Hey hey hey! It's my favourite day of the week again, Mac & Cheese Monday!
I pretty much bought every new Earth Balance product I could find when I was in Austin. I already reviewed the Cheddar Squares and the Cheddar Kettle Chips. I mentioned the Mac and Cheese yesterday in my ridiculous sandwich post and today I have a proper review.
I was pretty excited about this product, mac and cheese is one of my favourite foods and anything that's this easy to throw together will always appeal to me. Not because of my super busy life, nope! Because I'm a- pretty lazy and b- because I don't always remember to make food until I'm really, really hungry...or should I say hangry? I'm not sure there's a difference for me!
I read every review I could find online before my trip to Austin and people seemed to be enjoying the Cheddar, aka the orange box, better. All you need to do is boil the pasta, drain and then add the cheese sachet and 2TBS of both buttery spread and soya milk.
Sal and I were mainly making this to put in a mac & cheese toastie (yes, they were amazing!) but we managed to taste test a few spoonfuls of it first and surprise surprise it was delicious. This is no gourmet mac and cheese but it's super saucy and cheesy and just touch on the sweet side.
We made it with Vitalite spread as you can't get Earth Balance spread here. Vitalite isn't anywhere near as salty as EB, I thought this had the right level of salt but I have quite a low salt tolerance and don't put a tonne of it on my food. The other thing to note is that the two TBS's of soya milk you use need, like, really need to be unsweetened. As I said this is a little sweet already and it'd be a total disaster with sweetened soya milk. Apparently it's similar to Kraft mac and cheese but that's not something we have here so I've never tried it and I can't tell you how closely it compares. John from Laziest Vegans can though so check out his review for an American opinion!
Last night Nick and I whipped up a box of the White Cheddar, aka the blue box. We decided to add some Smart Dogs, another thing we brought back from the US, because honestly I don't think this box makes enough mac for two hungry people despite EB's claim that it's 2.5 portions.
The blue box mac is definitely a touch saltier and a little less sweet than the orange box which I think makes it my favourite. Only just though! I really wish I'd brought back even more boxes of this stuff, I think it'll become a lazy day staple in our house fo' sure!
Now for the fun part, the giveaway!
I have one orange box and one blue box to give away to a lucky UK based winner. To enter you need to leave a comment below telling me when you'd eat them. Would you share them with your vegan bff? Would you huff the whole box in one sitting alone whilst watching your favourite show? Would it be the perfect emergency food after a busy day running around after your kiddo's? Whatever, lemme know! There are no wrong answers. Don't forget to leave me your contact details (e-mail address, Twitter handle or your blog) so that I can get in touch if you win. The competition closes at 9pm on Friday 19th. No extra entries for sharing on social media but feel free to anyway if you wanna spread the vegan love!