Macaroni and cheese is almost always disappointing, which is a strange thing to say about humanity’s sixth best creation. It’s a dish with no ceiling and infinite variations, and the human mind is but a feeble instrument that turns variety to anxiety. The idea that you may not be eating the best possible version creates a sort of food-based FOMO that ruins any chance you had for total bliss. That’s a real problem. Total bliss is really the only result that would justify the inhalation of cheese and butter and the delusion that somehow this constitutes an entrée. Any food worth getting excited about will be accompanied by some level of guilt, but mac and cheese is the culmination of every dietary no-no. It’s the only accepted meal that flips the paradigm from “What shall I put my cheese in?” to “What shall I put in my cheese?” If you’re cooking for one, portion control is impossible. The noodles in any boxed brand are tiny and so lubed up with butter you legitimately don’t even have to chew – the only governor on consumption rate is spoon size. Much like how the only governor on consumption amount is box size. And leftover mac and cheese suffers maybe the most severe drop-off of any reheated food. All the same diet-busting nutrition facts, zero evidence that you didn’t accidentally microwave a dish rag. No dinner makes it easier to talk yourself into “just finishing off” forty more grams of fat. Unlike pizza, with its neat little slices, pasta has no built-in mechanism for self-reflection, meaning your brain can shut itself down while your hands shovel mound after mound after mound of Americanized fettuccine alfredo into your face. A proper bowl of mac and cheese should last around forty five seconds and feel like ten.
But back to the FOMO. Mac and cheese by itself is great. Mac and cheese with literally any other ingredient is also great. Salt. Pepper. Onion. Garlic. Bread crumbs. Sriracha. Ground beef. Tuna. More cheese. Jalapeno. Beets, maybe. Not all equally great, but all great enough to scratch at the back of your brain with every bite of whatever “recipe” you settled for. And yes, you slowly realize, you definitely settled. The dopamine is diluted, and what should be a euphoric confluence of flavor and nutritional ignorance becomes a descent from uncertainty to regret to shame. And then you finish, overstuffed but underfulfilled, with naive belief that next time you’ll get it right. Repeat.
Anyway. I used a little extra butter and a few shakes of salt and pepper, and it was good, and I hate myself.
And I’m sorry but I need to cut this one short. Yesterday I made what was an irresponsibly premature announcement of the death of the Neighbor Steve Report. Huge news today. Huger than the anxiety I get from mac and cheese, if you can believe it. Unable to accept the unknown, I brought a six pack of Dale’s Pale Ale over to Neighbor Steve’s house post dinner. Maybe a bit too obvious of a Trojan horse situation – seems to be delicious beer, actually conversational lubricant for low-key interrogation – but he welcomed in both the beer and the me. He still looked like alcohol was weighing down his face and I told him as much, which he laughed at and said he hadn’t had a drink in a week. Stress, it turned out. So obvious after he said it, the way his shoulders pressed toward each other, the way his non-beer hand would drift to his leg for a moment then flit back to his head and tangle itself in his hair on a metronomic loop. Stress from spending five days in literal, actual, physical jail. Definitely more exciting than vacation, and definitely better than being dead, but definitely not what you’d expect from Neighbor “TWO Homemade Birdfeeders” Steve.
The police grabbed him last week after tracking down a gardening glove delivered to his house almost three months ago and later discovered at the scene of a tragic, criminal happening. Which seems like a stretch. And after five days of questioning the police agreed. He spoke vaguely, frustratingly, but probing further so soon after he endured what I assume was a much more aggressive, beerless debriefing seemed insensitive. He didn’t seem too rattled, though, which was surprising and not. Once his alibi cleared – at a concert, confirmed by two bartenders and eventually an Uber driver who insisted “driver/rider confidentiality” was a real thing and then badly misinterpreted what it would mean if it was – they asked if he knew any potential murderers – he said he did not – and sent him on his way with only the request that he remain reachable. So his role in the investigation was most likely over, and with it the fear of wrongful imprisonment. A sizeable burden to be lifted, for sure, but relief of future suffering doesn’t undo recent trauma, and finding yourself the primary suspect of a very public murder case, even briefly, is years of weekly therapy kind of stuff. Tears and stammered “holy shit”s, not droopy eyes and fidgeting. Not that I want to critique his coping, he could very well just be tougher than me. Or he’d buried deep the part of himself responsible for the handling of unprecedented adversity, holding off a potential breakdown until it was convenient. Simply a chore he’d get around to one of these days.
If that was the case then it worked for at least a night. We drank the beers – me four, him two – and I made up stories about what’d happened while he was locked up and I didn’t mention anything about the unlocked door or the sriracha or his plants. Not from guilt or fear, but because what did it matter? A few days of sauce, no break ins, no wrongdoing, no problems. No anything. If a tree gets borrowed from a forest and no one’s around to see it, does anyone care?
Sorry, very wordy Neighbor Steve Report today. Only food going forward.
Burned and Bland 