Shells & Chreese

As of last Tuesday, my friend with the busted paw was still in the hospital. She'd undergone surgery, was well on her way to recovery and even had her appetite back. The problem was the hospital's food sucked. Before her surgery, I'd noticed my friend ogling the macaroni and cheese another friend had brought her mother, but she hadn't been digesting dairy very well since returning from a trip to Asia, so I decided it was vegan mac and cheese time.

I got home from the hospital at roughly ass o'clock, which was no time to be playing with Mac Daddy or some other vegan-macaroni-and-cheese-from-scratch recipe, but I had a box of Road's End Organics Shells & Chreese in the cabinet, so I decided to make that (I'd never had it before).

I followed the instructions on the box and nothing stuck to the pot, which was awesome (I've never been able to make macaroni and cheese from the box without losing half of it), but it didn't look very tempting, so I added a bit more soy milk. That made it look a bit better, so I decided it was done. Then I tasted it.

It tasted kind of like a cross between dirt and nothing. Seriously. It was so bad. I had been discussing the product with my lactose-intolerant friends a few weeks earlier and the first thing I did was email them all saying "DO NOT BUY! NOT RECOMMENDED! YUCK!"

After that, I checked The PPK boards and saw that people suggested adding things like oil and garlic to it to get it to taste good. That's too much like cooking for instant food, IMO. If I'm going to start chopping things, I want the sense of pride I get from making a dish from scratch, not boxed macaroni and cheese.

Thankfully, my friend was released from the hospital on Wednesday and her mother took her directly upstate, so I was spared the embarrassment of either giving her the Shells & Chreese or explaining why I could not. I attempted to eat it myself because I hate to waste food, but over half of it went in the trash. Ugh.