Bringing Bacon Back

I've gotten to dig my fork into a fair number of mac n' cheese meals these last 10 months.  The one thing that at first thought didn't scare me a bit, but now scares me quite a lot is the addition of meat to a meal (that isn't a frozen meal).  My Archer Farms real bacon experience taught me that it's potentially a very dangerous thing. So much so that I think even Target/Archer Farms is having a difficult time with them because I've not seen those bacon carbonara bowls on shelves but for one or two days every few months at any local Target since I did my review.

Finding that another brand was giving bacon the ol' college try had me very cautious about the potential outcome.  Armed with a camera phone and their customer support 800 number I was ready to give Kraft's bacon bowl a shot.

The Review

Brand:
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Homestyle Sharp Cheddar Cheese Sauce And Oscar Mayer Bacon

Big money, no moldy.... STOP!

Yee-Haw!

I love cheese.  While most of us get out cheese from a grocery store, either buying store brands or the national brands like Kraft, Sargento and if we feel like springing for it Tilamook.  Some stores are have small sections near deli's with more craft cheeses in them and if you're in an area with a good dairy supply, you'll possibly be blessed with local artisan cheeses!  With the rise of the organic and explosion of local and specialty shops, there are a number of towns that now have specialty cheese shops springing up once again, selling local and fancy cheese varieties.  Here in the Bay Area, one of the bigger and better known producers of local artisan cheese is the Cowgirl Creamery. 

Located in Pt. Reyes Station (an hour north of San Francisco) the Cowgirl Creamery started making cheese in the early 90's and today sells cheese at two shops, the Tomales Bay Foods location in Pt. Reyes Station and at their cheese shop at the San Francisco Ferry Building.  They've also got a milk bar and cafe right next door to the SF shop and they've got their cheese in Whole Foods stores across the country and if you've got a local cheese shop, they may carry some of the Cowgirl varieties as well. 

As I had mentioned before in my most recent adventure in San Francisco that it was my second mac meal of the day.  This, was my first.

The Review

Brand:
Cowgirl Creamery's Sidekick Cafe Macaroni & Cheese 

That horse and rider silhouette sure doesn't look like any superhero sidekick I know.

Back to homeroom

I think if you've read many of my posts, you'll have discovered (like I have) that consistently the best mac's I've reviewed have all been 'homestyle' macs. The freshness and quality of the ingredients, how they are prepared really highlights everything about them and how much fresh ingredients really trump packaged or previously prepared meals that are made on the stove or in your microwave. These other meals may not be bad, but they aren't the same and that's a big deal.

When i visited homeroom a few months back, we all had a great time when we took over a good portion of the communal table for our lunch.  We had really tasty food and we started to talk about making a return trip.  I knew I had left a number of options untried on their menu, including a few spicy and more adventerous dishes that wouldn't normally be up my alley. But I'm doing this blog for those 15 daily readers damn it and I can't let them down so I was more than game to head back. 

My friends and I finally all had a availability and another Saturday afternoon trip was scheduled back in the beginning of December. 

To my surprise the menu had changed (hello winter menu! which included a spicy Sriracha Mac, a Smokey Bacon Mac and a Truffle Mac that has real truffles in it and costs $15 bucks!) and some of those yet to try options were gone (darn, no Feta mac), but they had added the above new ones in their place.

While most of the party enjoyed what they had last trip, I made sure to try a new dish and this one was an easy choice.  It had bacon!


The Review

Brand:
homeroom's Smokey Bacon Mac



We're back!



'Murica!

Living in the SF Bay Area, I've come to discover that we live in a foodie mecca.  Some of the best restaurants in the country are here or so I'm told (being a picky ass I tend not to be too adventurous with my food).  There are also lots of specialty places that have made niches out of excelling at one kind of food.  A few years back I read about a place in San Francisco that serves nothing but different kinds of grilled cheese.  As a person who loves cheese, I told myself I needed to get there.  Sadly I hadn't ever made that trip.  While SF is not far away, I tend to only go into town when there is something planned, like a Giants game or concert and just a grilled cheese sandwich hasn't carried enough weight for a trip.

During the 2012 baseball season, a coworker decided that it would be fun if we could get a group of us together for a game when his boss came in from out of town.  Since this coworkers boss lives out of state, we had to hope that the timing would be perfect.  One trip it just so happened that the Rockies were in town (and this bosses favorite team) and a group was formed for the game.  While walking to the park, the boss and I ended up going down 2nd street to get to AT&T (rather than my normal MUNI trip) and we walked right by a place called The American.  The grilled cheese place that I had read about!  I made a mental note at how close it was to the park and said that before or after some game that I would attend separately on a weekend, that a trip would be made.

A few months later after attending a different Giants game, I told the wife lets forget taking MUNI back to BART just walk up 2nd to the station.  Lo and behold, that walk took us right on by The American and we couldn't help but stop in.  To my complete surprise (I swear on my 16 year block of cheddar) they had a grilled cheese with mac n' cheese inside.  Oh how the gods have smiled upon me!

The Review:

Brand:
The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen's Mac Sandwich

Ten hut! Present arms!

Homestyle To Go

Kraft is THE predominant mac n' cheese maker in the country.  They've got a massive line of macaroni and cheese products that just eats up the shelf space in your local grocer.  They've added a Homestyle line that gets cooked in the oven and I've been meaning to try since it debuted a few years back.  In the last few months Kraft has introduced a just add water version of their Homestyle line.  I know these won't be the same, but having heard good things about the standard line I was very excited to see these hit the shelves. 

The Review

Brand:
Kraft Homestyle Hearty Four Cheese

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)

Mac N' Cheese, It's What's For Breakfast

Sorry for not having any fresh posts these last few days.  The Friday quickie post was trumped by a long birthday weekend full of out of town friends and antics & shenanigans in the SF Bay Area. 

I did however make a point to get mac n' cheese when I could.  I was successful in my endeavors and ate mac out (same place, twice), made a homemade mac and found some mac n' cheese by association. 

For the wife's birthday her friends and I plotted a surprise and they flew out for a long weekend of fun.  After picking them up at SFO we got back to our place and we were all feeling that grumble in our tummies telling us that we needed to eat something for breakfast.  We quickly decided on a local favorite of ours, Red Tractor Cafe in Dublin.  They do all kinds of good southern style dinners and serve great breakfasts all day.  While most of us had breakfast (there was a lone order of fried chicken) I decided that then was as good of time as any to officially review their mac n' cheese.  Now I can't recommend that you eat mac n' cheese for breakfast instead of a bowl of cereal every day, but like cold pizza, I don't think anyone will mind if it sneaks it's way onto your plate once in a blue moon. 

The Review

The sign that greets you at the Hacienda Crossing Plaza in Dublin