mac&cheese

i've been eating wheat-free for a while now - well, let's call it wheat-reduced.  i don't make a rule of it when i'm out and about; i enjoy whatever is served when i'm at someone else's house, and i absolutely can't resist my friend julie's scrumptious sugar cookies.  but in general, i've been enjoying eating without wheat.

(i'm definitely not judging people who do eat wheat; i have insulin resistance, so it's harder for my body to process wheat than most people's ... it loves to hoard it as fat instead of using it.  so that's why i started cutting it out of my usual everyday diet - i wasn't getting any nutrients from it anyway.)

anyway, all that to introduce a yummy food i thought i'd never make again ... macaroni & cheese!

btw, i'm sure most - if not all - of you knew this existed since you first started eating, but for me, it was a happy discovery.

i've always loved kraft mac & cheese - actually, i'd pretty much eat anything with sprinkly powder cheese on it.  when i was a kid, i'd sneak into the fridge and eat it straight from the can with a spoon.

but of course, kraft dinner contains wheat.  and the generic label cheese sauce also contains wheat (not sure about kd's).  so goodbye, kd!  but then the other day i was on facebook and saw that one of my friends had made gluten free mac & cheese.  my brain almost exploded from the happiness, and i immediately began thinking of ways to make a fake fake-cheese sauce.  i snagged some brown rice pasta from the bulk store, and tested them out.  i tried using yogurt & cheese melted together - it was good, quite tangy, but definitely didn't taste like mac & cheese.

then i thought, why not just try straight cheddar?  so i cooked the noodles, grated the cheddar, and just when i went to combine them, found myself putting butter and milk into the pot too - from sheer force of habit.  good ol' kd trained me well hehe.

guess what?  it was delicious!

last night we dressed it up a bit by adding havarti, parmesan, and beef.  mmmmm.  so good.  so filling.  such a nice pasta-y dish, one i hadn't expected to enjoy again!  and from such great ingredients too - brown rice pasta, cheddar, milk, and butter.  that's it - nothing freaky, no preservatives, just plain good food!

which brings me to one of my new favourite verses:

                                  Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
                                        and delight yourselves in rich food.

                                                                     Isaiah 55:2 (b)

;)