Could it be cheesier? We all know that macaroni and cheese comes in a blue box and is bright orange. It's pretty cheap, too: At 99 cents for the box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner at one store, plus the margarine and milk that you have to stir into the cooked macaroni along with the envelope of powdered cheese mix, it comes to about 45 cents for each of three 1-cup servings.
The Big Spenders among us have long been able to step up to the labor-saving box of Kraft Deluxe Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, which eliminates dealing with margarine and milk, as it contains a pouch of ready-made cheese sauce to stir into the cooked macaroni. At the same store, this sets you back $2.29 -- 57 cents for each of four (1-cup) servings.
Kraft apparently couldn't leave it at that, and now there is an m&c dinner for the real high rollers. New Homestyle Deluxe Macaroni & Cheese Dinner (three flavors), in a comparatively subdued blue bag, goes for $3.49 and -- get this -- not only do you also have to provide butter and milk, but you have to make a sauce on the stovetop by melting the butter, stirring in the contents of the seasoning (and flour) packet, and gradually adding half a cup of milk. Then you stir in the pouch of ready-made cheese sauce and add the hot macaroni, and sprinkle on the little packet of crumbs. The total is about $1 for each of four 1-cup servings -- almost twice the blue-box cost.
The sauce flows a little more than the stickier and slightly brighter orange concoction that holds the boxed mixes together, but it involves considerably more work than either of them do. The crumbs are a nice addition, but the flavor of the Cheddar version, anyway, didn't strike Mr. Tidbit as twice as good as that of the 99-cent product. He's not surprised: The box of that original product does, after all, proclaim that it is "The Cheesiest."
AL SICHERMAN
