lit or right after the pasta finished cooking…

So we decided to just see what would happen to the pasta if it just sat in the hot water, thinking, yeah it’ll probably be a little gummy, but it’ll cook.  That was mistake number one.  Yes, the pasta did “cook” after about 15 minutes and yes, it did become very chewy.  However, working by lantern light, we deemed it decent enough to tame our hungry tummies and proceeded to add the vital packet of processed powdered cheese, and mixed in some powdered milk and water.  Mistake number two.

Voilà! The electricity returned!  (Of course!)  Tadá! The worst Mac & Cheese ever!  After sitting for a couple minutes, the texture of the noodles had become something I can only describe as like eating glue.  The gluey noodles sat in a pool of a cheesy, watery soupy substance.  It was inedible, this coming from Peace Corps volunteers who will eat almost anything, especially if in a cheese sauce!  Adrienne and I looked at each other, neither one of us wanting to say that we should throw it out, wasting the precious packet of powdered cheese…

Now with the power on again and because we had such cheesy soup-coated noodles, I had the idea of draining the cheese sauce, thus separating the terrible noodles and salvaging the precious cheese sauce, and attempting to boil some new macaroni noodles.  We proceeded to use a spoon to squish the sauce out of the gluey substance, rescuing what we could of such a delicacy and preciously saving it in a mug. 

Thankfully the electricity did not go out during the second batch of pasta making!  Tasting a properly cooked noodle once again emphasized just how bad those first noodles were!  We poured the protected cheese sauce over the new batch and happily enjoyed our cheesy meal.