Macaroni and Cheese

I have a "CRAFTY" idea. I love a certain brand of macaroni and cheese. All that lovely orange powder that makes the biggest difference to all those little elbow macaronis, YUM. I like to make different meals with this as a base.

Make the dish as directions state. Add any meat, vegetable and spice that your imagination inspires -top with a little bit of shredded cheese and TA DA! Lots of different meals.

Split up the box for a couple of meals. You can make the cheese sauce and use half for one meal and the other half for another. Using one box I made four meals. 1- I boiled a couple of potates, drained and added 1/2 the cheese sauce, added Early Peas, diced chicken pieces and a few spices to make dish #1. 2- One half of the macaroni was boiled and added to a sauce of butter, milk, spices and 1/2 can of diced tomatoes along with some leftover ham. 3- rest of the macaroni added to onion, bell pepper and garlic mixture that had been sauted. Diced chicken, the rest of the tomato and corn make the rest of the dish. 4- Other half of the cheese sauce poured over scrambled eggs and sausage.

One note; while this is my favorite easy mac n cheese, the BEST recipe is Patti LaBelle's Over the Rainbow Macaroni and Cheese. It comes with a warning that it can cause heart attacks if eaten more than once a year but WOW! (Just so you know, it was named by Elton John.)