Happy Neurodiversity Week!

There are many types of #neurodiversity and #ADHD is just one of them. A lot of times, an Instant Pot is a godsend for the easily distracted, whether that be adult caregivers to children who have the urge to draw a masterpiece all over the living room in lipstick, or a person whose brain is the child trying to draw a masterpiece all over the neural-living room with cognitive-lipstick. Which is why so many of my recipes are written for people with low working memory and cover meals that would be faster and, some might find, easier to prepare without the Instant Pot. And today is no exception. Today, I present: boxed macaroni and cheese.

Materials.

• 1 box of Mac and Cheese including noodles and powdered cheese packet
• 2 cups water [If using Annie's brand box, use only 1 1/4 cups of water]
• 2 TBSP butter
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• Instant Pot
• spoon

Method.

1. Put the water (2 cups), and noodles from the box of Mac and Cheese into the Instant Pot. Set it to Pressure Cook (sub settings: normal, high) for 4 minutes.
2. When the time is up, quick release the pressure.
3. Now add the powdered cheese packet, and butter (2 TBSP) and stir thoroughly with a spoon. [If using an Annie's brand box, you may need to drizzle a spoonful or two of water if the resultant cheese sauce is too thick.]
4. Eat.

NOTES

PSA: I know that people love Annie's brand macaroni and cheese for its brand values of being organic, wholesome, good for you food. I love a good Cheddar Bunny myself (one of the brand's products). However, if you haven't yet experienced the disappointment that is their boxed macaronic and cheese, let me please try to steer you away before you do. The only acceptable flavor that doesn't taste like warm, blended copy-paper to me (and the children I taste test these recipes on) is their Aged Cheddar but, frankly, we can do better.

Bibliography. The base of my adaptation was this already-Instant Pot recipe, from which I subtracted milk because liquid dairy isn't something I keep on hand and plant "milk" doesn't cook right in mac and cheese. Oddly, water cooks better than plant "milk"; go figure. Annie's brand modification came from trial and error. I also rearranged the order of some of the steps to keep the macaroni from sticking to the bottom of the Instant Pot. It turns out that the butter was the culprit so it got moved to a later step; it melts just the same.