QT Mac and cheese

The gluten and lactose intolerant’s nightmare dish

I went in looking for tots but found nothing of the kind—I panicked a little. Thinking it was a limitation of the app I scrolled thru the entire lunch/dinner menu on the in-store screen. Alas there were no tots. I did see Mac and Cheese though—with customizations like bacon, chicken and buffalo. ⭐️Asking myself if this was new or if I had just filtered it out of bandwidth, as I am want to do when low value is hastily determined on my limited, yet intimate view of food production and distribution, I gazed into the touchscreen and chose bacon chicken ranch Mac and Cheese ⭐️

Like most industries there are fewer and fewer owners. As production and distribution become one and the same, we’re seeing rapid consolidation of the pipelines, intellectual properties and manufacturing, all owned by a just few corporations. At the same time the regulatory powers of the people’s governments are stymied and neutered mostly through a mix of fully funding and non-funding. This is happening across all industries and walks of life, even the music biz. It’s about control and maximum extraction of value and resources as we head towards two equally dramatic and distinct wave trends—1) climate disruption of agriculture and 2) the long term declining birth rates of the first world.

The Mac and cheese was in a black petroleum based bowl of some sort—it felt like a thin, cheap paper plate with the familiar crimped edge, it was undetermined if this was purely aesthetic or to lend structural support. The lid was a typical, clear hard plastic to-go style. The synthetic clamshell was placed inside a branded QT food sleeve, like one might use for turnovers or small bites. The preparer placed that all in a third layer of branded plastic bag after my number, 264 was called.

<264+264  = 528+528=1056+1056=2112>

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXPYMcRIi2fHdvKx6Orw2ux9Lpj3tsBC2&si=uRoQWNjBit2IVivW

Upon opening the lid I was greeted by a fairly solid blob of baked cheese. My plastic fork had a job trying to break into its viscous layers. I used the spin technique to stretch out and thin some of the cheese into smaller pieces. Large amounts of thick melted cheese makes me gag a little. I think it’s a fear of somehow choking on a plug of mucilaginous goop—I tend to focus on the unforgiving folds of knotty wads by over-chewing, masticating, absolutely **Fletcherizing them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Fletcher

I found that spearing a chunk of chicken or bacon was helpful in that its fatty, corpulent mass seemed to naturally displace some of the cheesier fork fulls. The crunchiness and savory pork fat of the bacon reached across the isle embracing the baked-on chewy edges that had almost caramelized. The edges were right on the cusp of browning into those “Krunchewy” bits we expect from lasagna, casseroles and pot pies. And indeed this thing really overall felt like a small pot pie. I was promised ranch dressing. But it did not get placed in my 1st, 2nd or 3rd layer of packaging. Shame, all that space for more promotional, branded goodies…nada—that ranch may have been helpful as a solvent to reduce the viscosity of the Parm, Cheddar, Jack, American cheese cud or the PCJAM, if I may.

The plus sides of the lactose armada are the same as the challenges of said lump, its chewiness and saltiness. Luckily I did have on-hand a bottle Sea Smoke, which served the duel purpose of thinning agent and a spicy compliment to the hefty little chunk of Mac and cheese.

https://www.seasmokeco.com/

Though its flavor profile is certainly salt forward, The QT Mac and Cheese is not overwhelming and benefits from our ability to modify our sense of tasting on the fly. All and all it was a damn fine road snack. I’m sure I’ll get sick of it after a couple more times. But I am surely looking forward to the journey from craving to quinched.

⭐️ (really this is a helluva sentence, even for my tangential ass