Macaroni and cheese was my favorite dish as a child. I could tolerate Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner (“Kraft Dinner” to our friends in Canada), but I much preferred more substantial (and genuinely elbow-shaped) noodles and cheese sauce that didn’t come from a powder. My mom often used Campbell’s Cheddar Cheese Soup as a sauce for mac & cheese, and that worked surprisingly well. (Nowadays I prefer a mix of Gouda, Gruyère, and Cheddar.) I especially liked it when she’d bake the noodle-and-cheese mixture in a casserole with paprika (or, as I called it as a kid, “rust”) on top. And always, of course, I put ketchup on my mac & cheese. It’s not low-carb or low-cal, and (sorry) it wasn’t invented by Thomas Jefferson, but it is one of the ultimate comfort foods.
