Say Cheese

While watching TV on one of my favorite channels The Foodnetwork , my wife started to talk to me during a commercial. She notice I wasn’t paying attention to her (which is sometimes not that unusual) but I said, “Oh my, what is that.” It was an advertisement for Velveeta’s latest meal. It looked like it was macaroni noodles, with hamburger meat, spaghetti sauce, and Velveeta of course. After I got done wiping the drool from my face, I began telling my wife how I used to eat Velveeta often as a kid.

I can still remember the block of cheese wrapped in foil in the bright yellow box. My siblings and I would walk by the fridge and grab a hunk of cheese delight. It is like the perfect melting cheese, great for grilled cheese sandwiches. Our family favorite was nachos. You had to do it right or would not get optimum cheese on all the nachos. If you just threw the nachos on the plate and slapped the cheese on top you would just get a few nachos with cheese and the rest would end up on the bottom of the plate. The key was to layer. A little bit of nachos, then spread the cheese out evenly, then layer of nachos, and cheese again. This would give it maximum coverage. Top with a little bit of salsa and sour cream, and this would complete an evening of sitting in front of the TV.

This was the age of the microwave. You know when we didn’t know any better and we would press our face up against the microwave trying to watch things melt. Not knowing that radiation was seeping out the door and doing who knows what to our DNA. As a teenage boy I was the master microwave chef. If I could get it on a paper plate and could melt it together in the microwave I was happy. During summer vacation, while the other kids were playing outside, this teenage kid was in the kitchen figuring out my next microwave master piece. I found some different kinds of cheese; American Singles, Mozzarella, and Velveeta of course. I also found some refried beans in the pantry and some tortilla wraps. Not really caring what my mother had planned for any of this stuff, I made what I liked to call “The Melt.” Take a few spoons full of beans and spread on the tortilla, layer the cheese, and roll it up. Nuke it for about 15 to 20 seconds. If you are lucky you might have some sauce packets left over from Taco Bell to put on top. I was like Chef Boyardee with that microwave.

Of course you couldn’t go to the bathroom for a week if you ate too much Velveeta; I think it’s like 15% wax.