bunny lovin'

Original Post Aug. 23, 2006

I am an addict.
I am a junkie.
I am a fiend.
I guess this is the place where I suppose I should be overwhelmed in my unhappiness with my addictive disorder and make some sort of poignant plea for forgiveness….understanding….help. Truth told: I like what I am doing, I am willing to suffer the side effects, bear the consequences and cheerfully claim complete responsibility for my actions. I don’t want help, I will not stop and I am far too content to change; personal growth is vastly overrated anyway. I don’t have a problem I have a happy habit.
I can’t get enough of the cheese- macaroni and cheese.
I am a macaddict.

It all began in college, a time when much behavior begins to get a little out of hand. Child genius, college crash pad at 16, far away from loving parental guidance I had my very first late-night blue-box experience. Coming from the whole-wheat hippie household, my first Kraft blast was like a personal epiphany:
Food
Good
Cheap
In a box
Now

That night began a years long love affair with the box of blue, every night it was me and the mac. I even had a roommate with similar habits who had the god given gift to be able to make a double box blindass drunk, too stoned to speak and none of the requisite butter and milk in the fridge. It would come out perfectly every time. We were roommates for years and even had a song about the beloved box-o-food. Long after college we languished long, late nights in blissful mactopia. Recent reunion turned talk back to good ole’ days, back to mac and the song came back; each having continued to siren boiling saucepots in our own kitchens and own lives all these years hence. Spontaneously in unison we serenaded our astounded audience with the heavenly hymn:

Macaroni and cheese
Macaroni and cheese
Hook me up please
With macaroni and cheese

Hey, man, I never said it was particularly inspired.

I still box about 3 times a week, my favorite lunch of choice and I have long since refined my tastes, opting now for the Bunny Mac, whole wheat shells n’ cheddar. Without the Guru of the Blue, I have developed my own particular science of cheese, which involves boiling for eight minutes, adding Greek yogurt, an exact allotment of an assload of Thai chili and holy basil sauce, a dash of sesame oil for that lovely nutty flavor and grating in a pile of the extra-sharp New York cheddar. Yum.

At one of those chicks drinking wine gatherings recently I discovered I was not alone in my macdiction, though my macatite was a bit more voracious than many others present. I learned a lot that evening: Trader Joe’s is another popular option and one can tell a lot about a person by how they mac. A dear friend of mine had never ventured far outside the box and only macs with tuna and peas (although she is a caterer, she needs to get out more and upon hearing my macsterpiece, she forced me over to demo my madness so she could step closer to that edge for which she secretly yearns). Another party guest and recent transplant to Brooklyn, disclaimed her staunch sticking by the printed-on-the-box instructions by prefacing it with confessions that she has never eaten chili (the kind with beans, which she dislikes) and had only just had her first seafood experience. That poor, sheltered child…go the hell back to Michigan.

I am now a recent refugee, my house still in shambles, littered with the unpacked and the wheredoesthisgo. Last night in complete exhaustion I shopped the big shop although I was unable to find some of the perfect ingredients. I am edge-liver, willing to experiment with the bunny mac dosage and will try any combination of condiments in my quest for macvana. It was not until bundles were trundled into the kitchen that I remembered not having remembered to unpack the kitchen crap. Nine boxes of variously labeled cartons stood before and between me and my mac- not one of them labeled “saucepots”. Four boxes and three hours into my quest for queso, long since having switched from cerveca to whiskey, I abandoned the hunt for household implements and settled for leftover Chinese. Not really the same at all. I was shaking and weird, jonsing for my fix and unsatiated in my search for the sacred shells n’ cheese. I drank alone last night to try to drown my sorrow and disappointment, to try to fill the emptiness of my unfulfilled longing, my blue box blues.

A new day dawned, albeit painfully and once home from the gym I readdressed my quest with renewed vigor and determination, rewarded halfway through my second crate with the flash of stainless; the “pot of …” at the end of my rainbow. Appropriately impressed by the solemnity of my first bunny mac in the new pad I sat down to feed my need and found that today a new pasta day had dawned, bringingwith it a whole new flavor. Neufchatel, chili in soy and “firehot” chili oil: not altogether unpleasant, a sweet n’ hot event, much in keeping with the rest of my life at the moment so the weight of this macmentous occasion needed commemorating.

I’m now driving my first-ever newnew car, loaded and lifted with every accessory and doodad the factory offers, extra this and bigger that, more powerful and shiny than anything I roar past on the road. I am enriched by my addiction and I celebrate the newness of this experience with something honoring the familiar. When you spot that bright yellow cruiser with the “macnchz” plate, honk or take a moment of silent self-benediction to thank the things that get you through the days. Give homage what helps in good and bad times. Celebrate what nourishes your journey from the familiar to the found and embrace the goodness of what is good to you. There is cheesy comfort in all of it.