Pictured below is baked macaroni and cheese. Not one of the most creative or complicated dishes in my repertoire, I serve this when there has been a long run of rice or asian noodles. While good in its own right there is a huge flaw, but it doesn’t reside in the creamy sauce and the crispness of the melted cheeses on the top, no clearly it is…. that I made it.

True, I have not made one macaroni and cheese the same way twice but they’ve all turned out to be general successes. Unfortunately, no matter who I serve it to, it never seems to be quite right; I will never live up to the one person that served them their best mac and cheese. Save for my friend whose adoptive mother was notorious for making “macaroni and milk”, everyone who comes up to my table has the paragon of macaroni and cheese deeply embedded into their psyche. It is not so much the technique, but there are certain memories locked in with that perfect mac and cheese that I don’t seem to stock in my pantry.

Elbow, shells, fusilli, baked, stove top, roux-based, boil, boil and absorption, soft noodle, firm noodle, broth based, milk only, cream only, sour cream, no crust, crumb crust, cracker crust, cheese crust, one cheese, three cheese, white cheese, soufflé, black pepper, white pepper, fresh herb, dried herb, no spice, dried mustard, with vegetables, with meat, with meat and vegetables, full fat, low fat, no fat, soul free, soul crushing, crushed garlic, crushed ice, ice cold, cold heart, heart broken, heart ache, head ache, head trauma, traumatic childhood…