The Mac and Cheese that changed my life

It’s April 20, 2014. Easter Sunday is upon us and that means home cooked food all day long. Some friends from the dorms invite me to Easter service with a group from the school. One of the guys we are with invites us to his house for dinner. Since none of us had family in town, we decided it would be nice to celebrate the holiday with friends.

It’s finally dinner time, so we head to the host’s house for the gathering. We get there and a few people have already started eating, their plates hold the unattractive remains of what looks to be some sort of noodle dish. We go to the kitchen and Chris, the host, offers us some of his homemade macaroni and cheese. I peek into the pan to see what I am getting myself into. What is left in the pan looks much more appetizing than the sneak preview I saw on the other guests plates. I put a scoop into a bowl and it is gone within a minute. I go back for seconds. This time I take a bigger scoop in order to avoid the judgment I would have received if I was to go back for thirds. “Put down the fork and chew,” I have to whisper to myself between bites. The only macaroni I had ever ate before this came from a box or the hot food section at Publix. The cheese sauce had a texture that was alien to me: creamy and stringy, but not so stringy that every bite leaves spiderwebs of cheese hanging from your lips. Instead of the traditional elbow noodles, tortiglioni was used. I was impressed with just how delectable this was, especially once Chris told us this was his first attempt at cooking any sort of cheese sauce.

The dessert wasn’t homemade, although that’s probably a good thing because Chris is not a baker. I cut a small slice of the pie and pulled it out of the box to unveil a chocolate crust and a layer of cookie crumbles spread out across the top of the whipped center. I sit on the couch with Marisa, one of the girls I arrived with, and we dig into our pie. As we near our last bites, we decide that we are going to need more, so Marisa heads to the kitchen to grab the leftovers in the box, not knowing that the host hadn’t even had a slice yet. Before we know it we are down to the last slice. Trying not to be bottomless pits, we close the box and Marisa reluctantly puts the last piece in the fridge.

I should have known right then I would marry this guy. And Marisa? My partner in pie crime? We are still best friends. All because of food.