A review of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Macaroni and Cheese
I bought this on a whim after having a lengthy conversation with my coworkers about an anonymous comment someone left on a survey tool we use where we wondered if their comment consisting of the word "goldfish" 7,200 times meant that they wanted a giant fish tank full of living goldfish or if they were actually requesting a large box of goldfish crackers. We think they mean't crackers.
I went to the store a few minutes later and what do you know, goldfish mac and cheese ON SALE! Fantastic, I'm buying that.
2 weeks later ... working from home, I figure why not, I'll try them.
First red flag was reading that I was to boil the gold fish pasta for 16 minutes. Wow, talk about over-cooking pasta. Either it was going to be over-cooked or this is some gnarly dried pasta. I went with it. While cooking, I opened the cheese sauce packet to see if it did actually smell like the crackers and I was suprised because it did! Yum! I got excited.
Once it finished boiling, I strained it and while it was straining I prepared the sauce with milk and butter like the suggested recipe but in a pot before adding the pasta to get a nice even coating of cheese sauce. Added the pasta back in, stirred, took a photo of the beautiful fishes, then served. Here we go!
Oh my goodness, what happened to the flavor? Did I forget an ingredient? Did I spill soap into the food? Nope, all went as it should have. What did I do? I thought it would at least have tasted on par with Kraft mac and cheese, but nope. Wait, what's that feeling? I think it ruined my taste buds after just one bite. Took another few bites just to make sure and see if I could make it through a warming up period, but nope. My tastebuds are ruined completely now. I don't usually waste food especially after spending 20 minutes preparing it but I couldn't eat it.
I opened the fridge to taste some real cheddar cheese to try to bring my tastebuds back but the goldfish had done too much damage. The cheese tasted awful too. There's no quick turn around once you've put these into your mouth.
I urge you to hear me out and try to reason against the temptation to try these out. Maybe kids do like them, I don't know, but if you love your kids I urge you to not ruin their tastebuds with these. Go find some real food (or probably any other brand of mac and cheese).