Save time by grating your cheese in a food processor

Over the years, my mac and cheese evolved, hopefully the same way I have.  It, too, has gone through a skinny-jean phase, when I used whole-wheat pasta, skim milk and blanched broccoli.  Then I discovered that skinny jeans make me look like an exclamation point, and who wants to look like punctuation?  After that unfortunate revelation, my mac and cheese became unusually decadent, with full fat heavy cream and homemade bread crumbs scattered liberally across its surface.  Happily, I haven’t really moved past that phase, and neither has my mac and cheese, but sometimes, in the interest of time and sanity, I’ll use store-bought bread crumbs (gasp) and whole milk (double gasp).

No matter what version my mac and cheese happens to be for the particular occasion, there’s always one point on which I remain vigilant: the cheese.  An important tip here: please don’t go throwing some bland, rubbery orange cheddar manufactured by a company whose name begins with “K” and ends with “raft.”  Every time someone does that using my recipe, a puppy cries.