"healthy-ish-er" mac 'n cheese

There's pretty much no way to do healthy mac 'n cheese, let's just be honest with ourselves here. But you can at least do a little finagling to dress that wolf's food up in some sheep's healthy-ish clothing. Here's how I usually jazz up my store-bought mac 'n cheese, adding a little more flavor, texture, and nutrients (or so I've convinced myself). When I am living overseas, I usually buy a couple boxes of mac 'n cheese when I'm home and bring them out when I need a little bit of home--America in a box and it never goes bad.

Here's what you'll need for your healthy-ish-er mac 'n cheese:

1 medium or large saute pan
boiling water, if you have 4 or 5 cups (about a liter) ready to go, you'll have more than enough I'd say
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion (size to taste... if you like more flavor, use a bigger onion), diced small
2-3 cups fresh spinach, or 1-1.5 cups frozen spinach
any other veggies you want to throw in that you have lying around (I've used red pepper, frozen broccoli, cauliflower... veggies with a little structure. Much to my disappointment, eggplant doesn't work well in this recipe)
1.5 cups veggie meat crumbles
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 box store-bought mac 'n cheese*
1/2 vegetable bouillon cube (optional)
Red chili flakes or cayenne pepper to taste (optional)
Parmesan cheese to garnish (optional)

All my measurements are estimations, so feel free to adjust the oil

You're basically creating a skillet casserole, but you're working it like a risotto almost. I've been doing this technique for a while, out of sheer laziness of not wanting to wash an extra pan, but then Mark Bittman gave my technique legitimacy. You don't need any of the vegetables to be completely cooked before you add the water, you just want them to be about half-way or three-quarters cooked if you want them to still have some crunch when you're eating.

1. Start heating the water, either in a saucepan or kettle. You're only going to be dirtying up the saute pan, so you just need to boiling water in a separate vessel, boiling and ready for when you'll need it later. Don't salt the water, there's pleeeeenty of sodium in the mac 'n cheese cheese sauce and the parmesan, so adjust the salt later.
2. Heat the oil in the pan, add the onion. How you cook this is to your preference. I like the flavor of the onions when they're a little browned, but if that's not your thing, keep the heat low-medium and just let the onions get translucent.
3. At this point, add any non-spinach veggies (including fresh garlic; if using garlic powder, that comes later). If you're just working with the spinach, add that here. Spinach cooks super fast whereas other veggies take longer, so the principal is to get in the things that will take the longest to cook in first. Let these get slightly browned/toasted if you like that flavor (I do). 
4. Add red chili flakes or just a tiny bit of cayenne pepper now. If you haven't used cayenne before, be careful! It goes a long way. The red chili flakes are a lot more forgiving on spicyness, so go for that if you just want a mild kick.
5. If you haven't already, add the spinach. Let cook for a minute or two.
6. Add the veggie meat crumbles, let brown/saute for a couple minutes. I've tried this with veggie chicken, but it's not as good as with the veggie ground meat. If you're working with real meat, you'll have to use your own judgement of when to add the meat in as I'm not sure about cooking times, etc., and you don't want to take meat cooking advice from a long-time vegetarian if you want to avoid food poisoning. Just sayin'.
7. If you want garlic flavor, sprinkle with garlic powder now. 
8. Add the dry pasta, stir, let it get infused with some of the flavor that you have going on in the pan. I usually let the pasta get a little toasted, get some color on it, but that's just my flavor preference. You don't have to and the dish will still turn out fine. 
9. Add just enough boiling water to cover what's in the pan and throw in vegetable bouillon cube if you're using it. Stir to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan and to scrape any flavor bits off the bottom.
10. Stay by the pan and stir every once in a while, keeping an eye on how done the pasta is. After the first initial water dose, you just want to add water a little at a time, because you will not be draining this out. The water will need to be completely absorbed by the pasta, veggies, and fake meat, so don't overdo it on the water, otherwise you'll have mac 'n cheese porridge. 
11. When the pasta is just this side of done, lower the heat and add the cheese packet (see my note on preferred mac 'n cheese brand below). Stir until the cheese melts in and everything is coated. Turn off heat, let sit for a minute (otherwise you'll reeeeally burn your tongue, that cheese gets hot!).
12. Serve up and sprinkle with parmesan if you like.

Bon app!

*As for my preferred store-bought mac 'n cheese, it's confession time, I guess: I've found that the best for this recipe is Velveeta Shells 'n Cheese. If it makes you feel any better (it definitely helps me feel better), they do have a whole wheat version. The shell shape of the pasta stands up to the cooking and is a good shape for eating with the other ingredients. I've also found that the Velveeta itself, thanks to its simple heat 'n serve consistency, is the best for this recipe because you don't need to worry about the extra ingredients called for by other store-bought mac 'n cheese, which can make the dish a little mushy. I've tried this dish out with Kraft and Trader Joe's versions with their powdered cheese packets and it just doesn't turn out as well. Yes, Velveeta is basically edible plastic cheese. But I figure that my few moments of plastic cheese weakness are more than made up for the by the countless MickeyD's plastic cheeseburgers that I haven't consumed in the past 16+ years. Whatever, it's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe...

Editor's note: I don't know what the hell happened in my brain in February--I totally had this post and another ready to go and then never posted them. Doh! So, yeah, um, here we go... two months late. Hee hee heee... (awkward trailing off laughter).

The new "Unity" farce, er, I mean, government in Zimbabwe will begin with Morgan Tsvangirai's inauguration as Prime Minister on Wednesday. Mugabe will stay on as President. In Tsvangirai's speech, he plans to call for greater Western support in light of this great step in the Zimbabwean political situation. Currently, most Zimbabweans live a life of bare subsistence and depend heavily on foreign aid for good and medicine (in addition to the food shortage and civil strife that has plagued the country in recent history, last year, a cholera epidemic erupted).

So, while on Wednesday, Tsvangirai will ask for this: "Morgan Tsvangirai will use his inauguration as Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister this week to appeal to the West to fund the rebuilding of his shattered country..."

Coincidentally, Mugabe's 85th birthday is coming up right on the heels of Tsvangirai's inauguation--February 21st, to be exact. And, well, hey, a party is a party, right? No need to let famine and disease spoil your fun! Mugabe's supporters began last week to "solicit" (force with threat of violence) "donations" for his big birthday bash. Just in case you have a couple hundred kilos of caviar laying around, I thought you might like to know where you can send it for a good cause. Here's what's on the birthday party food wish list:

2,000 bottles of champagne — Moët & Chandon and ’61 Bollinger
500 bottles of whisky — Johnny Walker Blue Label, 22-year-old Chivas
8,000 lobsters
100kg king prawns
3,000 ducks
4,000 portions of caviar
8,000 boxes of Ferrero Rocher
16,000 eggs
3,000 cakes — chocolate and vanilla
4,000 packs of pork sausages
500kg cheese
4,000 packets of crackers

This is seriously sick. And I mean that in all senses of the word.

What I learned from the State of California

You learn something new everyday.

Today, I had the lucky chance to spend a little bit over an hour at San Clemente's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) waiting to renew my driver's license. I took the opportunity to brush up on any new laws that might have come up since the last time I took the test (more than a decade ago), just in case I had to retake the written exam. But, the booklet of driving laws also offered up some great everyday reminders:

1. Do not make a U-turn on a one-way street.
2. Do not make a U-turn when there is a sign that says "No U-Turns."
3. Do not shoot firearms on a highway or at traffic signs. (But, of course, presumably this means that shooting a firearm on surface streets or not at traffic signs must be okay.)
   
4. Do not honk your horn unless it is a safety warning. (My mom pointed out that this means that when you "Honk for Jesus," you're actually committing a crime.)

Just wanted to pass on that learnin'. Be sure to put that to some good use.

Add it to the "Must Dance" list

Britney's back and she's bringing her dance with her. I heard her single "Womanizer" for the first time last night, bought it cuz I had to have it for the dancer in my head, and have listened to it probably 20 times since then. I can't wait to hit Arty's to dance to this song. Click here to get your dance on.

Paging Captain Hook... Paging Captain Hook, please.

Here's a headline I never thought I'd see without a DeLorean ride first:

"World Grapples with Pirate Problem."

Alrighty then.

If it's Saturday, it must be time for a serious dose of sarcasm

Really. Here's one of the funniest SNL clips from the current season. Really.


via videosift.com

P.s. The last two weeks have been busy, busy, busy. I was in the States for a week and then hanging with my mom and dad in Japanland this past week, so please excuse the slowdown in posting. But, it'll all be worth it because Thursday I took a ride you won't believe and Friday I got happy at one of the five happiest places on Earth. Posts on those coming soon. Really. ;)

A truer truthism was never told.

Finding laugh-out-loud wisdom in an Amazon.com book review has got to be a rarity, but find it I did. Thanks to Hilde B. for providing the following highly accurate observation on living in a foreign tongue:

"Trust me, when you only can speak in present tense with a very limited vocabulary, you sound like an idiot and the conversation dies quickly..."

Salaryman boogie

Just another Friday night out belly dancing with the co-workers for this dedicated salaryman.

What's that?!?!

The last few days, I keep feeling phantom earthquakes - meaning, I don't know if they're real but very small earthquakes (a definite possibility in Japan) or if they're just me thinking there's an earthquake because we haven't had a big one in a while and I'm just anticipating it.

Things that make you go hmm...

Snow!

It snowed Wednesday for a few hours!!! Yay!!

I'm just a girl

Me: What's the difference between futsal and soccer?

Heather: In soccer, when you throw the ball back in, you use your hands and throw the ball over your head, but you have to keep one foot behind the line. In futsal, you kick the ball in.

Me: Oh, that's good - in futsal you don't have to get your hands dirty.

Heather: (Silence.)

Me: I think that's the girliest thing I've ever said in my life.

The story of my life?

I was tagged for a "Meme."

It’s a “7 Random Things About Me” kind of Meme.

Here are the rules: Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog. Share seven random and/or weird things about yourself. Tag seven people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Et voila:

1. My favorite food in the whole world is eggplant. In the whole "if you could only have one food for the rest of your life" game, the answer is eggplant. In my previous life as a meat-eater (I loved bbq and my mom's chicken), I would still have chosen eggplant. If you ever invite me to your house for dinner, you can never go wrong in serving me eggplant.
2. I wish I could be more of a fashionista. I watch "Project Runway" like I know what they're talking about, read/browse through fashion mags so I can recognize some designer's styles, and have resigned myself to my materialistic SoCal background that forces me to judge (in my head, in the cattiest ways) the clothes, hair, and makeup choices of most people who cross my path, even though I am Public Enemy Number One on my own "Worst-Dressed" list. Yes, I see the hypocrisy, shallowness, and stupidity of this, but I am a product of my environment and I can't help it. At least I've trained myself to keep these thoughts to myself. In SoCal, as a general rule, these thoughts are allowed to be expressed out loud without guilt. Also, as far as learning the ropes of the fashionista world, I totally suck at that too. I really do read Marie Claire for the articles and the fashion spreads usually annoy me. Plus, hello, like everyone who knows me knows I wear practically head-to-toe Target and Payless with some Nordstrom thrown in here and there for good measure.
   
3. Happy Birthday Carebear sleeps in my bed most nights. I have had Carebear for 25 years. I don't snuggle with him unless I'm really sad and/or crying, so mostly he just stays in the corner of the bed. Carebear has traveled internationally without me after I left him in a Paris hotel room when I was 14 and he was mailed back home.
   
4. I am a serious night owl (as this 7 am post should attest). I actually am pretty productive at night and whenever I don't have anything to regularly get up for in the mornings, my schedule almost always naturally flips itself with me working most of the night and sleeping into the afternoon. I usually sleep 7 or 8 hours. I often clean my apartment in the middle of the night.
   
5. I get B.O. very rarely and only need to put deodorant on every 3 to 5 days. I actually can't remember the last time I put it on, though I know it was in the last week, and the quick armpit sniff check I just did tells me that the deodorant I put on whenever I did is still working. Because of this fortunate condition, I can be pretty sensitive to other people's smells, which accounts for my vivid smell memories in various cities of the world (you can guess which one won the prize for smelliest).
6. 4% alcohol cider gets me pretty tipsy after one pint and I can't finish two. However, hard liquor will only get me slightly tipsy and usually requires more shots/drinks than you'd think to get me drunk. For example, the other night I had a whiskey sour followed by a godfather (two shots bourbon, one shot amaretto) and walked out of the bar way more sober than I'd be after a pint of Strongbow. Also, I've never been falling down, black out drunk. I can remember most parts/sequence of events/verbatim conversation after a night of drinking. I've only been really, truly hungover twice in my life - once in May 1999 after the last night in the dorms and the second time in May 2007. Because I'd hardly experienced this phenomenon, last May I actually didn't realize I was simply hungover at the time and really thought something was wrong with me.
7. I have been snowboarding since the 8th grade, approximately 13 or 14 years old. (I can't calculate what age I was at that time - that's another random fact about me. Only Ashley knows how old I was for everything as my "Life Chronology" is all off when I calculate it.) I have my own snowboard, boots, etc. My board is the same one I got in the 8th or 9th grade and has a fiberglass patch on it from where I cracked the core and bent the frame when I landed the biggest (and last) jump I ever did. Now, I just like to ride straight down, on mogul-less runs, as fast as I can (which still probably isn't very fast).
8. Bonus fact: I probably won't tag anyone for this because I just never get around to that kind of stuff. So, if you wanna play, feel free to take it from here. :)
   

It's 6 in the morning...

And I can't frickin' sleep! There's no good reason for this and it's just annoying. Especially because in three hours I have a Japanese level test at a new school I want to try out.