Liz’s rant: Please pass the plain pasta

Please understand that by plain, I don’t mean plain, plain, or sauceless plain. I mean stick to the plain shapes. Regular pasta, if you will – angel hair, elbow macaroni.

Heck, I’ll even give you rotini every now and then. But when the shapes take on the form of SpongeBob or Spider Man, it seems a no-brainer that the world of culinary delights is gonna sacrifice flavor for the sake of novelty.

Case in point would be Saturday’s dinner. My son requested mac and cheese, which I typically make from scratch. But for whatever reasons, (no elbow macaroni in the house…) I pulled out that instant version with the powdered cheese package (been there, done that?).

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the water was boiling and I was pouring the pasta before I realized Spider Man shapes were dropping into the sauce pan. As the stupid shapes dropped, so did my appetite.

I’d mentally prepared myself for the taste of regular pre-packaged faux macaroni and cheese – not crazy shapes – and yelled to my son:

“This is Spidermac! Gross.”

“It is? Yes! It’s really good, Mom! You’ll love it.”

Uh, huh…

Now I won’t complain about the ease with which it can be fixed. Instead I’ll note that the toughest part about making it is stirring thoroughly. It didn’t smell too bad, either. Plus, I was starving.

I figured if we were really lucky, it could be the start of a new fad. Each week, we could  pick a different cartoon pasta shape for dinner, and take turns annihilating micro-super heroes and villains.

Until I took the first bite. Luckily it wasn’t a big bite – but big enough to prove I’d been right. Good taste had been sacrificed for the sake of novelty, assuring that my cupboards will never again be devoid of good ol’ elbow macaroni – and the super heroes and villains will live to fight another day – at least in my house.

-Liz