The almost vegan quinoa macaroni and cheese incident of January 24th.

Let me just cut through the suspense here at the beginning of this post and just say that this story doesn't end very well.  It all started with a link I saw on facebook...

As soon as I saw the recipe for quinoa mac and cheese, I was beyond excited to try it.  And by that I mean, I kept the tab open for 3 days staring longingly at it until I had the time to go to the grocery store.  I had to swap out the cheese ingredient for vegan cheese and ended up coming home with a huge hunk of bright orange "cheddar."  As I was shredding it, the only thing that came to mind was soupy playdough.  I was mega skeptical/disgusted and did a taste test.  It passed, but just barely.  Other than that though, the recipe was easy to follow and there surprisingly weren't any disasters.

Karen and Jake came over for dinner and I felt a little bad subjecting them to a) my cooking and b) gluten/dairy free questionable ingredients.  But all was well and good and nobody hated it (unless they were really good at hiding it...) and I thought it was a total success.

...Until we all started feeling like shit.  Well, Karen was fine cuz she's one of those weird creatures that can eat anything, even styrofoam, and still have the sort of functioning digestion system I could only dream of.  (I made that styrofoam part up, though).  And Jake was fine too... for a little while.  We'll get back to that.  Tucker and I, though. Man.  It felt like my insides were being obliterated by one of those magic bullet things, except without the delicious smoothie outcome.  My plan had been to go to the gym, but all I wanted to do was lay on the ground and not move for 500 years.

And then I woke up in the middle of the night around 4am and saw that Karen had called me around midnight. I remember sleepily thinking, "hmm, I hope she's okay, mmph mmmmg zzz." And it wasn't until later today that I found out Jake had had an allergic reaction and needed a ride to the hospital.  I'm still a little unclear as to what he ended up doing and I haven't heard from him today, but I'm pretty sure he's alive.  So that's good.

And there you have it.  My delicious quinoa mac n' cheese was a fail.  Maybe I'll try it again with a different kind of soy cheese? I dunno. It's gonna take a while to build up the courage and block out that traumatic experience.

Deadly.