Last week, I talked about equality. This week, it’s time to talk about justice being served — served cold.
Growing up in a family that had far more of a hot-dog budget than a steak budget, we ate our fair share of hot dogs in the 1970s. It seemed we ate more hot dogs and other cheap meat byproducts than any other three-child family in southern Maryland or the Washington, D.C. area, but comparing notes recently, we were actually not big consumers of the dog, compared to our friends and neighbors.
Hot dogs were not simply the staple and main course to a meal. They were also a topping, a filler, a snack, and, sadly, in some cases, part of a dessert.
However, at least hot dogs are called by their full names. Occasionally, we’ll just refer to them as “dogs,” much the same way sports announcers or military call people by last names, but it’s usually both words. This is the not the dignity bestowed upon another dish: macaroni and cheese.
We all have our favorite ingredients or toppings but we also make the simple and yet demeaning mistake of using the two despisable terms: mac and cheese.
One might think this is a silly dispute, but it robs the macaroni not only of its Italian heritage, but it shows we don’t even think highly enough of the food to call it by its full name, and giving it the three extra syllables.
Maybe in 1979, when the three Brooks children were just learning to use words, the “mac” abbreviation was acceptable, but those days need to come to an end. Such an important part of our comfort-food heritage and gastrointestinal history should be called by its full name.
Folks with Irish last names, who are from Ireland and not easily confused with millions of other “Mac-” last names might go by “Mack” as a nickname. Mack trucks are as well-known within the transportation business as they are among anyone seeking a metaphor for something heavy, hard-to-stop and potentially lethal.
A mac or mack could be a Mac computer, a guy who is smooth with the ladies (such as the Kriss Kross of Mack Daddy or Daddy Mack), a type of computer address, something a banker never wears in “Penny Lane,” or a type of sloppy wet kiss that might happen at a dance. However, it is not an appropriate abbreviation for macaroni.
Some might think this to be an imagined slight. If you followed the TV show “South Park” in its infancy, you would remember an episode where Eric Cartman gets upset about rainbows, drawing strange reactions from his peers until he realizes rainbows aren’t what he thought they were. He never says what he thought to be the definition of a rainbow.
However, I am not confused in the way Cartman was befuddled. I just don’t like to see macaroni abbreviated.
Maybe the root of my discontent is Mom talking about “mac and cheese” brings up memories of growing up relatively poor. It was certainly one of our most common fallback, go-to meals. Our family certainly did its part to further the profits of Kraft products by downing large quantities of what’s in “the blue box.”
Even Kraft itself embraces the “mac,” calling one of its websites kraftmacandcheese.com (the box labeling, however, still spells out the word macaroni).
Maybe there will be a day when I’ll lighten up on this issue. For now, it’s about time to return to fully extending macaroni the respect it deserves.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com