Mac-ination

I have stumbled onto quite a few different mac n' cheese related items that aren't actually real mac n' cheese.  Mac themed bandages and realistic doll house food have gotten the review treatment and a few others are waiting in the wings.  What this has taught me is that the power of the dish of cheesy golden noodles has found its way into practically every aspect of our lives (at least here in America) and I'm O.K. with that.

Back during the summer (I know, I know, I'm just a smidgen behind in my posts) I saw that the retailers had swung into full gear for back to school and with sales abound the supplies flowed through the aisles.  Having heard from a few different people who thanks to having little ones, being teachers or are just artistic that Crayola has a crayon that I would be interested in.

Crayola started by two cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harris Smith of New York in 1885.  Originally known as Binney & Smith, the company produced pigments and colorants for industrial use.  Their products made tires black (and last longer) and gave paint it's color and they invented dustless chalk just after the turn of the century.  Separate from the success of B&S, Edwin Binney and his wife Alice Stead Binney, developed a wax crayon product line that she named Crayola.  The name came from a mashup of 'craie', French for chalk and 'ola' for oily/oleaginous.  Within two years there were 5 crayon sizes and 18 different packaging and crayon counts by 1905. Numerous sets were aimed at both artists and children and over the course of the next thirty years acquisitions allowed for a vastly expanded selection of crayons.  In 1958, the classic 64 crayon box with sharpener was introduced (and is still available today).  Over the years, the crayon selections have expanded and changed, growing to practically any color one can think of.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do to properly show off the macaroni and cheese crayon, since attempting to draw on my own is just a internet meme waiting to happen.  I do however have a cute mini coloring/activity book that a close friend created to promote his web series and numerous ebooks (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3 and Book 4 available on the iTunes book store for the iPad) The Boy With The Dreaming Key.  It's the perfect thing to color!

The Review

Brand:
Crayola's Macaroni and Cheese Crayon

Teachers love us!

Gobble Gobble!

I hope everyone (that celebrates it) has a great Thanksgiving, spending the day with family and friends.  Making sure to fill up on metric tons of food, because that's how we do it here in 'Murica. 

My mom found a comic strip that she thought would be right up my alley yesterday.  I'd have to agree.

To view the comic (and give Mark Tatulli, the creator of Lio his clicks) please click here

Itty Bitty Mac

One never knows where they'll find their next mac & cheese.  The obvious places are those that serve  or sell food.  Restaurants and grocery stores have been the root location of 99% of my blog posts so far, with an honorable mention of inedible mac bandages found at a candy shop in San Francisco.  Easy marks.  What if you up really want to challenge yourself.  Where would you look?

How about an antique store.

Now I bet you're thinking, antique shops don't sell food.  They can't. It's against the law, or it'd be a crime against humanity to buy some mac that was last sold in the Eisenhower administration.  Well I've not found any food (or any old packages of mac for that matter)... yet, but I did find something pretty damn cool. Miniature dollhouse sized mac n' cheese.

I had found myself back in the Niles district of Fremont, once again wandering the shops on a Sunday afternoon.  While I did walk by Bronco Billy's and their tempting mac bites, this post is about on one of the antique shops a few blocks down.

My Friends And I is located at 37521 Niles Blvd.  Like almost all the shops (as far as I can tell) on Niles Blvd., they have a bit of a focus, and numerous vendors that work to that shop's theme.  This shop (like any good one) has a little bit of everything, vintage and new but something I've noticed as I've been through the area a few times is that they make sure to decorate up their shop and work with their vendors to do so for calendar events.

The shop was pretty busy when I was there, but remember, they close at 5PM daily, so no late night antiquing for you!

Not only is that a good sign of rotating inventory, but a store that has vendors who don't want to just have a stagnant look that in my opinion, turns off the potential customers.  Why go in, if the stuff you can see in the front, is the same stuff you saw three months ago?  They want to sell their stuff and by rotating and bringing in new stuff regularly, it's actually an adventure to go in and browse. 

Besides, the ladies that work there are really nice, so even if you don't buy anything, you'll have a great conversation.

The Review

Brand:
Dollhouse Miniatures Macaroni and Cheese

While that's not the 'brand', this was the only sign in the booth (which was filled with miniatures for dollhouses), so huzzah for impromptu namings!

Mac-Aids

We all love mac n' cheese.  Well I have a great fondness for it and I hope that those reading it are either just as big of fans of the cheesy noodley cassarole, or have a perverse enough sense of humor to watch me consume as many kinds of this stuff as possible while having a chuckle at my expense. 

You know that mac n' cheese has hit the big time when you start to see non food stuffs appear in the likeness of this blog's subject matter.  While being tourists with friends who were here for a long birthday weekend, we spent quite a lot of time in San Francisco enjoying the sites and just a small chunk of what the city has to offer.  While wandering through the tourist trap known as Pier 39 we found our way into one of the candy shops to spy what they had. 

The Candy Baron is a dangerous store where loose candy sold by the quarter pound might as well come with a mortgage repayment schedule and the shelves are stocked to the hilt with all kinds of candy and candy related parafanelia.  Hiding in the back corner were some of the more random things that seem to be in the local candy shops now.  The section devoted to bacon (if I only wouldn't die from eating so much of it, I would try to find a way to blog it as well), a section devoted to 'naughty' candies and other random items that best fit in there because they don't fit anywhere else.  While looking over the bacon section I spied something that just begged to be reviewed on Mac N' Steve...

The Review

Brand:
Accoutreatments Macaroni & Cheese Bandages

Could these be the best bandages ever???