Cheesy Cupcakes

As I've mentioned in the past, my mac n' cheese has given me some notority in the office.  Not too long ago a coworker mentioned that his sister had made something that I may enjoy.  Because I was coming or going as he was mentioning it to me, I didn't catch what exactly it was, other than it was mac n' cheese based.  A few days later as I was getting a drink out of the fridge I saw a tray filled with what looked like cupcakes.  Mac n' cheese CUPCAKES.  Now that's the combination of two things I can get behind.  I was asked later that morning by EM if I had seen what he left in the fridge and he said to make sure that I got some before the rest of the office ate them all.  I made sure that I had them for lunch. 

The Review

Brand:

EM's Sister's Mac n' Cheese Cups.

One day some inventive chef decided to combine cupcakes and mac n' cheese.  I salute you chef!

A Mac Made For Steve

I've mentioned a few times that my coworkers have been instrumental with not only my creation of this blog, but helping me pick lunches, going to restaurants to try them with me and now taking time out of their own day to MAKE me mac n' cheese.

I've got a number of foodie coworkers, but one often makes some pretty amazing things and brings in the leftovers for lunch.  While she's feasting on her meals, I'm often in the kitchen too, making meals pulled from the freezer for this blog.  We've had a number of conversations about my love of comfort foods and our mutual love of crunchy snacks (we'll share that bag of chips or pretzels to help each other out) and once she found out that I was going whole hog into creating a mac n' cheese blog she said that she was worried about what I could be doing to my stomach and offered to bring in for me a healthier home made mac.

You read that right.  A foodie is going to make me a special lunch, for no reason other than because she's just that kind of person.  I really do work with a GREAT group of people and I can't thank my coworker enough for her kindness in doing this for me.

Some may say, "Steve are you actually going to review your coworker's mac that they brought in for you?"  And to that I can only reply with a resounding YES! She made this for me (and for the blog) so it's only fair that I give it the same treatment that I give all my other macs. I won't pull punches, but looking at it, I don't think i'll have to either.

My FIRST mac made exclusively for the blog and I.  I was so excited by the fact I got a special homemade brought into the office just for me, that I didn't take any other pictures because I was too busy eating it all up. 

The Review

Name:
DT's Healthier mac n' cheese, just for Steve

A homeroom That Should Be In Every School

This blog has really opened my eyes.  I've been simply stunned by the amount of mac n' cheese out there.  Frozen kinds up the wazoo, enough just add water varieties to make the state call for water rationing and so many stove top kinds that I could fill a grocery aisle.  Restaurant mac n' cheeses are something that we're sorely lacking in comparison.

When I first started the blog, I put out a call to friends on Facebook for places that I should try (if they knew of any) and between FB comments and coworkers, I had 8 people telling me that I needed to venture off to a place in Oakland called homeroom within the day I mentioned it.  If there was that much positive feedback I knew I had to get out there, and soon. 

This last weekend I finally got a group of friends and some of their family together (9 of us!) and we all went to homeroom for lunch.

Restaurant:
homeroom

Mac + Cheese?  I think we've got a winner here.

In The Land Of Milk & Cheese

As I've said in a few earlier posts I work for an energy consulting firm here in the Bay Area.  One of my first jobs was working in an implementation program for a Southern California utility.  We had a client site visit and we weren't sure where exactly we were supposed to be going.  So it was my job to find out. I went to see if Land O' Lakes (the parent company) website happened to list their production facilities anywhere.  I just happened onto the fact that Land O' Lakes was celebrating Mac n' Cheese month when I was looking things up.  They had a recipe on the site and I figured why not try it.  It looked easy enough and up to that point, I had never made any good home made mac n' cheese meals myself. 

Since then, this meal has become my go to home make mac.  It gets made every few months and has become the primary side dish for our Xmas dinners (it goes great with the ham we always have), been brought into work for movie night and was most recently made for all of our Chicago friends who came out for Sharen's birthday this last week.

The Review

Recipe Title:

Land O' Lakes 'Best Ever Macaroni and Cheese' (This recipe is no longer on the Land O' Lakes site)