Velveeta, My Love

I like an aged and sharp cheddar cheese as well as anyone, maybe more so because I'm from Wisconsin, but I would rather live in Missouri and eat Velveeta than live in Wisconsin and eat cheddar. Velveeta Cheese Product attracts me because:

1. It's good enough to eat but not good enough to snack on.
2. I can eat 55 percent more of it because it's got only 45 percent of cheddar's fat.
3. It melts wonderfully into my baked sweet potato.
4. It's cheaper, although not that cheap: one pound, about $5; two pounds for $7.
5. Dry out and whiten around the edges it will, but even when forgotten in the fridge for months it won't turn blue or totally gooey brown, and it will never smell.
6. Kids will eat it, as will many Midwestern adults.
7. Velveeta actually used this slogan: "It'll Get Eaten."And it does get eaten when there's nothing else to eat.
8. The ingredients aren't that bad: milk, whey, skim milk, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, modified food starch; and 2 percent or less of salt, calcium phosphate, corn syrup, canola oil, maltodextrin, lactic acid, sorbic acid, sodium alginate, sodium citrate, cheese culture, enzymes, apocarotenal, and annatto (for color).

Get the original. Don't bother with "reduced-fat" Velveeta; it doesn't melt well and lacks that nice synthetic flat-paint American-cheese flavor.

Fall Color

The red and green this year of the drought will have to be on your plate. The recipe for this luscious avocado, tomato and zucchini pizza is at The Piehole Midwest where due credit is given to the creator of this raw-vegetable dish you can serve and eat in any one of six ways: as salad, as salsa, as pizza topping (with mozzarella), in tacos.. .and two other ways I can't think of (I've been meaning to look up the early symptoms of Alzheimer's). Excellent because 1) there's no cooking, just dicing; and 2) the tomatoes don't have to be perfect. Peel a late zucchini, and most of the time it's still just fine to use.

Introducing "Piehole Midwest"

It's a Midwestern home-cooking orgy, so if that sounds good to you please see my branch blog, "Piehole Midwest," get on your elastic-waist pants and join in. In Shakespeare's soliloquy "The Seven Ages of Man" the fifth stage is described as a man with a "fair round belly with good capon lin'd, " and some good-cook and big-eatin' friends and I are at that stage now. "Piehole Midwest" (thepieholemidwest.blogspot.com) is blissful photos, recipe try-outs, and remarks about the food that ends up in front of me, and of course like all Midwesterners I eat what's put in front of me. I've also posted hand-picked links to guaranteed enjoyable food and recipe blogs, and I take the best photos I can.